The sentencing of 18-year-old schoolboy Uwer Rayner Campher to four years’ jail without the option of a fine, just a few hours after his arrest, has been described by Lawyers for Human Rights as “absurd”. “Bizarre”, “asinine” and “idiotic” are just a few other adjectives which spring to mind.
Campher was caught dealing in LSD with a street value of between R175 and R245. A police spokesman declared it stood as a warning that “the police will not hesitate to crack down on drug pushers”. One can only reply with sarcasm that the country’s drug lords are no doubt shaking in their boots.
In fact this piece of jurisprudence smacks more of lynch law, of a kind when a mob catches a thief red-handed and beats him to death on the spot. “He shouldn’t have done it!” cry the killers with self-righteous indignation. Indeed they should not
Of course lynch law is the price a society pays for the collapse of law and order. But the remnants of the forces of law and order which apartheid rule have bequeathed us should not be indulging in such acts of summary justice, even if lawlessness seems to be getting out of hand.
Punishment by the courts should be directed primarily towards the rehabilitation of the offender, then as a deterrent and, finally, to satisfy a public hunger for retribution which, unfortunately, needs satiating to some (extremely limited) degree. The Roodepoort magistrate who imposed the sentence on Campher unfortunately appears to suffer from judicial dyslexia where this order is concerned.
If the “short sharp shock” of a prison sentence has a deterrent effect (and there must be much doubt on that point), a
period of incarceration covering the summer holidays is the most a schoolchild should have to suffer. And even then a sentence should only be imposed after a comprehensive exercise in the way of psychological evaluation and welfare investigation, of a kind which cannot be carried out in a matter of hours.
It is time to declare war on the drugs trade. It is not time to declare war on our