After a mixed week of miscarriages of justice and random acts of mindless violence, Austin is mad as hell, and not gonna take it anymore.

Spare there rod and spoil the child. That’s the view I am coming to bit by bit. I am no hang-em-flog-em buffer with a gin-and-tonic at the bar of the golf club ( hate golf anyway… but yes, I like gin and tonic). I continue to be enough of a bleeding heart liberal to abhor violence and corporal and capital punishment.

Indeed this week saw the release after appeal of Sean Hodgson , convicted 27 years ago for the murder of Teresa de Simone, after DNA evidence ruled him out as the killer. Capital punishment has always been a questionable tool – Albert Pierrepoint, the great 20th century hangman thought it no deterrent – while corporal punishment always struck me, as it were, as humiliating the inflictor as much as the recipient. At my school it was done in a rather civilised way. The teacher offended by misconduct did not strike the blows of correction in heat of anger, but wrote out a bill for the number of strokes, which was taken to another teacher for “encashment” later in the day.

So far so good. But I have now reached the tipping point. As ever it is a couple of seemingly unrelated factors that have galvanised your humble blogger. One is reading the news that the Scottish Parliament are looking at methods of clearing our highways of the piles of litter on them. There is a suggestion that a Canadian model of Adopt-a-Highway is taken up, in which people dedicate themselves to helping clear a specific bit of road as part of their civic contribution. Closer to home the broadcaster and writer Heather Suttie tirelessly promotes her Say No To Plastic campaign ( ok Hettie – here’s the site: www.saynotoplastic.co.uk). The scourge of plastic detritus and pollution is worldwide. There is an area the size of western Europe in the South Pacific that is literally an island of plastic thrown there by tide and wind over the years. And I saw a piece on the news in which an islander in Scotland takes weekly strolls with a bin bag up and down her lonely beach, and fills it to the brim just with random throwaway objects washed up.

The other is violence. A friend was slashed in the face with a bottle last weekend in Glasgow. A junkie was needing to steal a phone to sell the SIM for a hit. Pathetic, but rather enraging. Why should decent man earning money and supporting his family , paying taxes to support inter alia the workshy and intoxicated – and be robbed and attacked by the very man he finances?

As a criminal lawyer of 30 years’ standing, I do sympathise with and understand human weakness . I still remember from student days the lectures on criminology and the various purposes of punishment: retribution ( always slightly frowned on), rehabilitation, and protection ( i.e. of society).

But as there are 57 varieties of criminal, there should be a clear division of approaches to punishment. And while impulsive domestic crime, “amateur” crime, professional crime can all fairly easily be dealt with appropriately and differently, I would like to carve out anti-social crime as being dealt with – and I now use this word deliberately and advisedly – HARSHLY.

I am sick to my very back teeth walking down a street in any town – specifically Glasgow where I walk every day – and see tags of graffiti sprayed on by some ned who deliberately goes out covered up to disguise himself , though he rather spoils that tactic by tagging his nickname all over Shawlands, or empties the bins at the bus stop, or breaks the bench in the shopping centre, or cracks a shop window with a stone, or throws his can of Kestrel on to the pavement. Or indeed if he shoplifts from Poundway, or menaces a young girl in an underpass, or worse, if he holds up a decent citizen for money or property.

Why should we who struggle– and presumably will now struggle even more when the Government’s largesse to support the banks has to be paid for – let these wasters away with it? The courts can only do what they can do , though often I think they can do more, but I can’t help feeling more strongly than before that a bit or rebalancing has to take place. For the rare capture of a litter or vandalism practitioner, it is small beer to the police, the fiscal and ( if they manage to get past the hurdle of a fixed penalty they won’t pay) the court. By the time it gets to the District, in a diet court of 100 + cases, there is not time to reflect on society’s attitude to those who spoil it. Just give the fine ( or admonition or deferred sentence) and move on. Never mind the ball, get on with the game.

The guy at the golf club bar would blame the human rights movement and legislation, but to me that legislative tradition is part of the movement of society, not a cause.

In the last days of ancient Rome there was weakness and decadence, and when the barbarians came to pillage, they found that it was the 3rd Eleven they faced, no longer Serie A. we seem to have headed in the same direction, though our barbarians are within, and we cosset them rather than bar the gate agin them.

If you believe in the cyclical nature of societal development, you may say that we have reached and are about to pass the point where liberalism leisure and pleasure have had their day, and a reaction will come. It may even be that as a civilisation we have reached the point that we can become disciplinarian and democratic together. But I for one would not shed a single tear for some ned who was paraded on a platform in George Square for graffiti-ing a suburban library, or a junkie was questioned on live tv as to why he had failed to turn up for his methadone clinic, and had mugged a pensioner for her weekly cash to buy heroin.

I continue to say that corporal punishment is a bad thing per se. but we need people to be accountable, and to be shamed if they behave anti-socially. There are some criminal acts and attitudes, indeed some non-criminal acts and attitudes, that do not deserve sympathy.

So is society weak? Are the days of pandering near an end? Let me know what you think, if you can dodge the graffiti, the litter, and that guy with a knife.

Austin