Freedom Vs Criminality

A man from Manchester (who I’m not going to name because he’s a dickhead!) has been jailed for four months for a public order offence. The crime committed was going out hours after the horrendous murders of police officers Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes while wearing a t-shirt with some offensive words written on it. These words were: ‘one less pig perfect justice’. As I’ve already stated, this man was a dickhead; in fact, that’s putting it far too politely, he was a horrible bastard of a poor excuse for a human being. BUT … that should not be a criminal offence. In my life I have known many imbeciles with disturbing opinions, but I’ve always tried to re-educate them about the immorality of their idiotic / objectionable viewpoints (largely unsuccessfully, but at least I tried!), I never thought that locking them up would be a good idea; if you lock them all up together they’ll probably entrench their opinions even further through socialisation with other dickheads! Freedom of speech is bandied around like a cliche nowadays, but it is a fundamental core of civilised society. Locking up this man from Manchester sends out the wrong signals that people may be criminalised for simply disagreeing with the majority.