KILL OR HELP TO KILL — NO EARLY RELEASE
JUSTICE MUST MEAN JUSTICE
When I started this Petition, it was focused on one very specific issue. As it gathered support, however, it quickly became clear that the concerns behind it reached much further — to the wider question of dangerous offenders being released early and the consequences this can have for victims, their families, our emergency services and the wider public.
Throughout this campaign, your support has been quite extraordinary.
To every person who signed the Petition, shared it with friends and family, encouraged others to support it, or simply took the time to read and understand what we were trying to achieve — thank you.
Some of you have shared your own experiences with me. I have heard from people who have suffered loss, trauma and circumstances that no family should ever have to endure. Reading those accounts has been both deeply moving and genuinely humbling.
This was never simply about collecting signatures. It was about making a point that should matter to every one of us:
If you kill, or knowingly help to kill, the sentence imposed by the Court should mean something. Justice should not be progressively diminished by early release. Victims and their families deserve better. Our emergency services deserve better. The British public deserves better.
Together, I believe we have achieved what we originally set out to do — and perhaps considerably more.
Most importantly, we have demonstrated that there are people across this country who are prepared to stand up and say that justice must have meaning, victims must not be forgotten, and those who put themselves in harm's way to protect the rest of us deserve our support.
When this Petition reaches 19,000 signatures, it will close.
But 19,000 is far more than a number on a petition.
It represents 19,000 people who were prepared to put their name behind a principle. Nineteen thousand individual voices saying that victims matter; that those who protect us matter; and that when our courts impose sentences for the gravest of crimes, those sentences should have meaning.
That is something every person who has supported this campaign should be proud of.
At 19,000 signatures, therefore, I believe the right moment will have arrived to bring this Petition to a close.
I will do so not with disappointment, but with enormous gratitude and pride in what you, its supporters, have helped achieve.
To every one of you who stood alongside this campaign: thank you.
Your signatures mattered.
Your voices mattered.
Your willingness to share this Petition mattered.
And I sincerely hope that the message those 19,000 voices have sent will continue to be heard long after the Petition itself has closed.
Justice must mean justice.
With my sincere thanks and warmest regards,
Michael Lord-Castle