Crime and punisment.

Firstly several people would like this petition to be publicised to widen the definition of 'Hate Crime'. I won't be signing it, don't get me wrong the attack on those two young lancastrians was a horrible thing but it wasn't any more horrible because of why it happened. The sentence for beating seven shades of shit out of two people, killing one of them, should be the same whether you do it because they are a goth, they called your pint a poof or they didn't bring their library books back.
If someone isn't going to get a stiff enough sentence for murdering someone, then the whole sentencing system is wrong. Saying that the defendant in case X should get more years in prison because their murder was due to race hate (for example) than the one in case Y which wasn't is an insult to the victim in case Y as it suggests their life is worth less.
Secondly a report in the garuniad says that a lethal injection review may halt US executions. Personally it sickens me that they are (potentially) stopping executing people because they think this particular method is cruel and unusual punishment. What part of judicial murder isn't cruel (obviously currently in the U.S. it isn't unusual) ending someone's life has no justification. Even if it is in response to them having killed, religion or otherwise, there is no excuse for "an eye for an eye" in this day and age.
Edit
A second petition is being promoted alongside the first

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to try anyone over the age of 12 as an adult in cases of assault.

I feel this is a call for institutional child abuse, I know our society is screwed up, but if it so screwed up that this is the only way to fix it, it may well be too late.

I believe putting children of that age through the adult criminal justice system is likely to either break the kid utterly or for the hard core, irretrievably setting them into a criminal mentality. If we need to improve deterrent to children (and I agree we do) we need to beef up the juvenile system not put them into the adult one.

You might as well advocate bringing back flogging and compulsory national military service.

For those of you who don't know what has prompted this, it was the murder of Sophie Lancaster