There is no excuse for the violence of recent events that have left five dead and over a hundred homeless and brought terror to our streets. That goes without saying. Those attempting to understand it are not condoning it nor are those who are concerned that it is being used to excuse dangerously anti-democratic responses.

The Prime Minister is reported to be impressed by the swift sentencing of all-night courts and asking why justice cannot always be served so quickly. The answer is simple: this is not justice.

Sentencing has been uniformly harsh. One person sentenced to 10 weeks in prison for swearing at police officers, another to four months in youth custody for ranting and swearing, another to six months in prison for stealing £3.50 worth of mineral water a sentence calmer minds have judged ”expensive and unnecessary”. These are sentences that no reasonable person, whatever their politics, however angry and fearful, could ever regard as just.

While the coalition threaten an end to human rights as though the fundamentals of our civil society were just so much administrative red tape getting in the way, the police have been busy in the media painting the demands for justice over the killing of Ian Tomlinson as a form of perverse political correctness holding them back. In effect, they are demanding that they be allowed to be above the law.

There are already reports of legal observers being beaten up by police. Footage from Manchester appears to show police forgetting their training and overstepping the mark. However much some may want to understand and pardon such behaviour, we cannot forget that the spark that ignited the original rioting was the death of another young black man at police hands and that the first instinct of the IPCC was yet again to lie to the press about the incident in a pattern that is wearily familiar.

Given that the police clearly lost control of the streets, it is understandable that many might think they need greater powers and to use more extreme measures.

Given that the police have routinely abused their existing powers, it is understandable that many might be frightened by this.

The IPCC are not fit for purpose. Nobody is watching the police.

The recent phone hacking scandal has exposed alarming links between corrupt police officers, a corrupt press and corrupt politicians all of whom look after one another in a freemasonry of vested interests. We live in dangerous times lorded over by a feral elite where the moral decay of society is as bad at the top as it is at the bottom. We have a socialism of the rich that demands the poorest and most vulnerable in society pay for the folly and greed of the most wealthy while rabid neo-liberals use a crisis of their own making to further their own poisonous agenda.

Like looters taking advantage of fear and anger on the streets, David Cameron and his housing minister Grant Shapps are eagerly supporting the eviction of families of those who have participated in the riots.

Even if you genuinely believe that this is somehow going to make parents more responsible for their children, if you punish an entire family, you’re also punishing blameless siblings too. That is unacceptable.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, Gandhi said, and this is an even more brutal form of vengeance than that.

If you cannot see what is wrong with collective punishment of families then there is something profoundly wrong with your moral compass.

I’d rather see our society grow stronger from this, not more fragmented. It is a fundamental tenet of justice that people should be punished proportionally. To fix the damage to our society – a damage that predates the riots – those who are found guilty should be made to do community service so that they learn the value of respecting their neighbourhoods rather than sent to our already over-crowded jails.

Was there anyone who failed to be moved when the Norwegian Prime Minister responded to the actions of Anders Breivik by calling for more humanity and more understanding?

However revolting their actions, those who looted and burned are as much our young people as those who were the victims.

We cannot replace one opportunist mob with another. This needs to be a time for calm and compassion, for conversation and questioning. Neither the right nor the left can afford to let themselves be blinded by prejudice and anger. Our instinctive responses are inadequate. History is full of dark warnings of what happens when a broken society attempts to use brute force rather than understanding to enforce stability and cohesion.

[Update: Greater Manchester Police have subsequently deleted their tweet and apologised for it, stating "Thanks to all for feedback messages - all your comments have been noted. You are right, it is not our place to comment on sentences."]