Licence To Kill: Britain's Surrender To Violence

Based on over thirty years of research of government sentencing policy and work within the criminal justice system, David Fraser demonstrates that Britain's increased reliance on alternatives to imprisonment has allowed violent crime to flourish. The number of life-threatening attacks has increased rapidly over the last forty years but justice officials have masked this development within a blizzard of deceptive statistics. Anti-prison groups tell the public that violent offenders can be managed in the community under supervision and that prison makes offenders worse. Contrary to this misleading propaganda, the evidence presented here informs us that criminals under probation supervision as an alternative to imprisonment commit hundreds of the most serious crimes every year, while the government's figures - which are kept away from the public eye - make it clear that long prison sentences are our best protection against violent crime. Licence to Kill demonstrates that the death penalty was an effective deterrent to homicide but does not argue for its reintroduction. Instead, by acknowledging its effectiveness, David Fraser argues the case for a re-vamped sentencing system that is as effective as was the fear of the hangman's noose. By providing readers with an alternative perspective, he invites them to consider the idea of a new criminal sentencing framework.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Leo McKinstry; Acknowledgements; Author's Note; Introduction; The Story of Gabrielle Brown; Violent Britain; Britain's Response to Crime and Violence; The Meaning of Violence; Released to Kill, Maim and Rape Again; Black Cap to White Flag: Killing, Violence and the Demise of the Death Penalty131; A New Sentencing Code: Keeping Britain Safe; Epilogue; Selected Bibliography; Notes; Endnotes; Index;

About the Author :
For twenty-six years David Fraser served in what is now the National Probation Service, both in the field and as a senior probation officer. He worked in several busy Inner London court areas, as well as in different prisons in the capital and the south-west. He also worked for almost a decade as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst with the National Criminal Intelligence Service, (which is now the National Crime Agency). He has been researching and writing about crime and sentencing policy in England and Wales since the 1980s. He has lectured to a wide variety of audiences in Britain and New Zealand and has had numerous articles published in a variety of justice journals. The first of his three published books, A Land Fit for Criminals, was recommended for the George Orwell Prize in Literature. It provoked wide interest in this country and abroad and was commended to the House of Commons during a speech by an MP. He has given evidence to three All Party Parliamentary Committees investigating sentencing and prisons. Licence to Kill: Britain's Surrender to Violence is the result of six years of considered research and involvement with the criminal justice system. David Fraser is married with two grown-up children and two grandchildren and lives with his wife in the south-west of England.