Groundhog Day
Peter Hoskin 8:50am
With the prison population reaching an all-time high of 82,006 (only 21 places short of full capacity), Jack Straw once again begs judges to consider more non-custodial sentences. Of course, it's embarrassing for the Justice Minister. His line is wide-open to opposition attack, and he's condemned to repeat it until those Titan prisons are finally completed.
Not that we should feel sorry for him. Straw should have made the right, forward-looking decisions during his time as Home Secretary between 1997 and 2001. Yet, somewhat masochistically, he's reluctant to take the proper steps even now. The result? Numerous tragedies waiting to happen.
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Comments
Mike
February 22nd, 2008 10:24amClearly crime is down as Labour claim (#5 in Labours Top 50 Achievements "Cut overall crime by 32 per cent"). Perhaps the fall in crime is the reason the prisons are full and we are having to build "Titan" prisons?
Fred White
February 22nd, 2008 12:01pmFunny how we can always find a cell for a pensioner refusing to pay his council tax.
Nicholas
February 22nd, 2008 1:10pmI would like to see a breakdown of the prison population by offence and age. I suspect it would be illuminating and go far to demonstrate the politicisation of the justice system. I find Straw repulsive as a not very bright schemer and the fact that he presides over a new "Ministry of Justice" decidely creepy. The term conveys Orwellian, third-world tin pot dictatorship, Gilliam's "Brazil" connotations - it is not British and does not convey any sense of historical independence from government and politics for the judiciary.
David Lindsay
February 22nd, 2008 6:01pmBut crime is falling. Isn't it? By refusing to police the streets properly, those who are paid to do so, and those to whom they are notionally answerable, have created an explosion in the sort of disorder that is "low-level" unless it happens to you (they have made sure that it can never happen to them), giving them the excuse to demand and enact ever-more-draconian curtailments on the liberties of Her Majesty's free subjects. As for the suggestion that too many people are being sent to prison (mostly by those uncouth non-London, or at least non-Islington, types on Magistrates' Benches), Mark Dixie has been found guilty of the horrific murder of Sally-Anne Bowman even though he had no fewer than 16 previous convinctions for sexual offences. Yet he was at liberty. How did that happen? It happened because They have made sure that these things can never happen to Them. And to hell with the rest of us.
Trumpeter Lanfried
February 22nd, 2008 9:03pmMore people being sent to prison. Crime falling. BUT insist the bien pensants, these facts are wholly unrelated. Hmmmmm.
Trumpeter Lanfried
February 22nd, 2008 9:07pmThere's a bit of a stand-off here. Judges and magistrates are saying, privately, 'It's not our job to get the government off the hook by passing more lenient sentences. If the prisons are full the Government will have to release some prisoners before they have completed their sentences. That's their problem, not ours.'