“Frankly, I feel cheated – what are the courts coming to these days? Telling us this dangerous psycho is just has ‘mental health problems’ and letting him off with an indefinite detention in a secure psychiatric institute – it’s just wokeness gone mad,” declares John Bruggery, a distant relative of one of the victims of murderer Randolph Kook, recently convicted of fatally stabbing three strangers in the street. “The loony bin is too good for that bastard! In fact, banging him up for life would be too good for the murdering scum! He should have swung for what he did!” The backlash against the sentencing of Kook is just the latest in a series of protests at what victims’ families claim are too lenient sentences for serious offenders. “It seems to me that all they have to do is say ‘I’m mad I am’, do an impression of a tea pot and stick crayons up their nose and judges go soft on them, no matter what they’ve done and send them off to one of these holiday camps for nutters,” says June Oralton, a former neighbour of one of Kook’s victims. “Of course, this sicko had the added advantage of being black – with that and his supposed history of mental illness, he really hit the jackpot. If only he’d been an illegal immigrant as well, he’d have walked free!” Both Bruggery and Oralton believe that those close to the victims of such crimes should have some say in the punishment of the perpetrators. “For people like this, custodial sentences just aren’t enough – even in real prisons, which are apparently like luxury hotels these days,” opines Bruggery. “We need to get back to the idea of an ‘eye-for-an-eye’. We should be able to pay the bastard back in kind, at the very least give him a good hiding, maybe even stab him once for every victim. That’d show these bastards and make them think twice about murdering people.”

While legal experts have pointed out that such a policy would constitute retribution rather than justice, the idea of paying out convicted criminals in kind is seemingly gaining in popularity with certain sections of the UK’s population, apparently fuelled by the notion that the UK has a ‘two tier’ justice system. “The courts punish ordinary decent citizens for minor misjudgements, but let the real criminals go free,” says Carter Bullstrap, who recently served a two month jail sentence for his part in the UK’s summer riots. “Apparently, if I’d run into the street naked and beaten to death three people with a giant dildo, then told the police I was a nutter who had been abused as a kiddie by his Scoutmaster, then I’d have been given a slap on the wrist, prescribed some pills and given community service. But only if they were white people I’d killed, obviously, if they’d been black, Asian or Muslims I’d have been sent down for life! Instead, just because I handed that bloke a petrol bomb that he threw at that Mosque – not me, but him – I get two months! Bloody ridiculous!”

Bullstrap has joined the chorus of voices calling for victims to have more say in the punishment of perpetrators. “I was the victim of a crime myself – when I was in the English Defence League some bastard threw a brick through my window when I had a Union Jack and a picture of Tommy Robinson stuck up in it during an election campaign. Did I get any justice? Of course not,” he explains. “I knew who did it, but the filth wouldn’t arrest the bastard, said they didn’t have enough evidence. Even if they had nicked him, he’s just have got a warning or a fine. If I’d been allowed to go around to his gaff, kick in all his doors and smash his windows, I’d at least have had some satisfaction and felt I’d evened the score!”

The case of a man recently convicted for a string of sexual assaults, however, has highlighted the extremes to which this sort of ‘retributive justice’ can be carried. During his trial at Manchester Crown Court, forty three year old Vince Wappler claimed in his defence that he had stalked and buggered seven men because they had been part of a ‘grooming gang’ that had raped a young female relative, but had received minimal justice from the courts. “They only ever convicted one of them and he got off with a light sentence – doubtless because he was Asian,” he claimed while on the stand. “The rest got away because of an alleged lack of evidence – they intimidated all their victims into not testifying against them. So I felt that I had no choice but to take justice into my own hands and do to them what they’d done to my relative and those other girls!” The court had already heard from the prosecution as to how a black leather clad and masked Wappler had broken into the homes of his victims, beaten them up and thrown them over tables, sofas or beds, pulled down their trousers and buggered them senseless. According to the prosecution, none of the men had ever been involved in any kind of grooming gang, Asian or otherwise, with Wappler having apparently targeted several Asian men at random. Moreover, no evidence could be found that he even had a young female relative, let alone one who had been raped. The jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict and the judge sentenced Wappler to twenty years.

For legal expert Hugo Coxman KC, the Wappler case amply illustrates the problems associated with the notion of ‘retributive justice’ and those who advocate it. “It’s all utter bollocks, “ says the top barrister. “These people aren’t really interested in justice, rather they simply want to satisfy some primitive blood lust – which is why they consistently mischaracterise the justice system as giving out lenient sentences because it is too woke.” He points out that those offenders suffering from mental illness aren’t being ‘let off’ by being spared conventional jail. “They clearly have little or no agency over their actions, unable to discern right from wrong, therefore cannot be held responsible for their actions – but the courts still recognise the risk they pose to society, hence their confinement to secure psychiatric units,” he contends. “Those advocating retribution for victims’ friends and families, by contrast, do know the difference between right and wrong and are simply trying to find a spurious justification for their own prejudices and lust for violence by pretending that they want to carry out justice on someone else’s behalf.” All of their arguments, he argues, are utter nonsense. “There is no ‘two tier’ justice based upon race and ethnicity,” he says. “Indeed, non-white people accused of crimes frequently face more severe charges compared to whites who accused of the same offences. Worst of all though, as the Wappler case shows, most of these people aren’t even really the family of victims or only have the most tenuous of links to them! They’re just a bunch of racist and violent bastards looking for an excuse to assault minorities! Justice my arse!”