This is Going to Shock You

I met a guy last week who's serving 100 years IPP (Incarcerated for Public Protection). I also met the murderer of an innocent young man who was just minding his own business and expecting no trouble. He was stabbed 11 times in about 6 seconds. The victim's parents received £10,000 from the Criminal Injuries Board as compensation for their son’s death. Precious little, you might think, but at the time that was the maximum that was allowed, and it allowed them to give him a decent funeral.

However, the murderer’s father won a settlement of £20,000 from the Metropolitan Police for his own ‘trauma’ which included a broken ankle when they raided his flat, his pit bull being tasered, post-traumatic stress and the ‘trauma’ of seeing the son he raised arrested and tried for murder.

I’m a writer, but the victim’s mother and father have expressed this more eloquently than I ever can; “….. claims he can’t sleep because of nightmares and flashbacks to what happened at his flat that morning. What does he think we do? What makes his trauma so much worse than ours? Why can’t I sue him for a broken heart? I raised a boy who knew respect and morals and now he’s dead. That man raised a  murderer who ruined our lives. It’s  devastating.”

The parents of the victim are awarded £10,000 while the father of the murderer is awarded twice as much. Have the lunatics really taken over the asylum?