The coalition’s liberal approach to sentencing could be the final straw for the middle class

AndyinBrum

All this would be sorted if they stopped locking up people for non-violent drug offences.

The money spent on locking these people up could be better used for treatment and those who deserve locking up.

Also surely the money spent on policing and interdiction could be better spent.

And think of the tax revenue.

A lot of violence and crime is drug related, full legalisation and control wont solve everything, but it will remove a hell of a lot of financial support from criminal gangs.

Or am I missing something. The war on drugs has failed, it has killed or harmed millions of people cost trillions and only served to put billion sof pounds into criminal pockets.

Its a disgrace, and worse of all, its just plain stupid.

Pot Head

And my families pension just got raided big time yesterday.. The people stealing huge amounts of MY money are in the Government not a few junkes on the street. And we lock up far too many or our citizens anyway. Ken Clarke is right..

AuldCurmudgeon

You quoted Oborne. He actually wrote:

"This ugly policy is based on a cynical belief that they can take traditional Tory voters for granted because such people have nowhere else to go."

UKIP will do to be getting on with.

John Lea

Andy in Brum - 'All this would be sorted if they stopped locking up people for non-violent drug offences'.

Nonsense. The situation could be sorted out if the state actually punished criminals properly and ensured that prisons, once again, were places to be feared (i.e. remove TVs, computers, and make prisoners work hard by establishing a system similar to the old-fashioned chain-gangs in the US). And, dare I say it - please, I don't wish liberal readers fainting at the very thought of this - bring back corporal and capital punishment.

Yosemite Sam

I will comment quickly on Oborne's intemperate rant. He builds a huge case against 'immmoral' attacks on the middle class on three things: the child benefit removal, the university fees package, and the changes to the tax allowances for pension provision. Only the first carries any weight, and even that is based on unfairness between single and dual income households - not unfairness between the middle class and other classes. University costs will be paid by the offspring of today's families when they become earners - not by their families now. At that time, the graduate may be middle income, poor, or rich, or abroad or dead. Who knows? The tax changes have been welcomed by experts who understand their impact. Not the innumerate hacks who wrote the original Telegraph story nor Mr Oborne.Now to the story about all these criminals not sent to jail after a career in crime. As yet we do not have a 'three strikes and you're out' law. The story does not throw any light on what the repeated offences are. This is important because a large number of offences do not carry a custodial sentence. For example, most football related offences do not carry such an option. Even some offences which carry custody as an option, carry maxima which are too low to be effective. For example, obstructing a police officer carries a maximum penalty of 1 month. It may be that the Telegraph and Mail wish to continue their campaigns to protect the middle classes, but they might be an stronger ground when they see the impact of the spending review on ALL sections of society. As for reoffending, a 'three strikes and you're out' law would do what the Mail wants. But at what cost?

CmdKeen

I fail to see how the coalition's policy on sentences is related to the mentioned issue of recidivists not being locked up. The vast majority of crimes carry a theoretical sentence of greater than 6 months, which is the cutoff below which rehabilitation doesn't work, as in it doesn't even attempt to happen.

The problem is that the judiciary and magistracy has been allowed to get away with completely ignoring the ever increasing maximum sentences. If you've 50+ previous offences you shouldn't be being jailed for less than 6 months - thus Clarke's policy has nothing to do with it.

Mr. Green

I feel sorry for the Police.
Imagine a job, where you spend your whole day/night chasing "bad guys", where you know that no matter how many times you arrest them for the same offence they will be back out on the street quicker then you will be away from your desk (filling out the paperwork).
The Police have been downgraded from thief catchers to play-ground supervisors.

Ian Walker

It's not the sentencing. What people want is for crime not to happen in the first place. Real, scary crime, not figure-fiddling fiction.

So schemes that have a measurable effect on reoffending are fine, although they need to be closely monitored for performance, and the ones with positive results copied (loudly announced, so that the public know that it works) - the negative must be scrapped rapidly.

And the police need to be told to stop hiding in their warm cars on garage forecourts and start pounding the estates and the town centres and the high streets and the back roads until the criminals are the ones afraid to come out, not the law-abiding.

arthur

And where else are the middle classes going to go? Who else are they going to vote for? Labour??

This election has proved that whoever you vote for, the politicians win. I think the coalition has realised that, for the next 3 years, they don't have to listen to us at all. We can't get rid of them, and there's not going to be a revolution. Job's a good'un.

perdix

The statistics refer to 2008. Let's see what changes Clarke makes to penalies. I await with interest the suggestion that police should be able to give out penalties. I suggest they be allowed to give teenagers with ASB problems penalties to serve detention at school on Saturday afternoons revising 3R subjects.

les

Suddenly it seems we have all become middle class - if you are not rich or poor then you must be middle class - since when?

Naomi Muse

The two issues are unconnected except in the minds of people who feel threatened in one or other of them.

Sentencing needs to be thought through as to what it is for.

Banging people up who are no danger to the community seems odd when correctional treatment of MPs is different from the rest for the same basic crimes.

If the perception was that the police, who are not part of the sentencing debate, were after criminals and not just after motorists as an easy target, then support of the police by the majority would be far greater.

The financial pain of the 'middle classes' is bound to hurt but it cannot be fair for comfortably off people to expect to be supported by those less well off.

As with all change the point and threshold of change is where the unfairness is perceived and the length of time people have to plan to accommodate the change is crucial to their being able to manage it.

A complete rethink of what jail is for and what society wants of and for those who commit crime against it, needs to happen. Only then will the right sentences, comprising the right components and with the best possible outcomes programmed in, be possible.

Ask Digby, Lord Jones. He's done a lot of work with young offenders and can tell it how it is for what could stop reoffending.

Mark Cannon

Fraser, you keep getting this completely wrong. Why?

Mark Cannon

Sorry, I meant James.

Frank P

Andy in Brum
Talks out of his bum
Banging the drum
Of the daft and the dumb.

As with every form of liberal weakness this nonsense encourages the wicked, weak and stupid to beef up their act, particularly when it is manifested by the Criminal Justice system. Clark is so soft in his expansive underbelly now he should withdraw from the fray. He was useless as Home Secretary; for years he has his head up the ass of Big Bad Business, including the Pharmas and is a committed Europhile. Just look at his mush - it tells its own story. His hedonist approach to life should disqualify him from office in those areas of government that have a duty to maintain a stable UK society.

Somebody has to have balls when addressing the guile of the ungodly. They exploit and feed off governmental confusion and compromise. Throwing in the towel and handing offenders over to shrinks and sociologists is not the answer, particularly in the case of supply and abuse narcotics, amphetamines and hallucinogens. Part of the Leftist game plan is to narcotise and hallucinate the hoi polloi; to make them more pliable to totalitarianism. It's in the book.

A number of elements must be restored by this new Westminster cabal:

(a) Professional, firm, fair and apolitical policing.

(b) The idea in the minds of career crooks that there is more than a 50-50 chance of capture if they offend.

(c) The knowledge that they will more certainly be convicted than not when they are captured.

(d) That they won't be able to grease their way out of it if they are convicted.

(e) That they will be punished incrementally for persistent offending,

(f) That recidivism will result in them being banged up in uncomfortable digs and not receive better treatment from the authorities in stir than most of the law abiding do in hospitals when falling ill through happenstance.

As long as we pander to law breakers, law-breaking will rise exponentially. This has been clearly demonstrated for the past three decades.

Is the Conalition the right mob to initiate such steps?

IIF!!

Clunking Iron Arse

The real problem for the Tories will come in the form of the EU. If at some point people find out how the Conservative Party are actually complicit in accelerating the transfer of power to Brussels then there will be a backlash. The approval in the increase of the Draft EU Budget for 2011 shows that Cast-Iron Dave has no intention of dealing with the EU problem and as such shows himself to be treacherous. I'm sure that some crisis will be manufactured by the EU to make him look good, but the Tory compliance with Brussels will be their downfall - the sooner the better.

paulg

What I find so worrying is the high level of people, who end up in prison, come straight from the care sector.

It appears to me that if better discipline,more robust education and intervention strategies were applied at a younger age. A lot of trouble that society has to pick the tab up for could be avoided.

Decriminalizing drugs will leave the most vulnerable open to their pernicious use.

DavidDP

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/kalw/detail?entry_id=73812#ixzz12QUgJjpk

Interesting article given the topic.

"If you look at a graph of the prison population in California, there's kind of bumps up and down over the years. But 30 years ago or so, all you see is the population going up, up, up - except for one brief period, a four year period when the governor of California managed to reduce the incarceration rate by 34%. And you wouldn't possibly guess which governor that was."

Norman Dee

Isn't ironic that Ken Clark raison d'etre at the moment is putting away those that criminally fill their pockets with our money against our will, and yet he approves of the European Union filling their pockets with our money against our will ?

Cynic

"I suspect that the fuss about the financial pain being caused to the middle class will die down a bit once we have had the spending review and we see how the country as a whole has been affected." Or, on the other hand, it may increase as it's just been announced that a large sum has been found for "disadvantaged families" to be given a "fairness premium" for schooling. The woman I saw on TV tried hard to avoid it, but eventually admitted that many, if not most, of these were "disadvantaged" because English was their second language. Who, having been born and bred here, is going to be keen to be disadvantaged themselves to pay for the offspring of immigrants who don't speak the language to get special treatment and extra money? Fairness? Don't make me laugh!

normanc

I wouldn't go as far as AndyinBrum but what I would advocate is to give long term addicts a daily dose of heroin, on the strict condition that if they are caught doing any crime it is immediately cut-off.

They could then try and live a life in some sort of order (addicts problems come from the lifestyle, not opiates, which are physically harmless) and at some point in the future enter a rehab programme.

This would drastically reduce low-level street crime and burglaries.

Dimoto

I think James Forsyth is mistaking the increasingly hysterical tabloid nonsense in the Telegraph and Mail, for what middle England actually thinks.

Olaf Rye

I would go much farther than most. The cost of prisons is high because of all the stupid human rights legislation--the government can change this if there was the political will. Only render it necessary to provide them with food and a cell, and that is it, unless they do something useful to gain more privileges. This would drop the cost of prisons and we could throw the book at the criminals, including consecutive sentences for criminals and additional years in prison for crimes committed therein.

When the politicians claim that they cannot change the laws, they are liars: they have changed them to suit themselves and bail their governments out of messes before, so their inability to act on crime really arises from a liberal conceit and a desire not to look bad at EU dinner parties.

TGF UKIP

Why on earth should anyone on the right of politics even contemplate voting for the Cameron London Tory Party?

TrevorsDen

Peter Oborne is a twat who only leaps on the costs to the middle classes as a way to attack Cameron. He is the morally disgusting one who just wants to clear the way for a loony tune agenda.

Who has the money? The poor? they are poor for christs sake - they have no money.
The super rich? There are precious few of them and their money is somewhere else - just ask Sean Connery.

But yes lets make the poor poorer - make them into criminals and make them eligible for even more benefits, very clever but then Oborne was at the back of the queue when the brains were given out.

Crime - the country needs an 'Awakening' to revoke the labour induced decline in morals standards and policing. Without a doubt this must start with the election of those whose responsibility it is to protect us. Direct power given to those who can enforce direct action.

Verityred

TGF UKIP -

The dinosaur right, like it's counterpart on the left are dead.

The likes of the eye bulging red faces at The Mail and Heffer are as rubbish as the likes of Skinner, trade union relics etc.

Oh, and UKIP.

EC

"low-level street crime and burglaries"

Street crime and burglaries are only "low level" when they happen to other people and their families.

I agree with Frank P. Much of what this glib government is about to do is going to bring about unchecked and unpunished lawlessness on the streets and in the estates of Mr. Cameron's Big Society.

normanc

TrevorsDen, here is the problem twats (I wonder if he tweets?) like Oborne have.

We are increasing spending by £90bn over this Parliament. We are reducing the deficit (optimistically) by £100-120bn.

Where is this ~£200bn coming from?

Some of it will come from growth. Perhaps as much as half, if we are lucky. The other half? From taxes.

Who will pay these?

The poor? As you say, they have no money.

The rich? They have offshore accounts, expensive accountants, trust funds, and a thousand other wheezes. You can rest assured they won't be paying anymore than they already are whatever rhetoric the politicians want to use.

Who does that leave?

perdix

Opposition to the Coalition has been truly pathetic - largely because the Opposition don't have any policies yet. So journalists have to invent opposition to fill the spaces in their publications.

Major Plonquer 1

Here in China they have very little in the way of drug problems and there are actually very few people behind bars for drug offences. The reason for this is simple. They shoot drug dealers in the head and send the bill for the bullet to their family.

Drug dealers are put off their trade quite literally by the 'fear of death'. I sure our warm and fuzzy liberal friends will be horrified by this approach but, hey, it works.