Drunkenness should be an aggravating offence

The Scotland on Sunday report on proposals being floated that alcohol fuelled crimes should face stiffer sentences than the same crimes committed when sober.

It's astonishing that this isn't already the case. The Herald reported last month that Justice Secretary Kenny MacKaskill was considering the change, which is already the way things are handled in England, and sends out the right message about the use of alcohol.

I've never been drunk myself, but I do get the feeling that people use it as an excuse for all sorts of inappropriate behaviour that they are really conscious of doing, albeit emboldened in a way that they would normally not be. If they have genuinely lost control of their senses, then that is something that they have done to themselves and should have been more careful about their limits.

Whatever the case is, people shouldn't be citing it as a mitigating factor, it should rightly be an aggravating one.

Comments

[Sohaib]

I liked the campaign a few years ago which said:

"DRUNK OR SOBER, YOU CARRY THE CAN"

[DavidMWW]

I agree entirely. Drunkenness should in no way be considered a mitigating factor in any crime.

The same principle should apply to religion-fuelled crime, of course. An act of violence or threatened violence inspired by a perceived slight to ones deeply-held religious beliefs - or indeed any criminal act perpetrated with the aim of pleasing a supernatural entity - should be punished with more, not less, severity.

I've never been religious myself, but it is clear that people use it as an excuse for all sorts of inappropriate behaviour.

[Osama]

David, do religiously motivated crimes get lesser sentences?

[DavidMWW]

Osama, did I say they did?

The point I was trying to make, ironically, and admittedly not very clearly, was that there is really no valid reason, apart from my personal distaste for religion, to punish religion-fuelled crime more severely.

I believe the same principle pertains with regard to alcohol. The crime is neither increased nor lessened because it was committed under the influence of either of the two intoxicants.

I hope you don't lump the moderate drinkers in with the more extreme members of the drinking community. They are a minority who give the rest of us a bad name :-)