Monday, November 16, 2009 

Scum-watch: Getting it completely wrong on Labour's record on crime and prisons.

Having attacked Gordon Brown personally last week and came off the worst for it, this week the Sun seems to have decided to stand on surer ground, by attacking Labour on crime. Problem is, it can't seem to do so without telling some whopping great lies, as today's leader shows:

Prison policy, in particular, has become a joke.

Early on, Labour decided not to build more jails and instead focus on alternatives to prison and early release for prisoners.


In 1997 the average prison population was 61,470 (page 4). The population last Friday was 84,593 (DOC), a rise in just 12 years of more than 20,300. I can't seem to find any concrete figures on just what the total number of places available in 1997 was, but ministers themselves boast that they have created over 20,000 additional places, and the Prison Reform Trust agrees, noting in this year's Bromley report that the number of places has increased by 33% since the party came to power (page 5). By any yardstick, the creation of over 20,000 places is a massive increase. Labour's real success is that despite increasing the population so massively, there are still not enough places to go round, hence the early release scheme which the Sun and the Conservatives so decry without providing anything approaching an alternative solution. As statements of fact go, the Sun's claim that "Labour decided not to build more jails" could not be more wrong.

This coincided with ill-judged policies on late drinking, softening drug laws and over-reliance on cautions, all of which increased crime.

In actual fact, and predictably, levels of alcohol related crime have changed little. There is no evidence whatsoever that softening the drug laws, of which only the law on cannabis was briefly softened, increased crime, unless you count the massive rise in cautions given out for possessionwasting the time of everyone involved. Lastly, there is little evidence also that giving out more cautions increases the likelihood of re-offending. You can in fact probably narrow it down to two groups: those who would have re-offended regardless of the punishment they received and those for whom it was an aberration. The problem with cautions is the effect it has on the victims of the crime, and the implications for the justice in general, not that they increase crime.

 which may previously have resulted in someone going to court for having a tiny amount of resin in their position,

The result? More criminals ought to be behind bars. But there is nowhere to send them.

Instead, jails and secure hospitals operate more as short-stay hotels.

Today The Sun reports on a murderer who hacked a mother and son to death but is on day release after just six years.


Not an exactly representative example: Gregory Davis pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, hence he is not a "murderer", as the leader claims. Psychiatrists now think that he has recovered to an extent to which he is not a danger to the public, on which I'm more inclined to trust them then I am the Sun.

Weekends out of jail for lags have trebled in the past two years.

Labour deny this has anything to do with easing prison pressure. But the facts speak for themselves.

Last year, 11,599 prisoners were let out for four-day breaks.

In 2006 the figure was only 3,813.

Is the Sun on to something here? Not to judge by the figures themselves: the latest show that there is room for around 900 more prisoners currently; back in August 2006 (DOC), to pick one set of figures at random, there were only 700 spaces available. Indeed, in October 2006, Operation Safeguard was in effect, with prisoners being held in police cells. Surely if weekends out were meant to ease prison pressure there would have been more let out back in 2006 when it was much more desperately needed. Is it not more likely that these breaks, meant to help those shortly to be released to readjust to life outside as well as for general rehabilitation are being used more widely because of the relative success of doing so?

Labour's soft approach even makes life cosy inside:

Convicts at Chelmsford jail enjoyed a talent show.


And what a talent show it was! Costing a whole £1,500, it seems the kind of thing that might actually help prisoners once they are allowed back out into the real world, but the Sun seems to think that prisoners should spend their time either locked up in their "cushy" cells or sewing mail bags.


Convicted criminals should pay the price - not just as punishment but for the protection of the public. That is the contract on law and order between voters and Parliament.

Having broken that deal, Labour have no right to criticise the Conservatives when they vow to do better.

By the same token, the Sun has no right to criticise Labour when it can't even get the very basic facts about the party's record on crime right.

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11/16/2009 11:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 06, 2009 

Jack Straw, also synonymous with heartless bastard.

It seems that we have Ronnie Biggs to thank for two things: firstly, for demonstrating just what condition you have to be released from prison on "compassionate" grounds, and secondly for highlighting what a charmless, inhumane bastard Jack Straw is.

On the 1st day of last month Straw ruled that Biggs couldn't be released because he was "wholly unrepentant". This was despite the fact that Biggs can't talk, walk, eat or drink. A few days before Straw's ruling he had fell and broken his hip; the parole board without apparently being sardonic, said the risk he posed "was manageable under the proposed risk management plan". The risk from a man who has to be fed through a tube and who can barely walk must rank up there with the risk posed by eating Pop Rocks and then drinking Coke, or the risk of being mauled to death by a band of marauding gerbils. Straw didn't bother to explain how keeping such a man in prison at a cost doubtless far in excess of that if he was in a nursing home was justifiable except in terms of pure vindictiveness. If the aim was to please the authoritarian populists in the tabloids, he failed: even they blanched at a man close to death being kept inside for no real reason except the establishment getting its own back for being played a fool for years.

37 days later and Biggs' condition has now deteriorated so significantly that Straw has granted parole on "compassionate" grounds. This in effect means that Biggs is about to die, with his son hoping that he survives long enough to see out his birthday on Saturday. If Straw had granted Biggs parole back on the 1st of July, he might just have been able to enjoy a few days of something approaching freedom; now he's likely to just slip away, having gone down with pneumonia. Politicians such as Straw justify the likes of Iraq war on the basis that even if hundreds of thousands of people died, the ends justified the means; in any event, rarely do they see the consequences of their actions close up, and even then they can take the abstract view, that they weren't personally responsible even if in the chain of command. Yet Straw can hardly deny in this instance that he may well have directly contributed to Biggs' suffering further than he needed to. Straw's shamelessness though seems unlikely to even slightly twinge his conscience, even when others would have been deeply troubled by just that thought.

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8/06/2009 09:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, July 07, 2009 

Scum-watch: "Soft Labour" is here again.

We're getting into one of those periods again when the Sun decides it's time to go after Labour's record on the criminal justice system. This is one of those dividing lines where the "hawks" think that Labour hasn't been harsh enough, i.e. the Sun, other tabloids and the Tories, although I doubt they'll be much difference should they get into power, and the "doves", i.e. the likes of bleeding hearts like me, who think that Labour has legislated far too much and imprisoned far too many even while crime, according to the official statistics (and replicated across the Western world) has fallen to levels last seen in the early 80s.

Last week we had the claim that Britain was the most violent European country, while also claiming that also included the United States and South Africa, where there are other 20,000 murders a year. This was based upon highly incomparable figures released by the European Commission, which were then compiled by the Conservatives, who sent them on to sympathetic newspapers. The actual data on which these were based either hasn't been released publicly, or hasn't been by any of the organisations involved in compiling it - there's nothing on the EC site, nothing on the Eurostat site, and nothing on the Tories' site, making it impossible to even begin to verify the claims.

Today the Sun is stunned, stunned to learn that "life" doesn't mean life. Alongside the obligatory report on Michael Jackson's funeral, the front page shrieked about how "Lifers do just 9 years". Those who don't bother to read the story, or the further explanation provided in the paper might be surprised to learn that this doesn't include those convicted of murder, as they might imagine. They instead do an average of 16 years. Rather, those sentenced to life imprisonment but convicted of manslaughter, violent rape or armed robbery and released from prison in 2007 served an average of 9 years, based upon the 146 who were allowed out. This is hardly surprising, as those sentenced to life are always given a minimum term which they must serve before they can apply for parole. What the Sun doesn't mention, and which is often glossed over in the tabloids when reporting such "shock, horror" figures, is that those sentenced to life imprisonment remain on licence for the rest of their lives - if they commit another crime after being released they are immediately recalled to prison. This of course doesn't always happen - as the other figures released yesterday, which amazingly revealed that up to 1,000 people meant to have been recalled instead made a run for it, suggested. The vast, vast majority are though, and if the Sun has a problem with the time served by "lifers", it ought to take it up with the judges who originally set the term, not the prison and probation system which then have to work with those limits. It also notes that 6% of mandatory lifers were then convicted of another offence after being released, which seems remarkably low considering that up to 67% of those sent to prison are recidivists, having previously been behind bars.

All of this overlooks that not only has the prison population vastly increased under Labour, but that sentences have been getting longer, as a past Prison Reform Trust report found. A report released on Monday by the Howard League for Penal Reform reached much the same conclusions and called for a reduction in the prison population, for some prisons to be closed and for local authorities to take control of the prison system, as well as for a major expansion in community sentencing as opposed to short, worthless, if not downright damaging sentences which are currently keeping the prisons full and which have expanded massively under Labour.

This is naturally diametrically opposed by the likes of the Sun. That isn't "tough"; that's "soft", just like Labour have been, and as today's editorial states:

CAN you believe 1,000 criminals, including murderers and rapists, are walking free when they should be behind bars?

Of course you can. After 12 years of "Soft Labour," nothing surprises us about our shambolic criminal justice system.

This doesn't of course take into consideration that this was the first ever complete audit of those meant to have been taken back into custody and dates back to 1984 - 13 years of which Labour can hardly be blamed for, although that hasn't stopped either the Sun or the Tories. The real blame here lies with the police for not chasing warrants or being given the resources to do so, not with the criminal justice system itself.

No wonder, when convicted criminals are let off with non-custodial sentences or let loose on licence after serving half their time.

"Let off" - doesn't even give a chance to either fines or community sentences. The reason why so many are now serving half their sentence, or even just a third is down to the continual demands for harsher sentencing and more prison places; continual growth in places simply isn't possible without planning restrictions being rode over and greatly annoying those in the vicinity of the new establishment. This was the case when the Sun called for Connaught Barracks to be turned into a prison - the local community predictably went up in arms and saw off any chance of it happening.

The average "life" term is a derisory NINE years! Some thugs might consider that a price worth paying.

Well, no, it isn't, as its own story makes clear. The idea that anyone will consider the potential prison sentence they will receive before carrying out a crime which will attract a life sentence is to give credit to them which they almost certainly don't deserve. 9 years in prison is hardly a walk in the park, regardless of how often the Sun claims our jails are "cushy".

Now the Justice Department admit hundreds of prisoners who have broken their licence have done a runner.

They include 19 murders, two convicted of manslaughter and 26 sex offenders including 12 rapists.

The government claim this is because of their crackdown on licence breaches.

But most people will believe a different explanation... that releasing violent offenders early puts us all at risk.

Except as noted some these date back to the 80s, and they don't include just those released early, but those released on parole at the end of their term who have then re-offended. The Sun, by such repeated attacks, helps ensure that there can be no change in the policies on law and order between the two main parties. We urgently need to put a stop to the war on crime in its current form, just as we do all the other so-called wars.

P.S.

Why, what do we have here? Some confirmation of yesterday's post perhaps? From further on in today's leader:

TORY leader David Cameron risks being accused of promising all things to all men.

He wants cuts in public spending, yet ring-fences the gigantic NHS and foreign aid budgets against any serious pruning.

He rightly vows to slash the hugely expensive brigade of bossyboots who run meddling quangos like Ofcom.

Unlike the brigade of bossyboots and meddlers in Wapping and News International, naturally.

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7/07/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 

Basic inhumanity.

What possible purpose is served by the refusal to grant parole to Ronnie Biggs? The only conclusion that can be reached is that this is pure political grandstanding by Jack Straw, designed to win favour with the more punitive tabloids. It's also an insight into the similarly ridiculous way in which the prison system works. While Biggs was clearly guilty of his part in the Great Train Robbery, those convicted of murder who reject their guilt cannot be considered for parole and so are destined to spend their entire life behind bars until they do so, as Sean Hodgson almost did, until finally proved innocent by newly discovered forensic evidence.

As Biggs has apparently refused to show repentance for his crime and has not taken part in the courses which those looking to be released usually have to pass before their parole is granted, he looks set to languish in a cell until he dies, which might not be that far in the future. According to his family, Biggs can no longer speak, cannot walk and at the weekend broke his hip after a fall. Keeping a man in prison in such circumstances is the heighth of stupidity, as not only can he not receive the help that he obviously needs, but he also doubtless takes up extra resources which could be better used elsewhere. The prison system is overcrowded enough as it is, without also having invalids who now only seem to be inside because of the perniciousness of a government minister. It would be different if Biggs' crime was similar in proportion to that of say, Ian Brady's, still refusing after all these years to reveal where his final victim was buried, but despite the huge amount seized in the robbery, no one suffered to anywhere near the extent to which it would be appropriate to inflict a similar amount of suffering on those guilty. Jack Straw seems to be just playing to the gallery yet again.

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7/01/2009 08:00:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, December 23, 2008 

Flagrant injustice.

On the 19th of December the prison population stood at 82,918 (DOC), 1,807 places from "Usable Operational Capacity". Operation Safeguard, which involves the use of police and court cells to hold prisoners, "remains activated", and the early release of prisoners to help with overcrowding is also still in operation. This time last year the prison population was 80,707, showing that although the massive rise in prison population since Labour came to power has slowed, it still continues to grow.

It would be nice to imagine that all of those 82,918 individuals spending Christmas in their cells thoroughly deserve to be there, but two thoroughly different cases over the last couple of days show the vagaries of the court system.

How many, honestly, would genuinely argue that a custodial sentence for Robert Holding is either appropriate or likely to protect the public? Holding, a milkman aged 72, rather than also selling orange juice and yoghurts to his customers ran a more exotic sideline, supplying cannabis resin to fellow pensioners. Whether they were genuinely using it as Holding argued for "aches and pains" is open to question, but even if they weren't, who exactly in this scheme was losing out or being harmed? Furthermore, Holding pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, and although the article doesn't mention it, it seems likely to be his first offence. Either a fine or at the most a community service order would surely suffice and have seen justice being done; yet Judge Lunt warned Holding that when he passes judgement the "likely outcome is an immediate custodial sentence". This is taking the so-called "drug war" and indeed our laws regarding Class C drugs, as cannabis will remain until the government reclassifies it and as result increases the likelihood of not just the "dealers" like Holding going to prison but also his customers, to ludicrous extremes.

If such apparent injustice doesn't bring the law and the courts into disrepute, then surely injustice piled upon injustice does. The Cardiff Three were convicted after police techniques which were subsequently described by the lord chief justice as "almost passing belief". Not in question was that three witnesses who gave evidence against them were treated in a similar fashion - but yet 20 years after the murder of Lynette White, all of them found themselves being sentenced to 18 months in prison after they were convicted of perjury. Two of them, Leanne Vilday and Angela Psaila, who at the time had been working as prostitutes, pleaded guilty, possibly misguidedly but presumably because they expected that doing so would lessen any custodial sentence. The third defendant, Mark Grommek, pleaded not guilty on the grounds that he had committed perjury under duress, again, something not contested by the court. They were however all convicted on the grounds that the duress they had suffered was not of the kind which was likely to make them either fear for their lives or believe that they were likely to suffer serious injury, making their testimony voluntary rather than involuntary. The judge in the case, Mr Justice Maddison, ruled that despite Grommek's testimony that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to the police's actions, he still had "ample opportunity" to tell the truth. Maddison even accepted that the police's conduct had been "unacceptable in a civilised society", yet he decided that 20 years on, when those really in the dock should be the police themselves, sentences of a year and a half were the best course of redress.

How exactly is the public by served by all 4 individuals spending time in prison? We certainly aren't by the cost, which averages out, according to a written answer given in parliament in April 2006, at a staggering £40,992 a year. Ultimately responsible are not the judges and police that enforce the law but instead our politicians, who are completely hooked on punitive measures and increasing the prison population, which has risen by 25,000 since 1996. Both Labour and the Tories seem to imagine that despite all the evidence to the contrary, they can build their way out of overcrowding. The Tories even want to cancel the early release scheme, which would swiftly result in the police cells being filled again, at further exorbitant cost to the taxpayer. By the same token, it's been noted repeatedly that when judges believe there to be a punitive mood, either in the public or in politicians, or indeed both, they pass harsher sentences. Often whipped up by the tabloid press, the evidence in fact suggests that such punitive prison policies are dropping in popularity: a recent poll gave an almost equal split between those who thought prison worked and those who wanted alternatives.

On the whole, the courts do a decent job, and mainly get the balance right. It sometimes takes cases like those of Robert Holding and the second Cardiff Three to force reform through, to show that such expense and waste is not the answer. We shouldn't expect however that those so wedded to authoritarian crime polices will have their minds changed, regardless of the evidence of such flagrant injustice.

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12/23/2008 09:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, October 27, 2008 

That insidious criminal justice lobby...

I have very little to add to what both Justin and Dave Osler have already said about Jack Straw's latest exercise in attempting to placate the tabloids, although the idea that there's even a "criminal justice lobby" is incredibly humourous, as is the idea that it has any real influence whatsoever over government policy. If groups such as the Howard League for Penal Reform or the Prison Reform Trust did, then we wouldn't currently have the largest prison population we have ever had, nor would the government be intending to even further extend prison capacity, or to build those self-same prisons with overcrowding built-in.

The parts of the speech released smack of "Unspeak". Straw it seems wants to reintroduce old-fashioned words like "punishment" and "reform", as if they had ever went away. The real reason why they might have become deprecated is because we no longer see prison purely as punishment or purely as reform; we've realised that pure punishment does not reform, just as without punishment there is no incentive to reform. This though is far too touch-feely for the tabloids, or for the victims' families that the Sun especially keeps inflicting upon us: what they want is little more than an eye for an eye, which the system can never provide. Equally disingenuous is his highlighting of terms such as "criminogenic needs of offenders"; a Google search turns up just 32,400 results, most of them American in origin or from psychological academic tomes.

It's not even as if Straw is being anything approaching original. Almost all the previous home secretaries under Labour, including Straw himself, and now the justice secretary since the changes in the Home Office have said they'll be ever tougher on crime, criminals and increasingly cater for victims. Each has also subsequently, after doing so and having failed to provide the punitive measures which they apparently favoured, been ridiculed and pilloried by those they attempted to woo. John Reid was depicted as brainless and Charles Clarke was sacrificed over the foreign prisoners affair; only Blunkett prospered, being given pride of place by the Sun in its columns for his "straight-talk". Straw must surely be aware of the dangers of his approach, but has gone ahead anyway.

And how has the Sun, for example, responded? In the way only it can:

But Helen Newlove, widow of Garry, who was kicked to death by thugs in Warrington, Cheshire, last year, said: “This is too little too late.

“Labour brought in the barmy Human Rights Act in the first place and employed many of these do-gooders themselves on huge salaries.”


Would Newlove like to name on single do-gooder that has been employed on a huge salary? It would be a challenge, as they number next to none.

As for the editorial:

Of course this is all true. Of course prison reformers get their way too often.

*snort*

You talk a good game, Jack. If you really mean business, though, give us those new prisons.

And end the early-release scheme that last year alone saw 31,000 inmates — yes, 31,000 — freed before their time.


All released a whole two weeks' before their sentence would have ended normally and that without which the prisons would be completely full, partially as a result of the Scum's own demands for incessant harsher sentences. Straw can't possibly win, but you almost have to give him credit for trying. The countdown to Straw being depicted as a crazed lunatic setting free criminals to murder your relatives begins now.

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10/27/2008 10:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, September 12, 2008 

Not everything the Sun does is instantly condemnable...

Considering that I'm probably one of the Sun newspaper's most trenchant critics, it deserves to be said that today's front page splash on a party held at Holloway prison is a fully justified and shaming incident which really ought to raise wider questions about what those in authority in such institutions really think is and is not acceptable. The fact that it was a Halloween party adds to the incredulity, but honestly, when is any sort of officer-approved party apart from perhaps at Christmas or when someone long suspected to be innocent is finally released acceptable, especially when it involves the other inmates apparently being neglected so that it could be monitored?

Apart from no doubt further disgusting the relatives of those killed by some of those featured in the photograph, it will also further push the idea that prisons themselves are cushy establishments where punishment is often the last thing that takes place in them. The fact that is often as far from the truth as it's possible to get - with women's prisons especially often filled with the mentally ill and the drug addicted, where self-harm and suicide attempts are an everyday occurrence - is ever harder to argue when such evidence of largesse, insensitivity and downright stupidity by those meant to be in charge comes to light. For once you can't possibly blame Jack Straw for reacting instantly to a headline, ordering that any such incidents be shelved immediately.

There must be some credit paid to the Sun also - the paper could have really gone to town with such an exclusive if it had wished to - instead only publishing this rather mild in the circumstances leader comment:

KILLERS go to jail for punishment.

They are not banged up to enjoy fancy dress parties.

The sight of convicted murderers having a Halloween knees-up in Holloway prison will heap untold anguish on their victims’ relatives.

A civilised nation will be astonished at this lax regime — at taxpayers’ expense.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw must take charge today by cancelling plans for any more parties in jails.

And sacking whoever was responsible.


Very little that can be disagreed with.

It would be remiss though not to comment also on this latest apology from the Sun, even if it is to a former highly unpleasant Big Brother contestant:

WE would like to make clear Big Brother contestant Alexandra De Gale was not issued with a six-month restraining order by Croydon Magistrates, has never physically threatened former colleague Laura Barnes or any of her family and is not involved in a relationship with Courtney Hutchinson nor any other member of the PDC gang as we reported on June 7.

We apologise for the mistake.

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9/12/2008 11:21:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 

Sleeping in the jacuzzi.

Remember that just over a month ago our prisons were so cushy that prisoners were opting to stay inside rather than experience freedom and that others were attempting to break in? Such conclusive evidence has been decidedly backed up by the prison inspectorate's report on Doncaster prison, dubbed by Erwin James Doncatraz:

Some inmates are living and sleeping in toilets because of jail overcrowding, a report says.

HM Inspectorate of Prisons found Doncaster jail's two-man cells had been turned into three-man cells by putting an extra bed in the toilet area.

Doncaster jail, run by the private firm Serco, holds almost 1,000 male prisoners - 200 more than it can accommodate in uncrowded conditions.

The Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, Anne Owers, said using the toilet area as accommodation was "unacceptable" and called for the practice to end.


This itself raises the question of where the prisoners did administer their deposits; "slopping out" was meant to have been banned years ago. You have to admire the thinking behind stuffing an extra bed in the toilet area on one level: now that's private sector efficiency and productivity in action. Whether Serco are paid by how many prisoners are in the premises at any one time is surely beside the point.

Could this initiative use of cell space possibly be related to this?

Incidents of violence and self-harm have also increased.

Thankfully, things in some areas have improved since Anne Owers' last visit. It would have been rather difficult for them not to; Owers then said conditions in some areas of the prison were "squalid", that less than a third of ethnic minority prisoners thought they were treated well and that the "first night centre" put prisoners in danger from others, making 156 recommendations on which to improve (PDF).

All of which hardly provides even the basics for any sort of rehabilitation. Speaking of which, also convienently shoved out on the last day of parliament before the recess, the justice committe more or less ripped Labour's criminal justice policy to shreds:

The Commons justice committee found Labour's flagship criminal justice reforms had been a "significant contributor" to prison overcrowding.

"We urge the government to address sentencing policy in a more considered and systematic way and to reconsider the merits of this trend," the cross-party committee of MPs said.

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 was the centrepiece of government plans for delivering clear, consistent sentencing. But MPs said the act had "fallen short of its aims".

The committee blamed a desire to appear tough on crime and a failure to inject sufficient resources into community punishments for a rise in short jail terms, which they said could lead to increased reoffending.

"There is a contradiction in stating that prison should be reserved for serious and dangerous offenders while not providing the resources necessary to fund more appropriate options for other offenders who then end up back in prison," the committee's Liberal Democrat chair, Alan Beith, said.

"Short custodial sentences are very unlikely to contribute to an offender's rehabilitation; in fact, short custodial sentences may increase re-offending."

Vulnerable groups such as women, young people and the mentally ill were found to be particularly susceptible to being imprisoned even though "their needs could be dealt with both more effectively and more appropriately in the community".


The solution to all of this is simple: build even more prisons, ones that will have overcrowding built into them. Oh, except, the review that recommended the "titans" was, according to the committee:

a "deeply unimpressive" review of sentencing by Labour peer Lord Carter that they said was based on "wholly inadequate" consultation.

Carter's report was "a missed opportunity for a fundamental consideration of problems with sentencing and provision of custodial and non-custodial facilities in England and Wales", the MPs found.

No surprises there: all the evidence suggests that the truly effective prisons are local, small ones which don't completely remove the offender from their local community and help with their resettlement and opportunities once they're inside. Titan prisons however are far more attractive to the government because they don't need to go through the hassle of going through multiple planning processes across the land, instead building some of them near to already existing ones. They're also tough: just look at that word, "titan". Ooh, that's hard, isn't it?

Who cares whether those within prisons are reformed while they're inside, the point is that while they're inside they can't commit crimes, right? That's the view the government's pandering to, one which cares only for immediate results and tomorrow's headlines and not for the long-term. There isn't however any dispute between the Conservatives and Labour on this: both are convinced that more people need to be locked up despite everything that suggests it simply doesn't work. To do otherwise would mean having to challenge the orthodoxy on the right and in the tabloids which has bequested us the current mess. Perhaps if ministers themselves had to sleep in toilets it might concentrate a few minds.

Related:
David Ramsbotham - We need a royal commission into our prisons

Update: I just noted I misspelled "jacuzzi" in the title as "jazuzzi". Whoops.

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7/22/2008 09:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, June 04, 2008 

Scum-watch: Cushy prisons, yet more Facebook bashing, and 42 days nonsense.

Plenty to get through today, starting with the familiar Sun refrain that the prisons are all holiday camps, this time on the back of data released by the Ministry of Justice:

PRISONS are so cushy that 37,000 lags have refused early release – and 42 others tried to break IN, it emerged yesterday.

The Sun doesn't bother to mention that this is over the last 7 years for another couple of paragraphs.

They showed that annually thousands of inmates would rather stay inside than take Home Detention Curfew.

It's worth linking to exactly what was asked, which TheyWorkForYou provides here. Nick Herbert didn't just ask about those who actually opted-out, but also those that didn't bother to apply, which means there might be plenty that forgot to do so that also make up the figures.

In any case, 37,000 prisoners not applying/opting-out over 7 years obviously doesn't instantly mean that those who turned out down are preferring to stay in prison because it's so wonderful inside. Some prisoners will obviously prefer to serve out their time than be subject to a 7pm to 7am curfew while electronically tagged, especially if it means that they can't work a night job as a result, if they have one to go out to. Some will turn it out down because they don't actually have a home to go to, or one where the other occupants will agree to the private contractor installing the necessary equipment, while others might prefer to stay in prison than go and live for the time period in a hostel. As Straw also points out, some probably don't bother applying because they don't think that they'll pass the risk assessment. Indeed, it's instructive that the Sun nor the Times bothered to publish the breakdown of the figures over the years, possibly because it shows that the prisons can't be that cushy, because the numbers opting-out/not applying has fell from a high of 7,800 in 2001 to 3,200 in 2006. This makes sense when you consider that the prisons are now hopelessly overcrowded, and that surprisingly, that makes them rather less pleasant places to be, 3 meals a day, "satellite TV and cheap drugs", as the Sun puts it, or not.

And there were 26 incidents of break-ins – including one at a high security jail and 25 at open prisons. Ladders were used by 13 and three climbed walls. Shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert last night blasted the prison crisis as a “farce”.

These figures are similarly making a mountain out of a molehill, with an average of just 4 attempted break-ins a year, the 42 coming from the number of individuals involved in each incident. The clue as to how easy it is to break-in, or break-out from an open prison is in the word "open"; a fair majority of the prisoners in them are being prepared for release, and have day jobs outside the walls as a result, or are ranked as the lowest risk prisoners were they to go on the run. It's little surprise that some drug dealers might think they'd get business in open prisons and think breaking in is worth a go, but by far the biggest source of drugs in prison is, *shock*, corrupt screws.

It's rather strange therefore that the Sun is also bigging up the CBI's condemnation of current prison policy, which is quite clearly not in the slightest supporting the ever increasing building and filling of new prisons, something dearly close to the Sun's heart:

The Confederation of British Industry will today tell the Government that reoffending rates are a “colossal failure”. Dr Neil Bentley of the CBI will say lack of rehabilitation means jail is just a “hugely expensive bed and breakfast”.

Two in three ex-inmates commit another crime in two years – rising to three out of four young lags.

A 40 per cent hike in spending has had no effect on reoffending in the last ten years, the CBI will say.


This is for the reason that it is incredibly difficult to rehabilitate prisoners in prison in the first place, but when they're full to bursting as they currently are, something the Sun has had no small part in ensuring thanks to its constant urging of crackdowns on law and order, it's close to impossible. This was reflected in the figures released at the weekend that showed that prisons were lying about the time that inmates had outside their cells, which in some was less than 2 hours out of 24.

Onward to yet another Facebook-bashing exercise while ignoring that the study also involves MurdochSpace users:

Facebook users are ‘shirkers’

SOCIAL networking websites have taken over from fag breaks as the bane of bosses’ lives, a new poll shows.

Four in ten managers say they now find that workers addicted to sites like Facebook and online shops are the biggest office time-wasters.


Ah, so MySpace users aren't shirkers. They're just morons.

Meanwhile, it looks like the Sun is starting to step up the pressure on those opposing 42 day detention, just as it did prior to the 90-day vote, after which it denounced those who voted against as "traitors":

ANTI-TERROR cops and security chiefs have rallied around Gordon Brown’s bid to give police 42 days to quiz terror suspects.

The PM, who is battling a Labour rebellion over it, got the boost ahead of next Wednesday’s Commons vote.


Why the Sun is using the plural is beyond me: for "cops" read ex-cop Peter Clarke, dealt with yesterday and for "security chief" read ex-security chief, Richard Dearlove, also known as a liar, involved up to his neck in the dodgy dossier and a signatory to the Henry Jackson Society:

Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove wrote: “If 42 days is not adopted, regret it we will.”

He's also apparently turned into Yoda.

 The PM’s bid has also won the backing of Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair – and top TORY MP Ann Widdecombe.

Err, Blair actually hasn't commented recently at all on 42 days of late: the Sun is being deliberately misleading by claiming that he's only now backed it. How Widdecombe can also be described as "top" when she's long left the shadow cabinet and is stepping down at the next election is also stretching credibility, and also not mentioned is the fact that Widdecombe came very close to supporting 90 days last time round, instead abstaining on the vote. That she supports 42, being one of the most authoritarian right-wing figures in parliament, is hardly surprising.

Then there's this flagrant piece of either deliberate bullshit or getting completely the wrong end of the stick:

In one case, police had to study 270 computers, 2,000 discs and 8,224 exhibits in eight countries to identify a SUSPECT.

Err, I think you'll find that they studied that number of computers etc in pursuit of evidence, not just to identify a suspect. It's also interesting how almost all of the commenters on the article are opposed, which is a surprise considering how they'll usually support absolutely anything on crime or terrorism on MySun. Still, for those wavering, the Sun helpful points out just how vital the bill is in by headlining the Scum's political editor's column thusly:

New Bill will help defeat al-Qaeda evil

The world's worst columnist also valiantly picks up the theme:

Cameron must choose his side

DAVID BLUNKETT - Sun Columnist

ON this very day 167 years ago a man who was soon to become a Conservative Prime Minister said: "The duty of an Opposition is, very simply, to oppose everything and propose nothing."

Which just goes to show that nothing much changes with the Tories, even from one century to the next.

Except the Tories supported Blair over "trust schools" rather than opposing it, for just one example.

 Labour’s present doldrums have allowed Cameron to avoid being nailed for his unwillingness to face the biggest issue that can confront a Government — protecting the safety and wellbeing of the nation’s citizens.

Except that the Conservatives also opposed 90 days, when things might have been bad for Labour, but not as bad as they are now. Still, keep going David.

 After all the compromises, is Mr Cameron, with his party in tow, still prepared to put the civil liberties of suspected terrorists before the greatest liberties of all — the life, safety and freedom of everyone in our country?

No Mr Blunkett, it's not the civil liberties of suspected terrorists he's prepared to put before the "greatest liberties of all"; they are the civil liberties of everyone. Unless you haven't noticed, and during your tenure you did try your best, considering you locked up foreign "terrorist suspects" without charge in Belmarsh for years, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. There is no such thing as a "suspected terrorist", a horrible piece of Unspeak.

The most shameless thing about this piece is it's the government that are behaving like "junior common room debaters", as Blunkett puts it. They can't possibly win without diluting the power down to almost nothing, yet it's still objectionable because 42 days detention without charge is simply unacceptable, and no amount of judicial oversight or safeguards will change that. The Conservatives have been completely consistent from the beginning, opposing 90 days, 56 days and now 42 days, and quite rightly so. It may well be that this is a tactic to put further pressure on the government, and I don't doubt for a moment that the Conservatives, should they win the next election, might well do a complete u-turn, but this is the government in the wrong, not the opposition. They're the ones that are protecting our liberties from those who want to destroy them, and that includes both the government and the "terrorists" themselves.

The Sun's leader echoes the exact same arguments (yes, I realise they're rhetorical questions but humour me):

ARE the Tories serious about Britain’s security?

No, they want us all to be blown to pieces.

Do they think security chiefs exaggerate the complex threat from extremists?

Probably not, but even if they did they wouldn't necessarily be wrong to think so.

The question needs addressing as Tory leader David Cameron tries to vote down the 42-day detention of terror suspects.

Intelligence experts say thousands of fanatics are plotting murder.


And? They're still going to be plotting murder whether there's 42 days or not.

They use sophisticated technology and concealment techniques.

Oh yeah, like the evil terrorist that kept an explosives manual under his bed in a sealed box that the Sun recently stalked.

Evidence may spread across several continents and many languages.

To be serious for half a second, then give the police more resources. Don't extend the time just so they don't have to rush so much.

Civil liberties are important. But if there is one person who should persuade the Tories, it is ex-Met chief Peter Clarke.

Mr Clarke is no scaremonger. He is the reassuring voice of sober authority.

If he says the terror threat is “growing in scale and complexity” and 28 days is not enough, Mr Cameron should listen very, very carefully.


This would of course be the same Peter Clarke who said of the ricin plot, where there was no ricin, and even had there been Kamel Bourgass was too stupid to know that it needs to penetrate the skin to have an effect:

"This was a hugely serious plot because what it had the potential to do was to cause real panic, fear, disruption and possibly even death," said Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch. "This was no more, no less than a plot to poison the public."

I too have the possibility to cause real panic, fear, disruption and even death if I run around outside waving a gun. It just so happens that I don't have a gun, but I still have the potential to do so, even if I haven't got a clue where to get a gun from. That too would be no more no less than a plot to kill the public. Clarke also defended the infamous Forest Gate raid, misleadingly claiming that a report made no criticism of the police's action when it was highly critical, while yesterday he expressed amazement at the politicisation of the debate when the police had done so much to err, politicise it.

Cameron though will have got the message. If the bill is defeated, not only will the spineless and pusillanimous Labour backbenchers get a roasting, so will the Conservatives. All the more reason to continue opposing 42 days and to once again say that it was the Sun wot lost it.

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6/04/2008 08:51:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, April 26, 2008 

They've never had it so good.

It would be reasonably easy to write an entire post debunking the curious idea, fast gaining in popularity, that some prisons resemble holiday camps. Some others have done just that, and the Grauniad recently published a day in the life of both prisoners and guards which hardly confirms the view, but there's just one point that ought to blow down the whole house of cards.

If the journalists (and Glyn Travis) writing these reports are so certain that a prisoner's life is one of pleasure rather than extreme boredom and overwhelming insecurity and fear, how about they swap their actual holidays in the sun or wherever with a stay in one of her majesty's finest? It'd make for a great feature piece, would settle the argument once and for all, and could well lead to fundamental changes in the prison system if their accusations turned out to be to sound.

Any takers then?

Oh.

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4/26/2008 09:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 25, 2008 

Scum-watch: A lesson in attempting to puncture its own emotional balloon.

It's interesting, these days, watching the Sun (No, please, come back!). Last year after the failed patio gas canister bombings it clearly didn't have the slightest idea how to respond to them: first with hackneyed blitz spirit type defiance; then scaremongering, and the resurrection of its demands to scrap the human rights act; and finally, resorting to patriotism, ordering everyone to fly the flag. This remember is the paper which over the 80s and up until recently was often considered the weathervane of the nation, or symbolic of how a majority of how it was responding, typified by how when it changed from supporting the Conservatives to New Labour that it was considered the final, death blow against John Major.

Since then of course we've had the online revolution; now the most visited UK newspaper website is the loony-left Guardian, closely followed by the Mail Online. Circulations continue to plunge, with the Sun recently slipping below the 3 million mark, only rising back above it because of price cutting. The real success story of today is the Daily Mail, and by far the most despicable, distorted press coverage of late, directed at asylum seekers and immigrants, has come not from the Sun but from the Express and Mail. Whether it's because the Sun's reflecting society at large or not, or that it's lost its way as the country has become more liberal and has tried but failed to follow, it no longer has the zest or vim that it had under Kelvin MacKenzie's editorship, as rabid as that was in places. The rot set in under David Yelland, the most memorable of his front pages one asking Tony Blair whether we were being run by a gay mafia, and Rebekah Wade, most notable beforehand for her "name and shame" campaign against paedophiles on the News of the World, has done little to change that.

Even so, it's surprising that it's been so surprised by the vehemence of the response to its call for a debate on capital punishment. For years it's been claiming without the slightest amount of evidence that judges are liberal loonies, that crime is getting worse while the figures suggest the opposite and that the criminal justice system is failing us all. The result of this campaign for "toughness", led not just by it but by the other right-wing tabloids also, is both obvious and apparent; our prisons are now so full that there is little to no room whatsoever left in them. Of late, the rallying cry has been against binge drinking and youth, or rather "yob" violence. This was crystallised by the death of Garry Newlove, a loving, caring father kicked to death by 3 teenagers who had drank large amounts of strong alcohol and smoked cannabis beforehand. It's one of those cases, like the murder of Rhys Jones, that pushes the press into a familiar period of soul-searching of how we've reached this lowest-collective ebb. The reality is of course that it's an aberration, a terrible crime that is thankfully very rare. Nonetheless, it gave the Sun and Newlove's loving widow, an opportunity: both want change, but for very different reasons. The Sun wants improved sales and to be able to crow about changing government policy, as well increasing its own influence; Newlove wants vengeance and for her husband's death to not be in vain. Newlove, along with a shopping list of other demands, clearly stated how she longed to be able to personally execute the 3 boys who killed her husband. Never mind that even in most American states it would have been highly unlikely they would have been sentenced to death because the crime wasn't premeditated, and that perhaps only in such freedom loving countries as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran would such a punishment have taken place, the Sun at the time didn't speak up and say that it was personally against capital punishment. It did all it could to encourage a grieving, deeply hurt woman to keep going.

Then, in quick succession, we've had other troubling murder cases, which due to their own individual circumstances have caught the public's attention, or at least certainly the media's. In Steve Wright's, because he murdered 5 prostitutes with no apparent motive, not even a sexual one, and was apparently not mentally ill; and Mark Dixie's, in that he stalked and killed a beautiful 18-year-old aspiring model, who had a whole string of portfolio photographs that the media could splash all over their pages. Today Levi Bellfield was convicted of the murders of two young women, and suspected, like the previous two, of having potentially killed before. While the relatives of Bellfield's victims haven't spoken out yet, it won't be much of a surprise if they too, like the next of kin of those killed by Wright and the mother of Sally Anne Bowman, Dixie's victim, suggest that they would also like to see the return of the ultimate penalty.

The Sun on Saturday then, presumably because of the response on its talkboards which are usually filled with individuals not always residing in this country demanding the restoration of capital punishment, set up an actual poll asking whether readers would like to see hanging back. The response seems on the surface to be overwhelming, and despite the Sun personally coming out against it. 99% of 95,000 wanted it brought back, according to their you the jury poll. The poll result is of course questionable; you can vote multiple times on the online poll, and doubtless can on the actual phone lines too. Even if you consider that it is a seemingly massive response, the Sun has over 3 million sales, which means that 3% of its readers' responded and want it back. The Sun also claims to have an actual readership of 8 million, meaning that the figure goes even lower when you factor that in.

Despite its past polls returning similar overwhelming results, the paper in this case genuinely seems taken aback by the response. The question has to be: why? Its attitude to crime has always been leading towards such a policy, even if it actually balks at the possibility. I very much doubt it's because polls that are representatively sampled suggest around 60% or lower (albeit from a few years' ago) are usually in favour of capital punishment being brought back, with even only 65% of Tory voters wanting hanging to return; rather, it's because it's greatly perturbed that its readers aren't hanging off their every editorial word. The Sun is, first and foremost, pure propaganda, and it expects its line to be swallowed. Secondly, it almost seems worried that it can't control what it's started off.

As Tim Ireland writes, it almost seems as if the paper is trying to control the mob it set in motion. Wade couldn't do it when she named and shamed paedophiles and a paediatrician ended up being hounded out; how on earth could she manage it now? In any case, she's making an attempt: as well as listing all the relatives of victims who want capital punishment back, the paper remarks on how Sara Payne, one of those whose line in criminal justice policy based purely on her own experience as a victim has been pushed relentlessly in the paper, doesn't want it back. It points out how Pierrepoint didn't believe that it was a deterrent (although Wikipedia asks whether this was just a selling tactic for his book), without mentioning how he, merciful and humane despite his role as executioner, was only interested in making sure that the end for the person being put to death was as painless and quick as possible, something at odds with many of those calling for its return, who clearly want those put to death to suffer. It even says that the hated Germans brought hanging to this country, almost as if wanting to put its readers off it by its pure heritage; the page 3 girl, the paper's purest piece of propaganda, asks for life to mean life rather than for capital punishment; and only two of the Sun's gor blimey commentators, both of them the loathsome talk radio hosts Jon Gaunt and Fergus Shanahan, want it back.

Today's leader column is extraordinary therefore for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I agree with large parts of it, which is almost a first; secondly, because of its sheer flaming hypocrisy:

THE clamour for the death penalty is deafening.

Some 99 per cent of 100,000 voters in our poll demand its return.

Such an overwhelming response is no surprise after the killings of Garry Newlove, Sally Anne Bowman and the five Suffolk Strangler victims. Not to mention the anarchy that has erupted in some parts of Britain.

No one reading the heart-rending interviews with any of the victims’ families could fail to understand their desire for the ultimate revenge. Most of us share it.

But The Sun does not believe in capital punishment. It will not be brought back on a wave of public emotion, however much we sympathise with it.

Emotion cannot dictate a nation’s system of punishment

Yet that is exactly what it has wanted by giving over so much space to Helen Newlove and others. Helen Newlove claims in her own case for why it should be brought back that it isn't about revenge or vengeance - yet anyone reading her demands and frankly chilling account of how she'd like to execute her husband's killers couldn't fail to realise that was exactly the motive on which she was acting. Emotion or revenge cannot possibly even begin to be a part of any justice system which is going to attempt to be fair - yet by not pointing that out forcefully enough the Sun has failed those that it's given such succour to.

This is the Sun's main argument for what should take capital punishment's place - and it's just as flawed as capital punishment itself is:

Demands for capital punishment are only so strong because the justice system fails at every turn.

Too few police. Too few arrests. Too few offenders being locked away because there are too few jails and, scandalously, they were allowed to become too full.

Too few judges taking public safety seriously.

And far too many serious offenders whose “life” terms mean nothing of the kind.


Except we've got almost the most police ever. How can you possibly say too few offenders are locked away when there's currently 82,000 in prison and we are among the most heavy users of prison as punishment in Europe? Yes, the jails are too full, but that's not just the fault of the government but of the very same newspapers that have demanded ever tougher punishments, got them, and then demanded even harsher sentences. The very reason we're currently at bursting point is because when we have these sporadic bursts of draconian sentiment the judges are inclined to send those they might have previously fined or put on a community order to prison. They're reflecting what is apparently public opinion, even if polls now suggest that the country is split equally over whether more prisons are the answer. Judges are doing their very best in difficult circumstances; and "life" terms are usually about right. Learco Chindamo perhaps should have got more than 12 years, yet when the evidence suggests that he is a rare success story of prison actually working beyond just locking the dangerous away, he gets attacked, the victim of his crime is given centre stage to voice her disgust, and the demands for tougher sentences grow once again. Who could disagree with Dixie being sentenced to over 30 years, meaning he'll be 70 and a danger to no one if he is eventually to be released? Wright's sentence was also the right one, as was mostly the ones given to Newlove's killers. Life should only ever mean life where this is no chance whatsoever of redemption, or in the case of someone committing multiple murders. Despite common belief, life sentences have never meant life in this country, and the time served for a life sentence has actually continued to rise since the abolition of capital punishment. Believe it or not, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks this, our current justice system model gets it about right. The occasional cases where it either gets it wrong, with both miscarriages of justice and with those who either get away with it or kill again needed to be taken into consideration, are relatively few.

The most true and again, also line which contains the most chutzpah on the Sun's behalf in this one:

Revenge is the real motivation behind the calls for the return of capital punishment. That’s not enough in a civilised society.

And who knows just how the average supporter of capital punishment will take to being spoken to in such a tone by the "reactionary" Sun newspaper?

Related post:
Impotent Fury - Tabloid legislation - why do we bother having a government?

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2/25/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 11, 2008 

Prison bloodbaths and an Express hack bullshits every 4 minutes.

Tabloid stories really don't get much more pathetic than this:

PRISON chiefs sparked outrage last night for letting lags stage a production of violent musical Sweeney Todd.

Cast members, likely to include murderers, will use cardboard knives to act out the tale of the killer barber, currently a hit film starring Johnny Depp.


Or perhaps they were more inspired by the BBC drama a few years' back which starred Jessica Stevenson presiding over a production of Sweeney Todd in a... maximum security prison. Naturally, the Sun has found an appropriate person to give their view on how disgraceful this is:

But Sam Salmons, whose stepdaughter was murdered, said: “It’s awful, they’ll probably have a murderer playing a murderer.

“Sweeney Todd is a bad choice — what’s wrong with Grease or the Sound of Music?”


Ah yes, I can just see a prisoner deciding that he's the one that wants to channel Julie Andrews, or indeed Olivia Newton-John. You're the one that I want - ooh ooh ooh! Here are a few of my favourite things - cold showers, early lock-up and shitting in buckets?

They could of course go for a entirely different sort of play and decide on Shakespeare. There's the Scottish play - no bloodbath in that; Othello, which ends happily with the Moor and his white wife overcoming all the racial obstacles in their way and dying in old age; or Titus Andronicus, where well, you get the picture. Fact is, Sweeney Todd is probably one of the few plays that prisoners are most likely to either enjoy, or at least somewhat relate to. Sam Salmons is fully entitled to try her own hand and get those sentenced to life to put on a production centred around working-class late 1950s high school kids, but she'll probably need to be Mary Poppins to get anything out of them.

Slight P.S. I try to refrain from making glib statements such as "doing the BNP's work for them" but I really can't see any other motive behind the Express front page today, which, as usual, is full of mendacious distortion. As FCC writes, the number of migrants arrested, which is itself based on a estimate from only half of the police forces, amounts to only 7% of the actual total. That'll be 93% of number arrested NOT migrants then. If a migrant is therefore arrested every four minutes, how many of our "indigenous" population are arrested every second?

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2/11/2008 08:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

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