Did You Hear? Jamie's Back in Jail. Again.

For some reason the UK can't bring itself to keep Jamie Manderson off of the streets of Swindon. I found the article on the BBC NEWS website and, to be honest, I don't know if the story is just plain funny or just plain sad. For one, how does a guy get 200 convictions for anything and still not go to jail for an extended period of time? And, for two, what does a guy have to do in order to get locked up to begin with? Here's a little excerpt from the story:

About eight years ago he ran over a 12-year-old cyclist as he drove a robbery getaway car.

So, in just one offense, Jamie--a guy described by his lawyer as a "likable idiot"--just happens to accidentally run over a kid after robbing somebody (why does bad shit always have to happen to good people?). Later Jamie's lawyer implies that this isn't Jamie's fault because he, "clearly has a strong addiction to cars". Wow. I imagine the Magistrate never saw the, "likable idiot who has a strong addiction to cars," defense. Still, the Magistrate was having none of that as she threw the book at Jamie. Or, well, she threw part of the book...actually, she threw a few pages from the index and a modest chunk of the glossary in the form of five months in jail. And she added two years of disqualification to his license. The cold-hearted wench. But the people of Swindon need not worry for too long as Jamie will have plenty of months left in the year to keep up his driving with a disqualified license streak that he started way back in 1988. So, I guess, even this hard luck story might still have a happy ending after all.