Judge Anthony Ensor said the courts will come down hard on "evil" robbers who use the threat of violence against drivers to steal their cars.
He spoke out at Manchester Crown Court as he sentenced two thugs involved in separate car robberies to a total of 12 years in prison.
Judge Ensor said: "I have to make it clear that substantial sentences will be imposed to deter and punish people involved in this sort of offence, and also to make it clear the courts will not countenance this type of lawless behaviour."
The Manchester Evening News told last month how gangs of carjackers were operating in affluent districts such as Bowdon, Prestwich and Whitefield.
In Prestwich alone there were seven reported cases in 30 days.
And last week the body of BA cabin crew member Gerald Shaw, 59, was found in his detached home in Stalybridge after he was stabbed by an intruder. His £30,000 Mercedes car was missing from the driveway.
Greater Manchester Police launched an operation earlier this year to target carjackers after a string of violent car thefts in South Manchester and made a number of arrests.
One of those charged was Dwaine Holuj, 22, of Endcott Close, Gorton, who was yesterday jailed for nine years after he admitted forcing a motorist out of his parked car while pointing an imitation firearm at his face.
Mobile
Holuj also stole cash and a mobile phone from the terrified motorist when he held him up in Gorton Lane, Gorton, in October last year.
He then brazenly called his victim the next day to complain the phone was not working properly and to warn him he knew where he lived.
Holuj, who is serving a six-year jail term imposed in August for another robbery, was arrested after his victim spotted him again and alerted police.
In a separate hearing Richard Jones, also 22, was jailed for three years after he pleaded guilty to robbing another driver of his vehicle.
Killed
Along with a gang of other men, Jones, of Hough End Avenue, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, approached the driver of a VW Golf in a pub car park in Moss Side and forced him to hand over his keys.
Another man arrested by police in the same operation, Ramone Cumberbatch, was later shot and killed in September during a spate of gun violence in South Manchester.
Carjackings were once extremely rare but criminal gangs are now much more likely to use violence to steal vehicles.
Improved security features in top-of-the-range cars often mean they can only be stolen if robbers force owners to hand over the keys.
Have you been affected by the carjack gangs? Have your say.
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... and on the same day, the Sentencing Guidline Council announces that muggers should not be sent to jail. Make your mind up: either prison is a deterrent or not. And I think we all know that it is. The insconsistency is staggering.
Yeah right, the police and council can't keep a lid on antisocial behaviour and half of these judges are soft in their sentencing policies anyway! What's new?
Murders and their kind should be hung without a second thought
There is so much irony in all of this. The judge says: "...I have to make it clear that substantial sentences will be imposed to deter and punish people involved in this sort of offence, and also to make it clear the courts will not countenance this type of lawless behaviour." He then goes on to dish out feeble punishments of 9 and 3 years respectively. Can't blame the judge whose aims are admirable, but whose hands are tied as no harsher sentences could realistically been granted. Our justice system needs a complete overhaul to give the power to dish out proper sentences. We need the death penalty back at the top and any threatening use of a weapon like this should carry life (...which is not limited to 25 years!) Only then will the system be able to satisfy the judges' own aims and surely those of the whole prosecution system.
12 years is not enough for these criminals.They will probably be released early for 'good behaviour' only to go on and commit more evil crimes.
If the real problem is the lack of prison places, then build more. If necessary, create prison ships. Then I'll get myself a U Boat......
I agree with all the comments so far. You can't have anything nice these days for some scumbag thinking they have the right to threaten you by whatever means and steal it away from you.
The sentances in this country are a joke, and need to be much tougher if there is going to be any deterrant.
I DRIVE A VOLKSWAGON PASSAT WITH LEATHER INTERIOR, AND 6 DISC CD PLAYER, I LIVE IN A LOVELY AREA BUT I DO DRIVE SCARED
ON THE WAY TO A RECENT CONCERT I FELT I WAS BEING FOLLOWED, AND TRACKED LUCKILY NEAR THE VENUE MY FOLLOWER WAS DELAYED BY TRAFFIC LIGHTS, MIGHT NIGHT HOWEVER DID NOT GET ANY BETTER
Tim, it wasnt the Bob Dylan concert you were going too was it??
If so i feel for you.
On the subject of car jacking, always keep your door locked and dont stop at red lights if driving through moss side, i find this helps.
Stella, Hyde
These people show no respect and deserve a long prison sentence to serve as a deterent to others.I only drive a fiat van , if only someone would steal that !
I agree that quite often the sentences handed out to the convicted are too lenient. But at the same time I have serious doubts whether tougher sentencing will act as a deterrent. There seems to be a minority in today's society who are completely devoid of any human conscience or morality. Maybe we have to begin to accept that for certain individuals life should mean life. As for the death penalty I can't believe that there are still people who support this barbaric act, the state has no more right to kill a person than you or I.
And yes, I have lost someone close to me as the result of a violent act but I still would have been against the state taking the life of the person responsible.
The problem is deepseated and one has to go back to the 60 and 70s to see how all this crime started.
We had liberals soft on crime and people in government who have always ben completely out of touch with reality, epitomised by the Manchester council and it's leader Graham Stringer.
Once leniency in school was allowed and corporal punishment was finished, then all teachers lost control and became more victim than teacher.
Then the type of soft parent that was around then and is still around now to indulge their children in what ever way they demand breeded indiscipline. This in turn breeds lawlessness and a selfish society caring little for anyone but themselves and their own selfish needs. Then criminals with no education abuse the system and seeing the low sentencing that they receive, even for major crime, carry on doing what they feel and hurting innocent victims. Yet national and local government always seem to give the impression that they are on the side of the criminal, why is that the case?
If you commit crime here in the US, then you serve hard time, and quite rightly.
Until and unless the ordinary citizen is prepared to make chnages and make his local MP aware that the ordinary citizen is no longer prepared to accept, muggings of old ladies, carjacking at knife and gun point, and vote out the liberal MPs, then and until then nothing will change. its a terrible shame.
By the way I was brought up in longsight and by working class parents who always voted Labour, until the party was high jacked by the left winged loonies, who are still there. Lets take the country back now before it's too late!
Why can't we just hang them, there are reports to suggest that capital punishment doesn't work, but it would make feel everybody else feel so much better. If prisons don't work either, why bother, for this ort of crime it should be one strike and your out. It's a numbers game, if there are 10,000 criminals in MAnchester, wouldn't it better if that number was reduced by 500 every year. It might work, nothing else is.
I had my door broken down in the middle of the night by three masked men and forced to hand over my car keys. The man who came to fix my door said he was doing two these a week. The Government's failure to deal effectively with minor offences has led to the increasing feeling of lawlessness. The police have lost faith and the criminal justice system is operated by accountants. The Government appears more concerned with international affairs and PR than crime and order on the U.K. Still, perhaps the all night drinkers will delay my stolen car long enough for the police to take notice.
In reply to PW, yes prisons are a problem but the real problem as Gregory Happy says is that not enough serious criminals are being executed.
I too had my door broken down in the middle of the night and 3 masked men ran in and demanded the keys to my bmw X5,when they then realised it was the wrong house and it was next doors X5 they then stole the keys to my scooter and drove off laughing.Its discraceful you cannot have anything nowadays.If anybody seen 3 men on a honda melody on the night of 15th Novemeber please call crimestoppers.
I can not believe all of these stories, I had no idea that so many other people had experianced this.
I too had three masked men run into my bedroom whilst I was asleep and stole my car keys from me. During this intrusion they also kicked my pet dog in the face disabling him. I have now had to put arthur (my dog) down. This deeply sadens me.