The Icelandic "justice" system is really bothering me these days... I'm looking for the appropriate terms to describe my opinion of it right now - but nothing more mature than 'big bucket of steamy crap' comes to mind!
Recently, a man was sentenced to spend a few months in prison for severely beating up his wife. He got I think something like 8 months... Well I'd think that was joke enough, but a short time after that, his sentence was changed in our wonderful supreme court, and reduced to some probation time because "she probably aggravated him" !!!
COME ON! Seriously, so now it's supposed to be OK for me to go bash people's head in, damaging them for life, just because they aggravated me?!? Just imagine it, I'm walking down the street and a woman gives me a weird look because she doesn't really like my hairdo. So *of course* I jump at her, beat her to the ground and then kick her face repeatedly until she simply doesn't move any more - and that's perfectly fine, because "she aggravated me" ! This absolutely makes me sick! To have the supreme court of a presumably civilized nation affirm, in the year 2004, people's right to physically abuse other people is so beyond my comprehension - how can using a person as a punch bag ever be all right? In my opinion violence just shouldn't be given the OK like that, it's just... erm... WRONG!
Well as if that weren't bad enough, that really wasn't what caused me to start writing this post. What really got me going was another sentence recently imposed upon a guy who had sexually abused his wife's 12 year old granddaughter for some period of time. As with other sentences for sexual crimes in Iceland it was absolutely laughable... But to make matters worse the delightful supreme court reduced it, as it had done in the previous case I mentioned. Their argument this time was that the poor old guy had a bad heart. Yes, of course it's kind of obvious that the SOB has a rotten heart - he wouldn't have molested the child if his heart was pure and honest... But that's not what they were referring to. No, the sick bastard has a heart condition, as in he could have a heart attack any time and drop dead.
*That wouldn't bother me a tiny bit personally, I kind of wish that it will happen, and that it will take a long time and be extremely painful... But now that's just me*
But this heart condition of his is now grounds enough to reduce his prison sentence. And to add insult to unjury, his old age was also considered when making that decision. Yes, they felt that the poor little thing was just too old and too weak of heart to serve time in prison.
I don't know about you guys, but that certainly puzzles me! Because he wasn't too old to force himself upon the child and his heart condition didn't exactly cause him to have problems with the abuse either, he wasn't too old or fragile to show up in court to lie about what he had done... His weakness - be it his age or his heart - didn't help the little girl whose life will probably never be the same again, and it will definitively not help the other children now put in danger of having to live through the same nighmare!
I could go on and on and on an on about the craziness of our system, but I think I'll leave it here. You probably get the idea.
I just think it really hurts to realize that in my country - a country where people live the longest, have the best quality of life and are the happiest of nations in Europe (and the rest of the world as well I might add) - sexual offences are not frowned upon more than this example shows. People who cheat on their tax reports or who embezzle money on the stock marked are handled more strictly, hell, at least they serve time!
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