Having established that the price to pay for murder is relatively low in the Netherlands, we now get another example of how utterly ludicrous Dutch sentencing has become. Six men between the ages of 18 and 28 have been convicted of attempted murder, two others of public violence and causing premeditated grievous bodily harm. On the 10th of September 2002, the group of masked men attacked two other men with truncheons and a machete causing serious injuries. It was supposedly a revenge attack for their victims supposedly hitting one of the group, but they ended up attacking the wrong men. In any case, it's a pretty gruesome case of wanton violence, and they have been rightfully convicted of attempted murder.

So what's the punishment for attempted murder? If murder only gets you 8 to 12 years, what's an appropriate level of punishment for attempted murder? Hang on to your seats: 30 months, of which six months are on probation. So effectively the longest amount of time these thugs will serve in prison is 24 months, probably less on good behavior. They tried to KILL SOMEONE for crying out loud!

I think I'll go bang my head against a concrete wall for a while.