In this week’s Takimag, the dissenting doctor revisits the usual problems with the British criminal justice system after hearing of the life imprisonment sentence handed down to a man found guilty of bludgeoning an elderly man to death.

Perhaps I am an excessively vengeful person, but if Sable Thomas had killed someone near to me, I would have derived some satisfaction, been assuaged somewhat, if he had been sent to prison for the rest of his life without possibility of release except on his deathbed. But it wouldn’t be “closure.”