Inevitable detention

Much as I wish to empathise with Charles Caruana Carabez (Power of Interpretation, January 26), the thing is that if we do not want to send a person below a certain age to detention, and I think most of us, if not all, do not, then the law and legislators should say so. It is within the latters' power, and knowing Minister Dolores Cristina from what she says and does in welfare, her reaction was to be expected. Possibly we might have an amendment in Parliament, to this effect, to bring back the law as it stood in 2002.

The other option would be for the courts never to send minors to detention. But if that were to be so, why was Section 36 of the Criminal Code amended in the first place to include detention? Does not the law reflect the will of the people as expressed by their legislators? Isn't its application by the courts a logical conclusion to that?

Alternatively, if this section is to stay as it is, the proposed custodial/correctional facilities for minors, must be running properly.

Because I believe that it was not so much the sentencing as the detention in a prison ("incarceration") that raised eyebrows in this case.

In the Bulger Case (UK 1993), the offenders Thompson and Venables, then 10 years of age, too, were detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure. If I am not mistaken the court could have imposed a stiffer punishment had the law not been amended a short time before.

Contrary to the perception conveyed in the letter of January 26, that "magistrates should not ... apply a law like automatons", suffice it to say that the court must have necessarily pondered over the case, if at all because here, as with so many other cases, it was bound to exercise discretion - a power of interpretation of sorts.

As to quoting Shakespeare, the poet said much about the law for one to quote him to suit any purpose. Was it not him, too, who said that "We must not make a scarecrow of the law" (Measure for Measure, 2.1.1.), meaning, presumably, that one cannot call its bluff with impunity. As for clemency, it is an aspect of justice and of the prerogative of mercy which, after Shakespeare again, is "not strain'd" and "it droppeth... from heaven" and "seasons justice".

Understandably, however, it resides not at the courts (although exceptionally the jurors in a trial by jury are entitled to appeal for clemency to the judge passing sentence) but elsewhere, with the Head of State, where locally it is referred to as the Presidential Pardon.

And there's the rub, namely that if a provision of law stipulates a sanction, that sanction may one day be applied to whoever. Very similar to the principle that what may happen or fail sometimes will. We all know this from sad and tragic events in life... as with this failure, somewhere down the line.