Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Poor old 'hush puppy' Clarke has been forced to scrap his plans to reduce prison sentences for those cons that cop a guilty plea.
So what now? Will he stay or will he go? And just how will any government reduce the prison population without some form of compromise or radical thinking,
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Reduce the prison population by making prison somewhere they really want to avoid. Take away their computer games, put more cons in each cell, make sure that the food while nutritious and plentiful is plain, no televisions in cells and limit their access to them more, no internet access and bring in some hard labour - back to rock breaking maybe.... make prison a much nastier place in general and a proper punishment.
Soft penalties and easy prison conditions have failed to reform, the more we have had of that the more criminality we get.
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
More u-turns today,Mr Clarke must now go he is making a mockery of the blues,(Mind you they do not need help with that,Do they.?)
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
No Vic - What you are seeing are the problems/challenges of coalition government.
This is the right decision and its time the Cameron stood firm on an issue against the LibDems (and Clarke who is totally out of touch with his own Party and too willing to suck up to the LDs)..
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i think dave likes him as justice secretary, every strange and unpopular idea that ken comes out with takes the pressure off of him.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
clark needs to retire asap,then hung out to dry along with a few others.
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
Kenneth clarke cannot stay after this latest u turn by the conservative govt.
that said, i go along with some of the views of barryw(yes read it again!!!!!!!!)
i agree with barryw lol
prison should be a place people fear to go to.
at the moment this is far from the case.
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
Yes indeed prison often offers criminals better accomodation than they have in the outside world so in many cases its not seen as a hardship at all. Meals are provided too and heat and TV...and no bills for any of it. So its not much of a deterrent in some cases...although you and I might feel it to be so.
Only downside is that your freedom of movement is seriously hampered.
Prison wont get any harder though chaps because there is the human rights act to consider and the forces of rehabilitation.
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
I hate to sound like a do-gooder but some of the Victorian nicks are *hitholes. No electric other than light,high windows unable to see out. Rent a kill are the most frequent visitors clearing the cockroaches,pigeons and rats.
Overcrowding,often 3 to a single cell, leads to tense situations which often breakout into violence. Gang wars,racist attacks and the frequent beating up of the 'nonces;' are a daily occurence.
23 hour bang up with exercise of an hour every 3 days ,staff and weather permitting.
Suicides are common place,stabbings,drug abuse ,bullying and raping...in fact all the fun of a Saturday night out in Cardiff.
So what I hear you say...well rehabilatation is a non starter and laughable. Treat them like animals but don't complain when they start to act like one.
So don't let anyone fool you into thinking that prison is easy,cushy with satellite tv and laptops. Sure they exist mainly for lifers and low cat non violent offenders
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Restriction of movement is not the only negative! Prison can be a scary place regardless of the provision of basic comforts. But I can understand people being pee-ed off about some of the directives about provision of care over and above. As for rehabilitation: if you want to reduce re-offending, and I would have thought that was a given, it is crucial to explore rehabilitation. Not soft options, not reduced penalties, but a way to prevent people wanting to re-offend by changing behaviours and providing realistic alternatives. That can be as harsh an option as hard labour for some die-hard recidivists.
Sorry Marek, we crossed posts. Good post mate!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
from what i have seen on the box prisons look like desperately depressing places where many are on suicide watch.
in many inmates are cooped up in cells for 23 hours a day, which means that the officers are sitting on a potential time bomb.
not surprisingly drugs use is common as a way of keeping sane.
And the idea of removing some of the tools used to distract and occupy the prisoners is appalling, for the prison staff as much as anything, for the very reasons mentioned in the last couple of posts. It is not a simple bang 'em up outcome.
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
I've posted on this many times, but prisons whould not be a soft option, but somewhere where people really do not wnat to go back to. In order to do this of course, they should have training/classes in learning various skills - plumbing, plastering, bricklaying, spark, chippie etc.
Most offenders will always re-offend, because they don't need to worry about accommodation, food, bills etc. etc. as most law abiding people do.
They also of course, ought to sort out who should be in prisons.
Roger
Guest 717- Registered: 16 Jun 2011
- Posts: 468
Have any of you ever heard of Sherrif Joe Arpaio prison in the USA? Now that is a place I would NOT want to end up in twice and is precisely the idea of the place!
Keeps politics to myself
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
read about that some time back, apparently the reoffending rates are much lower in the catchment area of the prison.
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Roger
I agree with the training programmes you mentioned above but in todays economic climate the first thing to bear the brunt of cuts is education. Teachers are supplied by the LEA but paid for the Prison Dept. So it's a real unseen saving that doesn't effect security,food, laundary etc.I know its false economy but if the prisons run a full education programme then money will have to be found from other crucial areas.
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
this what helen refers to in post 14, courtesy of time maazine.
He likes to call himself "America's toughest sheriff" and even used that moniker as the title of his autobiography. It's a claim few people would challenge — but whether that makes Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff Joe Arpaio an effective law-enforcement officer or, as his critics say, a flagrant human-rights violator remains an open question. The stern law-and-order advocate has declared war on illegal immigration in his sprawling jurisdiction, which includes Phoenix, but now the Federal Government is reining him in. Arpaio, who gained national attention for housing his inmates in tents when jails reached capacity and forcing prisoners to wear pink underwear, said earlier this month that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revoked his deputies' authority to arrest people on immigration violations in the field (they can still check immigration status and make arrests in county jails). A final decision by the Department of Homeland Security is expected to be made public on Oct. 14. Though Arpaio's severe tactics are popular among Arizonans, his deputies have attracted widespread criticism in their pursuit of illegal immigrants for harassment and the racial profiling of Latinos. Just a small fraction of the 33,000 arrests he has overseen have been based on documentation checks in the field, but Arpaio says the program to allow field checks is symbolically important: "This is a crime-deterrent program, too."
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
We need more like Arpaio.
The only 'rights' prisoners should receive are decent nutrition, safety from violence and clean quarters. All the rest should be earned and be able to be taken away including a more interesting and varied diet than a basic one. But tv and computer games in cells should be banned all together. Books should be allowed and a programme made available for those who cannot read to learn. Illiteracy among criminals being a significant problem and potentially inhibiting factor for them to improve themselves.
Think before you speak! Especially now, with potential staff cuts, we need to make sure there are distractions - not privileges - that reduce the risk of rioting and unrest. Absolutely we need to educate and re-train people, but that doesn't happen in isolation, and if it is made to seem more like hard work it is less likely to succeed. It is all about what you want to achieve rather than knee-jerk ideas of punishment.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Bern - for decades we have seen a liberal establishment focus more on more on rehabilitation and softer punishments. What is the result - more and more crime and a lack of fear in being caught. On top of all that we have the Human Rights Act - inmates being called 'clients' and prison officers disciplined for being rude to them. A sorry state of affairs.
We need to get some fear back into the system and stop worrying about criminal's so called 'rights'. The liberal experiment has failed.
The other day I was walking behind two loud youths, one was talking about getting out of prison the previous day in the same way you or I might talk about the weather. There was no sense of wrong in him and for him prison is a normal part of life. Such people should be ashamed of being in prison, not boasting (which was effectively what he was doing) and should be scared of going back in.
