Now I wouldn’t say that I’ve generally got draconian attitudes towards crime and punishment. I would feel that I would tend to punish crimes of fear, violence and intimidation, and crimes against a specific individual more harshly than I would want to punish other sorts of crimes, or those against a company or organisation.

There are some areas where crime and punishment presents difficulties. Does a father who steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family deserve to go to prison? No? What if you’re the shopkeeper of the shop he’s stolen from a dozen times. How would you feel then? In either case, I’d reckon clapping him in chains and shipping him off to Australia for the rest of his natural life was perhaps a little harsh, and fortunately we no longer export criminals to Australia.

However, one of ours exported himself to Brazil, and that’s the chap that’s inspired this post. Look at Ronnie Biggs; he’s old, he’s frail; he can’t walk, he’s going to die soon probably (*koff* anyone else remember Ernest Saunders’ recovery from incurable dementia?) Why don’t we let him out of prison early?

In 1964, Ronnie Biggs was sentenced for his part in the Great Train Robbery of 1963. Fifteen months into his sentence, he escaped, and after five years or so, he ended up in Brazil, where he could not be extradited back to the UK. After having suffered a series of strokes, he returned to the UK for free medical treatment in 2001.

Here we move into the realm of speculation. Some people would argue that he returned to the UK simply to benefit from the UK’s healthcare. Some people would suggest that he returned to the UK because his money ran out. Some people would suggest that he returned to the UK because he didn’t think in his frail condition that he would be sent back to prison.

His son thinks he should be allowed to live out the rest of his life in peace, insisting that he is no longer a danger, he’s not actually capable of committing any crimes. I do understand the point that his son is making, and can understand that it must be awful for the son to watch his father suffering and moldering in prison but…

…and this is rather my key point. In 1964, Ronald Biggs was sentenced to thirty years in prison. By my reckoning, he has served about nine years of this. On the other hand, had he not escaped from jail, he would probably — assuming good behaviour — have been released between 1984 and 1990. The fact that he’s got to spend the rest of his life rotting in jail is a direct consequence of not only the initial crime he committed, but the second crime he committed in escaping from jail in the first place and going on the run.

It might seem like a lack of compassion, but I cannot find it anywhere in my heart to suggest that a man who escaped from prison should serve anything less than the initial tariff for which he was sentenced. Why should a man who has tried everything to avoid serving his sentence until his health fails him, be allowed to get away with it because his health has failed him?

Also, what message does this send out to others: do your time, keep your nose clean, and you’ll be out in two-thirds of your initial sentence; or you could go on the run until you’re very old and frail, and then you’ll only have to serve one third of it?

It might not be pleasant — or cheap for the taxpayer — to keep an ill, elderly man in prison, but were it not for his own actions, he would have been released from prison before he became that old, elderly man. But I’m not without compassion: once he’s served twenty-nine of the original thirty, I’m quite happy for him to be released just in time to see in his hundredth birthday as a free man.