Is sentencing a Nazi sympathiser to read Shakespeare an appropriate punishment?

Judge seemed to think introducing student ‘to high culture’ would ‘magically make him a better person’ said The Daily Telegraph

Shakespeare books
(Image credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

“Does reading classic literature have a beneficial effect on the criminal mind,” asked Amanda Craig in The Sunday Times. Judge Timothy Spencer QC apparently believes so.

Last week, he gave Ben John, a former student at De Montfort University in Leicester who had downloaded some 70,000 white supremacist documents, including bomb-making guides, a two-year suspended sentence – telling the 21-year-old that he had avoided prison “by the skin of his teeth”.

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