Roy Castle and Norris McWhirter would be proud of “New” Labour and its record-breaking efforts. I’m sure I remember as a kid watching someone on Record Breakers trying to get 40 people inside a Mini. Messrs. Blair, Straw, Blunkett, Clarke and Reid are attempting the same in Britain’s gaols:
- 80,000 Prison population today. There are just 317 spare places.
- 60 Pieces of legislation relating to criminal justice since Labour came to power in 1997.
- 25,000 10-year rise in prison population.
- £100,000 Cost of each new prison place.
- 4,452 Female prisoners in 2004 compared with 1,804 in 1994
- 10,089 Foreign national prisoners.
- 78 Self-inflicted deaths in prison in 2005. There were 65 in 1997.
Tough on crime, not really all that arsed about the causes of crime.
Lord Ramsbotham, the former head of the prison service, today describes this approach as:
the Government’s headlong and self-induced race to absurdity as far as the conduct of imprisonment is concerned.
THIS, however, still remains The Best Criminal Justice Idea Floated By A Serving Home Office Minister In The World… Ever!(TM)
Hilary Benn plans to run for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 2007.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
It used to be said that increasing either the number of people in prison or the length of the average prison sentence would deter people from committing criminal offences. Indeed, deterrence is now enshrined as a valid sentencing principle in the latest Criminal Justice Act – despite the fact that its effect is at best unreliable and at worst negligible. But John Reid (whose doctorate has disappeared – a bit soft for the Home Office, or a case for Scotland Yard?) appears to believe that prison is an end in itself. Retribution is clearly good for someone, if not the criminal – or the victim, who is more likely to suffer crime at the hands of ex-prisoners who have somehow failed to benefit from this government’s myriad measures tackling the causes of crime. How can you run a country on the basis of what might be on the front page of the Sun? Now there’s something from which we need protection.