Obsolete

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.

Labels: crime policies, criminal justice system, Jack Straw, prisons, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, titan prisons

10/27/2008 10:06:00 PM | Permalink | | 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.

Labels: apologies, cushy prisons, Holloway prison, prisons, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

9/12/2008 11:21:00 PM | Permalink | | 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.

Labels: Anne Owers, cushy prisons, Doncaster prison, Justice Committee, prison reform, prisons, titan prisons

7/22/2008 09:27:00 PM | Permalink | | 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.

Labels: 42 days, cushy prisons, David Blunkett, Facebook bashing, MurdochSpace, prisons, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, war against bullshit

6/04/2008 08:51:00 PM | Permalink | | 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.

Labels: bullshit, cushy life, Glyn Travis, holiday camps, prisons

4/26/2008 09:44:00 PM | Permalink | | 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?

Labels: capital punishment, crime, criminal justice system, Helen Newlove, media coverage, mob mentality, prisons, Rebekah Wade, Sally Anne Bowman, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

2/25/2008 11:59:00 PM | Permalink | | 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?

Labels: Express-watch, immigration, migrants, OUTRAGE, prisons, Sweeney Todd, tabloid stupidity

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

Saturday, December 08, 2007

The doctrine of pseudo-strength.

It was most certainly get tough week in Whitehall, or at least, get tough on everything other than party funding. One of the very first things that Brown promised, perhaps not in so many words, but in actions, was that there would be an end to the habit of the Blair government of announcing things to anywhere other than to parliament itself. When you're getting assailed from some many different angles, it's always the "little" things that get broken first, hence Jacqui Smith, the third home secretary in a row attempting to convince the public at large that the terrorist threat is so severe that anything shorter than a month detention without charge is insane and potentially cataclysmic liberalism, forgoing the tedious ritual of presenting the latest twist to parliament, choosing elsewhere to proclaim the latest number of days to be pulled out of the Home Office policy hat.

42, it seems then is no longer not just the meaning of life but also the magic number that terrorists need to be held to. The seeking a consensus sessions, which according to Private Eye amounted to the swivel-eyed Smith haranguing David Davis for daring to be a "28 day-denier" have been abruptly canceled, and so has any possibility of dialogue with the Home Affairs Select Committee, a leak of whom's report Smith seemed to be responding to. The committee had come to the not unreasonable conclusion that there was no evidence whatsoever to support any further extension, having only heard support for such a measure from the suitably plied Lord Carlile, butcher of the yard "Sir" Ian Blair and from Smith herself, who previously didn't know how many more days were needed. As for Ken Macdonald, who had so dared to give evidence to the committee that in his capacity as head of the director for public prosecutions he didn't see the need for more time, his treachery was such that Smith's new plans require him to sign off his agreement in any instance where longer than 28 days is needed. Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. Shami Chakrabati has denounced Smith's plans as constitutionally illiterate, in that although parliament is required to vote on the continuation of the extra time, it doesn't need to do so until err, after the extra time has itself expired. The safeguards add up to Smith agreeing and the same as before, a judge having to reauthorise the continued detention every seven days. What kind of judge would have the balls to free someone after the police had demanded extra time and the home secretary had agreed is not an easy question to answer.

Almost any other government than this current one would be embarrassed by how ridiculous they look, continually having to dilute their plans little by little, without realising (or perhaps they do, they're just that stubborn and petty) that they simply cannot get this through in any form. The obsession with extra time, one kept only by hopeless police officers that can't fuck off when they know they're no longer wanted and by politicians determined to look endlessly tough and at the same time attempt to make the Tories haplessly weak would be easier to take if anyone other than the Scum, the Express and Melanie Phillips was falling for it, but they're not. The opposition against is almost everyone except the Labour front bench and the most vile of the press. I personally hope it does come to a vote - just so that the government can be thrashed again and the Sun can call all the rest of us traitors.

Similar thinking has been going on over prisons. The most disingenuous moment of the week has to have been over the need for "titan jails" - not because they're better than smaller ones, quite the contrary, but rather as Lord Carter openly admits in his report, they can than be referred straight to the secretary of state for planning permission, negating to go into such needless debates over consultation. After all, look where that's got them over the above. They're also a developers' dream, almost certain to be built under the private finance initiative, and then also likely to be ran by private security firms, meaning even more cash to be milked off from the public purse to the unscrupulous who'll then either demand even more or sell on their interest for a huge profit, as has occurred numerous times before. The job's a good 'un - except for those who'll find themselves behind the bars. Jack Straw has tried to sweeten the deal slightly by also investigating the possibility of linking sentences to the capacity available, but expect that to be dropped once the clamour from the Mail and the Sun grows too loud. The statistics for the prison population growth show that we can't build ourselves out of the overcrowding crisis, but by God Labour will try anyway. You can't have the tabloids screaming about soft sentences and the streets being full of drug addicts, the mentally ill and baby molesters; that will never do leading up to an election.

So it also is on immigration, where the points based system will ensure that the unskilled darkies will be kept out while the unskilled from the EU will still be able to come as they are. Add in some clearly unworkable and prejudiced thinking on whether or not to allow in spouses who can't speak English, and then also cut back on translation while not increasing and eventually cutting the funding for those who want to learn and you have a potent mixture to add to the hubris and carelessness which has led to Brown being in the same situation as before Blair had even left.

Labels: 42 days, immigration, Jacqui Smith, phony toughness, prison overcrowding, prisons, terror suspects, titan prisons, translation costs

12/08/2007 09:29:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Scum-watch: Prison ship obsession rises again.

Doesn't it look just so inviting?

If the Sun were a person, its turn on and offs would be intriguing. Tits would obviously be at the very zenith of its sexual fantasies, while evil paedophiles, the scourge of modern life, would be something the person would focus their hatred on, even while secretly glancing at photographs of a 12-year-old model wearing only a bikini. Less conventionally, one of our imaginary Sun person's greatest desires, resulting in numerous rushes of blood to the head, so to speak, is for villains to be caged aboard floating fortresses. It's a continuing obsession, and one which the Scum is again cheering about today:

A PRISON ship is set to ease overcrowding in Britain’s jails in the New Year in a victory for The Sun.
The move comes as the prison population this week soared to 81,455 - leaving just NINE places in our cells.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw is in talks with the Dutch government to secure one of their floating prisons.
Officials have been sent to the Netherlands to get a high-security vessel that can hold up to 200 lags.

In actuality, a prison ship will do nothing whatsoever to ease overcrowding, especially one that can only cater for 200 "lags". As the current prison population statistics show, 177 prisoners are currently being held in police cells. Even with 200 extra places, that would mean that courts could sentence 23 extra to imprisonment on top of the expected daily churn in and out of the prison system before it would again be thoroughly overloaded. The current level of overcrowding is quite simply unsustainable, as politicians not playing to galleries more than know. None of them however have the courage to raise their head above the parapet and say openly that less people need to be sent to prison: the level of opprobrium would be far too great, despite the fact that overcrowding only makes rehabilitation even more difficult, leading to the recidivism rate increasing exponentially, to further tabloid outrage. It's a vicious circle which no politician is prepared to break, through pure cowardice. It's also worth pointing out that the Sun also breathlessly announced back at the end of September that Straw was deciding which of three vessels to chose as the new prison ship, and surprise surprise, nothing more was heard of it until up to this latest wheeze.

All of this is despite the government's early release scheme, which the Sun also covers. Despite 11,000 "crooks" being released up to 18 days early, the prison system is now currently only 9 places away from complete capacity. The Tories said that it would mean 25,000 being released early this year, while also opposing it completely, which if they had been in power and had done might well have led to even the extra police cells being filled, but being in opposition means you can get away with such disingenuous playing to the crowd. The numbers that have apparently re-offended after being released early are surprisingly low, if anything, especially considering that those released were given £45 on being freed that in some cases was expected to last a month, while some were given nothing at all.

The Sun's leader is almost orgasmic at the news that a boat has been found to stow criminals on:

SHIP, ship hooray!

The last time this combination of words was used in the Scum it was on the front page, overjoyed at the suicide of Harold Shipman. How very appropriate.

Finally, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw have found us a prison ship.
It can’t sail into harbour soon enough.
Our prisons are bursting at the seams.

Which of course has nothing to do with the Sun's demands for an end to "soft" sentences and for never ending crackdowns against yobs, gangs and almost every offence and grouping you can think of. The leader but one above this is advocating such a campaign against "underage boozing" which names everyone responsible except for parents. Overage boozing where the editor of a tabloid newspaper gets drunk and smacks her husband (now ex) is curiously not worthy of crusading against.

Rapists, killers and paedophiles have been freed early to make space.

Really? Is that why, err, the Sun's own report on the 11,000 released early only mentions 4 sex offenders who've been let out 18 days early and nothing about any murderers whatsoever? This wouldn't be another huge lie in a Sun editorial, surely not.

Now it seems a 200-cell Dutch barge is heading our way.
It’s a good start, Mr Brown.
But it’s only a start.

Well yes. If things get any worse, he'll be needing to make sure there are cells ready to take him and most of the cabinet. One already seems to have Peter Watt's name on it.

The irony of the Sun's unhinged joy at a prison ship being found is that the leader above it is on Gillian Gibbons "suffering in captivity", and few if any would disagree with that. There is no such sympathy for the mentally ill and drug addicted that will find themselves making up the population of the new prison ship. If it's anything like the old one, then the inmates can look forward to it being "unacceptably cramped and claustrophobic", with "no access to fresh air", "poor healthcare facilities" and with jobs "very limited". Still, they're all villains, aren't they?

Labels: prison overcrowding, prison ships, prisons, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

12/01/2007 08:46:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Scum-watch: Those prisons, they're hotels, guv. Know what I'd do? String 'em all up, it's the only language they understand.

One has been in a secure hospital, one hasn't.

Another day, another new Scum campaign. Faced with so many evil monsters putting on weight while behind bars, the leader argues for the bringing back of hard labour, or at the least, those inside being put to work on chain gangs repairing the roads, cleaning canals and tiding up after fly-tippers.

There are so many obvious problems with this proposal, none of which are anything to do with human rights laws, as the Scum churlishly insinuates, that it's almost laughable. Setting up such schemes would necessitate a huge rise in the numbers employed in jails, in order so those let out during the day to perform such works would be properly supervised, and those left behind would not be left without adequate cover. There's enough outcry when someone walks out of an open prison, so you can just image the opprobrium were a whole group of prisoners able to escape at some point from one of these jaunts. It would also take time away from those who spend their time in jail learning a skilled profession - the numbers of which are large.

The Scum's tiny amount of evidence for why such hard labour is necessary is also threadbare, reliant on the more famous inmates who have put on weight since going inside. Of two of the killers mentioned - Peter Sutcliffe and Beverley Allitt, both are held in secure hospitals, Broadmoor and Rampton respectively, not prisons. There are also numerous reasons for weight gain, not just pigging out; it can be as much a sign of stress as weight loss for instance, and medication can also play a role.

The belief that life in prison has become soft, with them often referred to as holiday camps, as the Sun does, and with Tim Spanton, previously responsible for a whole article of lies about the human rights act, claiming that "Aromatherapy and massages have largely replaced work for today’s inmates," has become insidious. It's complete nonsense, as with so much other thought on the right dedicated to what they see as political correctness and going soft on crime etc, but that doesn't stop the rhetoric. A more representative view of the prison system was presented earlier this year in the Grauniad, when it interviewed 42 individuals about one day in their life, from Category A prisoners to the head of the prison system himself. That however will never stop tabloid journalists who have never so much as been to one, let alone served time, from telling the public how much like hotels they are.

Labels: hard labour, obesity, prisons, Scum-watch, Sun-watch

11/10/2007 07:49:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Friday, November 09, 2007

How I stopped worrying about the Muslims...

The "lyrical terrorist" and her rhymes of doom.

Those Muslims. They're a worry, aren't they? We worry about them integrating. We worry about the books they read. We worry about the religious premises they attend. We worry about the library stock dedicated to their religion. We worry about offending them. We worry about how some of them talk in funny languages called "Arabic" and "Urdu", whatever they are. We worry about what they're thinking. We worry about whether some of them are AS WE SPEAK plotting our demise, brainwashing children, and writing poems about the joys of beheading infidels. We worry about whether the anti-terrorist legislation which is clearly targeted at "them" is tough enough; the home secretary doesn't know how much longer the pre-charge detention limit should be, but she does know that it isn't long enough.

To add to all of these existential problems and threats, the Sun today cheerfully informs us of another problem with Muslims. Apparently, the numbers of Muslims behind bars has risen by 120%. This undoubtedly means that BRITAIN'S jails risk becoming breeding grounds for Islamic extremists:

Figures obtained by The Sun show there are 8,000 Muslims in our jails – up from just 3,700 in 1997.
And the number of Muslim inmates – from both Britain and abroad – is growing FOUR TIMES faster than the prison population as a whole.

The Sun appears to be adding two and two together and getting five. The simple fact that there are more Muslim prisoners doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to have jails full of radicalised young men. The conditions might be right in prison for radicalisation - but those who tend to find themselves serving time usually don't fall into the same demographic categories as those who have previously taken part in terrorist plots: overwhelmingly decently educated, reasonably prosperous and who have either done their own research or met like-minded individuals online.

The paper relies on the general secretary of the Prison Officers' Union for the actual evidence:

Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, said his members were struggling to cope.
He said: “We have already seen how shoe-bomber Richard Reid was converted and radicalised in prison. We don’t want that being repeated. We have a massive lack of language skills. Very few officers can speak Urdu or Arabic, which means prisoners could be doing or saying anything.”

If we're going to be pedantic about it, Reid converted to Islam while he was in a young offenders' institution. Whether he was radicalised there is something in dispute - Feltham has had a number of imams suspended over fears they were anti-American or radical - but Reid also undoubtedly spent time at Finsbury Park mosque during Abu Hamza's tenure.

This itself poses a problem with the Sun's alertness. Reid was a petty criminal before he entered Feltham, and although his father encouraged him to learn about Islam, he most certainly wasn't religious prior to entering the YOI. Is it those who don't already have their own interpretation of Islam when they're imprisoned we should worry about, or those with little information on it?

As with everything else, it's worth getting this into perspective. According to the prison service, there are currently 130 prisoners being held under terrorist legislation - even if all of them are Muslims, that's an incredibly low percentage of the total currently imprisoned, and they're also spread out throughout the prison system, for the exact reason that keeping them altogether, ala the Maze in Northern Ireland is only storing up even further problems for the future.

It is however indicative of how we're either increasingly afraid of or meant to see the very fact that someone is a Muslim as a potential problem. The Tories added their concern to the Sun's article:

Shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert said: “Officers are right to warn about the challenge posed by a large number of Muslim inmates.”

Shouldn't we be similarly concerned about the challenge posed by a large number of inmates full stop? The prison system, as the Sun falls over itself to tell us, is at breaking point. Overcrowded prisons makes it near to impossible for any real rehabilitation to take place; prisoners are increasingly banged up in cells for longer periods of time, making those vulnerable to the advances of their cell-mates, whatever their religion or otherwise. The projections that up to 1,600 terrorists could be behind bars in ten years' time shouldn't be surprising when we're imprisoning those such as Atif Siddique for 8 years
(Abu Hamza got 7 years). Who knows how long the "lyrical terrorist" will receive?

The Scum's leader inevitably takes it all up a notch (the actual page seems to have since disappeared into the ether, replaced by tomorrow's leader, so you'll have to trust me on what it says):

Jihad jails

BRITAIN’S bulging prisons are being turned into hothouse training and recruiting posts for Islamic terror.