I often read about pathetic jail sentences handed down for serious offences – and they make me very angry. I try to imagine how I would feel if a member of my family had been hurt or killed by someone who then received a pitifully low sentence. For victims of crime and their families I’m sure weak sentences for perpetrators make their suffering even worse. Our judges seem worryingly out of touch with public opinion and often seem to choose the lower end of sentencing guidelines. Rarely, it seems, do victims get proper justice.

Well now you don’t have to get angry – you can do something about it. 

Under Section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988  the Attorney General can review low sentences given by any Crown Court in England and Wales if he’s asked to – and it only takes ONE person to make a complaint about a sentence. This can be done anonymously and you don’t have to be connected to the case in any way.

A single phone call to a friendly civil servant at the Attorney General’s Office (I’ve done it – and they were very helpful!) on 020 7271 2492 or an email to: uls.referrals@attorneygeneral.gov.uk is all it takes. This has to be done within 28 days of sentencing. The Attorney General then has 28 days to review a sentence and make a decision. Once the case has been reviewed, it may be sent to the Court of Appeal. Essentially, we the public are simply drawing the Attorney-General’s attention to the case.

Full details can be found by clicking here.

Remember, it only takes one of us to have a big impact…

I came home from work today to find my baby daughter playing with my son’s toy digger. She seemed to be very pleased with herself and, despite the fact she’s not even one yet and has only just started to crawl, she was already showing a fair degree of competence at the joystick type controls.

“By the time we take her to Legoland for the first time in a year or two (where there’s an attraction where children can control real diggers),” I thought “She’ll be able to give her older brother a run for his money in the lift and shift stakes…”

It was only a small thing, but watching her playing with the digger made me rather proud – and excited for her future. It also made me briefly think about her future. One day she could drive a digger for real. Or one day she could maintain and fix them. Or even design the next generation of diggers…

Contrast these thoughts with an article I read in the Daily Mail today entitled “I spend a fortune to send my girl to private school — so she’ll marry rich and never work” which I thought was tragic on so many levels. Tragic that someone would be so lacking in ambition for their child. Tragic that they were already plotting their child’s life for them in such a narrow way – and tragic that they were so proud of it all to share it in a national newspaper (and I’m sure plenty of stay at home mums (and dads) would be pretty incensed by the implication that they stay at home and don’t ‘work’).

I just won’t see why parents would want to constrain their child’s life choices like that. The things I want for my children are pretty simple: health, happiness, a respect for others and an inquiring mind. I hope I’ll raise them to be kind, not to judge, to work hard at whatever they choose to do but above all value people above material things. (And if either of them want to be stay at home parents then that’s fine by me…)

I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to break down barriers between jobs that are seen as “men’s work” and “women’s work” – and I don’t mean that in some kind of right-on, namby-pamby way. I just mean that girls should be encouraged to become scientists and engineers just as much as boys and that young men should be encouraged to be nurses or, as we are woefully short of them, primary school teachers.

And incidentally, I love Lego (possibly even more than my son does!) but I think the the seven-year-old girl who recently wrote this letter (right) made a very good point when she compared how “all the girls did was sit at home, got to the beach, and shop, and had no jobs,” while the boy figures “went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs,” adding they “even swam with sharks”.

I look forward to seeing Lego’s female digger driver set available next Christmas…