Soap Box Part II

Having just watched the Panorama that P.C. Bloggs has been hyping up for the last few days I have to say that I'm shocked at the scale of the divide between government policy and those who impliment it/suffer it.

I knew McNulty was a pillock but I can't believe he actually defended the decision to send that man to prison for defending his family from three abusive teenagers.

Teenage kids are a law unto themselves and they're getting worse (because they're pushing the boundaries and no-one is stopping them).

If I ruled the country here is how I would try to sort out law and order:

Prison

I would set a benchmark of 9-11% overflow capacity for prisons. It gives you a bit of time if you have an increase in the prisoner population and more importantly it gives you a disaster recovery option.

Too often people referred to as wishy-washy-liberals* say that we should be doing more to rehabilitate prisoners. I would agree. But you've got to punish them first. Each prison sentance should have a structure of punishment, rehabilitation and external adjustment.

For punishment we could get them to do monotonous tasks like catagorising recyclable waste or stripping used tyres into raw materials for recycling or similar. During the punishment period they don't get Playstations, they don't get TV, newspapers etc.
They still get visitors, how else can they appreciate how truly shitty they have it? The money made from the hard labour they do can help pay towards the running of the prisons.

Once the punishment period has been satisfactorily completed they begin their rehabilitation. This is where they are given a series of tests to identify their strengths and provided with a vocational use for them. The better they behave, the more perks they are given.

Then when they are in a position where they are close to full release, they are given supervised day release to gain work experience for their new vocation. Then they are finally released.

They only get the rehabilitation and adjustment for a first offense. If they re-offend they just get the punishment for the whole sentance - what I like to call an incentive.

Prisoners already get rehabilitation and day release but I don't see them getting hard punishment for the crimes they have commited against society.

Youth Crime

I'm not an advocate on the 'change the law' culture that modern Britain endures. I think that enforcing the law is the issue, not changing it. However one thing I would do is remove the ridiculous distinction in the criminal justice system between an adult and a youth. Quite simply if you can do the crime, you can do the time. As I said at the top of this post, kids today are fearless so it's time to put the fear back into them.

Zero Tolerance

Yes it's expensive to send people to prison but if you make the experience shit enough and do it often enough it'll keep many more in line. A zero tolerance policy like they have in New York might be costly in the short term but in the long term it will work.

Listen

Having read a great deal of police blogs, the overriding message I get is that they know what to do but can't do it thanks to constant Home Office interferance. More needs to be done to make their jobs easier (reductions in beaurocracy not changes to the law) and they need to be given more freedom to go out and do it. Politicians seem to be more interested in how the Police are perceived by the public than how the police are perceived by themselves. I see an awful lot of cracks in the Civil Service so I can only imagine all the problems that Police officers see but can't fix.

If I was put in charge of any organisation I would always take a looking-upwards approach to bring in reform. Chiefs (whether constables or executives) will see far less problems in their position than those on the front line.

So to sum it up I'd make prison unpleasant, punish people that break the law and enable those that enforce the law to do their job. Is it really that hard?

* As I keep saying, I am a liberal. Your right to liberty is eroded when you infringe someone else's liberty (i.e. break the law). Wanting to see criminals punished doesn't make you a facist and if you think criminals aren't responsible for their own actions/choices then you clearly aren't a liberal - you're a twat!