Britain's justice system is broken and in need of total overhaul, writes Reform UK's Home Affairs spokesman
Examples of Britain’s failing criminal justice system have become harrowingly common over the past few years, but none stand out more than the case of Axel Rudakabana.
In 2019, the future killer was referred to an NHS mental health trust after bringing a knife into school, in his own words, “to use it”.
Shortly afterwards, he was referred to Prevent after using a school computer to research school massacres - the first of three referrals.
Having failed so completely in its duty to prevent this violent thug carrying out his sick fantasies, one duty remained to the state which had not yet been neglected: delivering justice for the victims and their families by ensuring Rudakabana would spend the rest of his life in a cell, with nothing but his thoughts for company.
For a time, it looked like that justice may finally have been delivered - but no longer.
The move this week to relocate Rudakabana from Belmarsh prison to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital demonstrates once again that our broken justice system offers more sympathy to the perpetrators of these sickening atrocities than to the victims.
As the head of the prison worker’s union said, Rudakabana is not mentally unwell.
Nevertheless, he has been given yet another opportunity to play the system.
Plucked out of solitary confinement and dropped into a hospital which looks more like a fashionable leisure centre than a place of punishment, Rudakabana will now get to enjoy all the fruits of his newfound freedom.
He will be encouraged to wander the “large central garden", to participate in sports and social activities, and even given the opportunity to work on his arts and crafts skills at taxpayer expense.
Broadmoor even has a cafe, a shop, and a barbers which Rudakabana will be allowed to frequent at will.
To this day, his only regret is that he did not do the same to the eight other children and two adults he also attacked that day.
Society has no responsibility to this man who has so thoroughly repudiated the basic humanity on which such responsibilities might be based.
Our only job is to keep him locked away for the rest of his life, so that nobody else bears the costs of his perversion, and to do so at minimal expense to the public.
Decisions like this are, of course, a failure of justice in the immediate case.
But their effect over time is far broader and more insidious.
Britons are losing faith in their government to keep them safe and to deliver punishment where required.
More than that, they are losing the conviction that Britain is a fair country, where those who do the right thing are rewarded, and those who do wrong are given their just deserts.
Can we say they are not right to do so? And if we do not change course - restoring real justice and the people’s faith in the Government to deliver it - where will a few years further travel down this path to ruin leave this country we love?
Britain’s justice system is broken and in need of total overhaul.
