Lord Hanningfield has been freed from jail after serving just nine weeks of his sentence.

The news made me wonder quite what use the jail sentence is nowadays.

Having been convicted of fiddling his House of Lords expenses and sentenced to nine months, it would appear crime does possibly pay quite well.

There was also news of another soft sentence, when it was announced the M25 road rage killer, Kenneth Noye, a notoriously vicious criminal who was jailed for life in 2000 for the murder of young Stephen Cameron, was being moved to a “holiday camp jail”.

Two years before the stabbing, he had been released from jail having only served eight years of a 14-year sentence for his part in the £26million Brinks-Mat bullion robbery.

He has recently been moved to a soft jail near Nottingham, from the Whitemoor high security prison near March, in Cambridgeshire, where he had been regarded as a model prisoner by the guards.

Sources have said it is to prepare him for his release, which could come in as little as four years.

The family of Stephen Cameron feel he is still a dangerous man at 64 and that a leopard never changes its spots.

They were not informed of the move. Will this mean we will give Colonel Gadaffi a pardon if he surrenders and that he will be promised a palatial residence with a pension and other benefits?

Brian Keeler
Greenwood Avenue
Benfleet

...After the way Blaine Robin, Conservative councillor for Kursaal ward, Southend, spoke out about fraud and the need for harsher sentences, I trust he will lead a campaign to ensure Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield will be sent back to prison to finish his sentence.

To know he fleeced taxpayers out of thousands of pounds, yet only served a quarter of his sentence, is a travesty of justice. Is this a case of one rule for the rich and one for the poor?

Robert J Brown
Northumberland Avenue
Southend