22BUK

"Thousands of prisoners could be released early if controversial Home Office plans to extend tagging go ahead.

In a move to ease prison overcrowding, criminals sentenced to four years in prison could be released after 18 months. A two-year sentence would mean six months would be spent in jail. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have already condemned the plans."

Why don't we pay "third-world" countries to take some of our prisoners?
Maybe a few years in a Nigerian jail would discourage re-offending...

SJ_Skyline

Why does prison overcrowding need easing? It's not a holiday camp!

Petem95

A fairly high percentage in our prisons are foreigners - why arent these people deported as soon as they are released? Instead they are just released, and continue to commit crime and claim benefits too in many cases, but are allowed to remain in the UK?!!!

Turbohot

Because their prisons are stuffed too.If a self-satisfied civilized country like GB has such number of criminals,think about the countries where there are grave problems that push people into committing crimes.Saying that,if the governments of developed countries and UN come up with some positive strategy that may work,it may not be a bad idea.Otherwise,it would not be fair on "third world " countries to be emburdened by GB's rubbish.It will only create problems on global level.releasing the criminals earlier due to an overflow is going to be very dangerous to the society- Obviously!Crime rate is going up and up already and it is worrying!

Turbohot

Very good point!

Drunken Bungle Whore

The biggest problem is with re-offenders - the rate is currently running at about 60%. There are around 60,000 people in prison in this country and only 25 will never get out. Yet as soon as people start talking about rehabilitating prisoners they get labelled as tree hugging do gooders.


I was involved in setting up a prison education system aimed at teaching people how to claim benefits when they got out, how to get housing and how to write a CV and handle a job interview.

Yes I did worry about what was happening to their victims, but the way I saw it I was in a position to possibly stop other people becoming victims.

It's oh so easy to make judgements about prisoners but many of them grew up with parents who made an illegal living and they just saw it as 'normal' (face it, when we're kids we all think what our parents do is 'normal'). As soon as they run out of money they reoffend because it's all they know how to do - the system we set up was aimed at breaking that cycle and we had a pretty good degree of sucess.

How can ex offenders break the cycle when so few people are prepared to employ them so they can put some effort into going straight?

Of course there are some people who are 'bad to the core' who we woldn't ever be able to help, but they're not the majority.

<climbs down off soap box>

rgv_stu

chop hands then....
make them not want to comit again and again.

personally i think they should just keep filling them up, take away tv playstation cigarettes etc and make them suffer.

some of them get a better life than me and i work my **** off, really annoys me !!

Drunken Bungle Whore

Have you actually been inside a prison? The media makes it out to be a holiday camp but believe me it isn't! I've been inside loads of prisons from the old Victorian to the modern and none of them are pleasant in any way!

Some of the lower security ones are a little less scary, but that's about it!

Brendan Hughes

Maybe the prison rates could be reduced if politicians, ie legislators, stopped doing what the Sun/Mail-reading public want them to do, and actually have the guts to do something which genuinely stops reoffending. But I doubt that'll happen.

LOL at all the fools on here who keep saying "lock them up longer", and then moan about paying taxes for keeping a prisoner at about £25k per year or whatever the figure is these days.

The UK has the highest per capita prison population in Europe IIRC, and you lot are paying for it.

The Zohan

It is simple and it is not as if they did not know this was happening, feckwit short sighted government again.

BUILD MORE PRISONS!

SJ_Skyline

So the only viable solution is a mandatory death penalty:

- Zero re-offending rate.
- Much lower cost to the taxpayer.
- Prison overcrowding eliminated.
- Punishment for the crime is so horrific that crimes are not commited.

ajm

The prisons are full because prison isn't a deterrent against comitting crime any more, its too easy. So their answer to that is to make it even LESS of a deterrent by letting them out earlier?

If prison was as nasty as it should be then less people would risk ending up in there. They need to make it more unpleasant, not less so!

KiwiGTI

Need to face hard facts.

6+ billion people on this earth so life isn't that valuable. For serious offences or multiple offenders there needs to be a form of euthanasia or ship them of to a deserted island fortress where monthly food drops are made and the prisoners just fend for themselves. Send and forget.

gingerboy

Don't know about the food drops how about the occasional surplus tomahawk

Brendan Hughes

BTW, I'm sure dc911 will really appreciate your comments.

OllyK

Couple of other things to add to that
1) Ensure Police funding is directed at catching criminals rather than generating paper handcuffs
2) Get the courts to hand out meaningful sentances that will be a deterrant - 5 years for a first shop lifting offence rather than 15 warnings would be far more effective.
3) Remove ALL luxuaries in prisons, 6ft cube, empty, solitary cells combined with a 14 hour day hard labour regime. Basic food rations. Oh 30 lashes on a Friday

Dracoro

I don't think it's necessarily that. Most crims don't think they're gonna get caught so the punishment for a crime that they're not gonna get caught doing anyway is hardly a deterrent. Make the odds of getting caught higher and that'll scare them. Add that to prisons being an unpleasant place and things may get better.

Anyway, the solution to overcrowding is simple as Paul above said. Build More Prisons

OllyK

Indeed, IIRC in Japan the crime detection rate is very high and as a result the risk of being caught if you offend is high, so crime is low and likely to remain so.

I definately think it needs to be a multi pronged attack. Improve detection rates, stop giving those caught second chances, make prison a real deterrant.

Holy Ghost

quite right matey. obvious isn't it? i don't see what the problem is. if we can't manage to deal properly with 70-odd thousand crims out of a population of 60m then it shows just how incompetetent (this) government really is.

BUILD MORE PRISONS!

doesn't mean throw away the key; i'm all for trying to counter recidivism but i mean, really! if you can find money for a war; you can find money to build ten new prisons. to55ers.

sorry, nearly slipped into a totally f***ing justified rant there.

warrenm2

Imprisoning people stops them commiting crimes


But thats actually good value compared to the cost of them running loose and causing grief, police time, poor quality of life, value of goods stolen/destroyed etc etc

Ahh this old chestnut! Yes and Portugal. And yet maybe because we have such a high rate of crime per head has something to do with it?

read this http://www.civitas.org.uk/data/prisonEU2000.htm

Brendan Hughes

I said stops reoffending. You say locking them up stops reoffending - er yes, until you let them out again. So you want to give everyone a life-life sentence now??? Can't wait to see how much tax you'd have to pay to fund that!

As for the table, thanks for proving my point. Nice edit

Brendan Hughes

"maybe because we have such a high rate of crime per head has something to do with it?"

Maybe the fact that we lock minor offenders up with major offenders where they can exchange tips on committing more crime, rather than trying to STOP them reoffending, contributes to a high rate of crime per head?

boxst

And it really works of course ... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...786977,00.html

Steve

warrenm2

Give me ANY kind of proper research that backs that up! (the education in crime). Believe me judges go out of their way to avoid locking people up. Harassed someone, threatening behaviour, burgled a shop after hours, handled stolen goods, social security fraud, TWOC'd, theft, made off without payment? The recommended tariff for all of these is community penalty. ABH etc are custody. Hardly justifys the comment "the fact that we lock minor offenders up with major offenders"......

Also if you look at the table again, we hardly lock anyone up per 1000 crimes , in fact we're below the EU average. So the fact is we hardly lock any criminals up, the reason prisons are full is so much serious crime is being committed. Compared to Spain, they lock 4 times as many people up as we do!

turboman786

Very crap point Im afraid, a VERy small proportion of prisoners are 'foreigners', by which I assume you mean illegal entrants to the UK.................. I am sorry to burst your bubble by informing you that the 'high percentage' of prisoners are, would you believe, white!

I work within the system and we do get a few 'foreigners'(my definition as illegal entrants), but certainly not in any great number...but hey who cares abiut facts when we read the tabloid press eh!