Could They Reopen The Dartmoor Quarry?

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The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, said yesterday that prisoners should no longer live a life of ‘enforced, bored idleness’ and that his aim is to make prisons ‘tougher places of hard work and reform for the criminals who should be locked up’ and ‘make community sentences that really are tougher and more effective for those who don't need to be locked up’.

Doubtless, all the bleeding hearts will now emerge to say how Dickensian these proposals are and how they offend against prisoners’ human rights.

But so far as I am concerned, Mr Clarke is spot on. Bring back oakum picking is what I say!
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Too Comfortable?

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The subject of prisons is one that interests me for I have not long since retired from doing voluntary work in my local one.

I often ask myself whether or not prison is an answer to many crimes and I usually, but not always, come to the conclusion that it is. Sadly, I often think that prison is too comfortable for many prisoners who, though having lost their freedom temporarily, may enjoy better conditions in prison than they might at home.

This is partly borne out by the news that an unmarried 75-year-old career criminal who has spent fifty of the last 56 years in jail has been sent back to prison for two years for theft and handling stolen goods. Described as a ‘bit of a rascal’, this man committed his first crime in 1945 when he was nine, since when he has clocked up a total of 35 convictions. Rightly, the court heard that the man has been institutionalised by prison and ought to be ‘in his slippers in front of the fire’ rather than carrying out more burglaries. This is confirmed by his reaction to being sentenced; ‘OK, thanks’, he said, and gave the thumbs-up sign.

Perhaps this man represents one extreme, but it is interesting to note that the Justice Secretary has disclosed that the number of prisoners in England and Wales has reached an all-time high at 85,495, around 2,000 short of the prisons’ operational capacity. It is reported that he wants a greater emphasis placed on rehabilitation and community sentences.

I really don’t know what the answer is except to build more prisons. I have doubts that rehabilitation and community service achieves a great deal but, at the same time, I have reservations that prisons may be too comfortable for some people. Prisons come with a great variety of amenities not all of which are available to folk outside: decent food, education and training, gymnasiums and sports facilities, recreation areas, televisions in cells, laundry, chapel, etc., etc.

There is a popular comparison between prisons and work circulating on the internet:

PRISON VERSUS WORK

Prison: You spend the majority of your time in a 10x10 cell. Work: You spend the majority of your time in an 6x6 cubicle/office.

Prison: You get three meals a day fully paid for. Work: You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.

Prison: You get time off for good behaviour. Work: You get more work for good behaviour.

Prison: The warden locks and unlocks all the doors for you. Work: You must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself.

Prison: You can watch TV and play games. Work: You could get fired for watching TV and playing games.

Prison: You get your own toilet. Work: You have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat.

Prison: They allow your family and friends to visit. Work: You aren’t even supposed to speak to your family.

Prison: All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required. Work: You get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

Prison: You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out. Work: You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

Prison: You must deal with sadistic wardens. Work: They are called managers.

Alas, there may be truth in some of this!
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A Sort of Justice

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The Justice Secretary has agreed that bank robber Ronnie Biggs can be released from detention just a month after refusing it on the grounds that he was ‘wholly unrepentant’ about his involvement in the 1963 robbery of a mail train. Biggs, who cannot eat, drink, read, write or talk, will spend the rest of his days in a nursing home having already spent many months in prison hospitals.

Contrast this with the case of the loan shark who lent one family £500 and who over the next seven years bullied them into repaying a staggering £88,000. This man, who the judge described as ‘beneath contempt’, was merely given a 51-week prison sentence, suspended for two years.

On the one hand, we have a man who escaped from Wandsworth prison and spent the next thirty years so cocking a snook at the British legal system that he became a sort of Robin Hood figure, albeit a rather sad one since he returned to the UK in 2000.

On the other, a man whose violent extortion racket caused a woman to have two strokes and a brain haemorrhage along with untold misery walks free from court.

Justice?
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