The cross party Justice Committee of MPS said yesterday in its report “Cutting Crime: The Case For Reinvestment” that prisons were a costly mistake and that the UK prison population should be cut to two thirds of its current levels.
According to LibDem MP Alan Beith, the committee chairman the current £4.24 billion prison building plan is a misallocation of resources.
This money he says should be diverted into rehabilitation and addiction prevention programmes. He maintains that prison is useful for repeat violent offenders for example but not criminals driven by addiction. “Long prison sentences do not make safer streets. Achieving the highest prison population in Western Europe will not cut crime.”
At 84,000 occupants UK prisons have the highest level of prisoners per head in Western Europe and the new plans look at incarcerating a further 12,000 within the next 5 years.
According to the report a greatly increased use of community punishments will lead to fewer repeat offenders and cut the need for prison places in the future.
How many times have we heard of people out on licence or bail re-offending at the moment, when the law is considered by this committee to be too harsh? People have been driven to violence by repeated attacks on them or their property. Take the cases of Tony Martin and Munir Hussain for example. Also a couple who renovated their house had it taken over by squatters at Christmas. The police and the law could do nothing except line them up and look for a charge of racism against couple. Then the case reported yesterday of the murder of Maurece and Rosemary Smith, murdered for financial gain.
Just when the government needs to find huge cuts in expenditure and many MPs come under scrutiny for dodgy claims we get something like this. Whatever happened to “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”? As far as I can see the state has gradually criminalised the ordinary person in the street whilst legalising the conduct of those who want to take advantage of them. And do you really think the saved building costs will be spent on rehab or just be sucked into the bottomless black hole that the public accounts have become?
This state of affairs has come about not because the law is too harsh. It is because we as a society have become too soft on law breakers. We now blame it on society, not the perpetrator. The welfare of the criminal is now more important than the property and sometimes even the life of the victim. Why is it that every clever report seems to fly in the face of common sense? And then end up in disaster for the person in the street?
Cosseted MPs do not see the reality of this. Yes, they read the reports but when out and about I doubt very much that they suffer the real dangers and angst of potential victims.
Modern politicians are not ‘real people’ as you and I understand it. They are coached and are now selected from privileged backgrounds by party to toe the line and obey the Whips. Modern election processes have pushed the ordinary applicant out of the picture and left us with representatives that push out reports like this.
The only way the voter can reclaim their society is to vote independent and really shaft these career politicians. At the very least do not vote Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat. Make these people re-earn the opportunity to represent you. Not as they see it the right to rule over and dictate to you.
Related Article:
The law in the UK is an Ass (2)
------ Other articles of interest ------
IMF says UK debt will keep going up
To share or not to share
And Gordon Brown replied
Kabul Bank taken over by Afghan authorities
Tags: justice committee, News, Politics, prisons
Wrong.
Build more prisons. Lock drug addicted scum up. If they are in prison then they will
a) Not be able to commit crime
b) Have their addiction ‘cured’ (and I mean real cold turkey prison)
Until a prisoner is free of any drug addiction keep ‘em locked up.
If any of these ‘bleedin’ hearts social worker types (and I suppose Mr Beith fits into this category) object then perhaps THEY would like to have these crims’ lodge in their family houses?
Our elected representatives should be forced to live in the poorest sink estate areas in their constituencies. With every constituency having one of these within its boundaries, even if you have to make some very strange shaped ones.
Then the MPs office has to be in that area and all MPs surgeries held there.
Then maybe we’d see some real policies to address these issues!
[...] again they have demonstrated how out of touch and ill informed they are. I have read with interest an article posted on this site earlier this week relating to this, and was flabbergasted by the assertion from the Cross Party Play Group that offenders who offend [...]