I HAVE had the pleasure of working with criminals for over a decade who target the innocent and often vulnerable law abiding citizens of Bristol.

During my time one thing has become blatantly obvious to my colleagues and me.

The role I played would look at risk, managing the release of offenders who have a history of violence, drugs and even sex offences. We would discuss how we can protect the public even though we have intelligence and also the prisoner may also indicate that he will reoffend upon release.

The current situations allows for criminals to constantly reoffend and collect a string of short sentences due to the judges believing their sad stories and list of excuses, then judges taking this into account giving leniency time and time again.

If we took a hard line and locked up the most persistent and dangerous offenders for life (meaning life) this would change our streets for the future immediately, making a safer place for the law-abiding public and a deterrent for those who see our system as a soft touch.

Why should someone who has murdered, raped or sexually abused children be allowed a second chance to offend again and make more victims and the streets unsafe.

In every other industry apart from law, we learn from our mistakes and take measure to prevent people being put at risk, but when it comes to criminals and crime, we ditch all common sense and make ridiculous decisions to keep the human rights of offenders above those of victims on every level.

I have seen so many crazy decisions being made in my life and nothing is being done to improve the situation.

If this was a business we would be closed down for incompetence.

Our country would be far safer if we built new prisons for the future with excess cells available and filled them with all our persistent offenders rather than release them early because we have no more cells available! – this is constant issue for the prison service. Imagine if we kept all the dregs of society behind bars, this would create a safer place and reduce all of our insurance policies and give the chance for funding to be spent on health care, education rather than security and most importantly they would not be able to create any more victims.

For those who are reading this and are against strong sentencing and believe that everyone should deserve a second chance, you probably live in a world outside of where these people operate or you have never been affected by these people. I started my career with a positive attitude thinking that I can make a difference but I was proved wrong almost every time.

There will be those who say if we change the life of one persistent criminal to be law-abiding then that makes it all worthwhile.

But in the real world this comes at a cost of millions of pounds from the taxpayer and furthermore, all the ones who fail the probation courses and rehabilitation courses go on to continue in there illegal activities ruining perhaps the lives of young and old innocent people at a cost that the victim may never get over.

As you can probably detect, I have strong feelings and many more, my views are first hand and can be justified from real situations of our shocking legal system.

Wayne, Shirehampton.