The utilitarian barbarian

David Martin

Taking a handsome retainer from a company with an interest in selling tobacco also struck me as pretty barbaric.

EDDIE

I love Melanie's invective. It is so precise and thorough. I just wish she could say it to his face in the House, now that really would be good theatre.

Kevincidle

"It doesn’t occur to him that maybe it is because twice as many people are in prison that crime has gone down."

My thoughts exactly when I read what Clarke had said, and I would suspect the thoughts of most right-thinking people in the UK.

Unfortunately, our political class on the whole do not come from the right-thinking majority, but from some bizarre subfusc netherworld where morality, common-sense, and clear-thinking are seen as irrational, irrelevant quirks of the "Little People"

But I have long since given up in despair listening to what any of the bastards say, Tory, Liberal, or otherwise.

Anthony Zacharzewski

"It doesn’t occur to him that maybe it is because twice as many people are in prison that crime has gone down."

That would almost be convincing if it weren't for the fact that crime has also fallen in other countries, in which incarceration rates have not risen. Fewer uneducated young men, more economic growth = less crime.

debbie

Well Said !

Annie Loyedeer

You don't like him, do you, Mel!

Ian G

I thought that I was the only one who realised that KC was an utter disaster in every job except the Treasury. I think it was beyond him so he wisely did very little and reaped the benefits of letting the Treasury and the economy run themselves.

However, very short-term prison sentences are a waste of time and money. In some cases, by the time a prisoner has been inducted it's time to prepare to leave.

Prison does need to be reformed. Drugs have to be removed from the system. Bullies have to be removed from the Prison Service and controlled if they are prisoners. If a prisoner chooses to be educated they lose the pittance paid to those who work - it's really slave labour - but the money is an incentive NOT to be educated. There are a great many insanities in the system and outright cruelty - not punishment but sadism. For example, the method of transportation between prisons would have the RSPCA and others involved were it done to animals. It's illegal to transport a child in a sealed iron box with no room to move, no toilet breaks, no food or water for hours on end in freezing or boiling conditions, IF you are its parent; but God help the prisoner who is transported like that.

Prison is and of itself a punishment. It is not simple a loss of freedom but of nearly every human dignity. They are evil places and some of the least evil people in them are the minor offenders.

If KC's utilitarianism can be used to create a more effective and humane system for once he might do something useful.

Salvatore

There are many ways in which confidence in the Criminal Justice System could be restored.
They include returning The Police to the status of a Force not an arm of Social Services, and having proper disciplinary measures enforced throughout the various components of the CPS.
However that would bring friction with the Unions, and the Human Rights Act, so it's not going to happen is it?

Margaret Muller-Johansson

What kind of Sherry he is drinking? Is this is a joke or something? We need more prisons for criminals, criminals should be in prison where they belong not in the streets or in the community.

Graeme Thompson

Let's remember, if my memory serves right, and I think it does, Ken Clarke brought in the insane rule that did not allow Courts to take into account an offender's previous convictions when passing sentence. Enough principled magistrates were prepared to resign that he backed down on this insanity.

Having someone in place who applies the principles of freeform jazz to our Justice system is disaster waiting to happen.

Baron

well, he has a point in a sense that what we call prisons relates to prisons of the past as does Clarke to a statesman of the past.

the pseudo-liberal fruitcakes, of whom Clarke’s one, have turned prisons from places of punishment into places exclusively for re-education, rehabilitation and re-doing this and the other. Except for a few modern crime offenders, not many inmates feel punished, they feel no pain whatever. Punishment without pain will never work, the miscreant doesn’t feel cleansed, the tarnish of his crime stays with him, there’s little fear of imprisonment, the high level of recidivism’s the proof of it.

The Beefeater

In her review of Clarke's career of crime, Melanie strangely omits to mention what I suspect is her main grudge against him: that he voted against her beloved Iraq war.

Jeri

I am not Conservative. However I must say that I, from personal experience, completely agree with Ken Clark: PRISON DOES NOT WORK! My brother was recently sent to prison, this being the only prison experience my family and I have been through. He has been in there for a year. As we visited him every month, and questioned him about his activities there i.e. reading, work... we came to realise that prison was just a dumping ground for those whom society has deemed as misfits. He is housed in one of the largest prisons in Europe (funded by your taxes). Believe me when I say that there is no intellectual or physical activity for prisoners to get involved in, nor are they encouraged in any way to become productive members of society upon release. The bottom line is that if you as a prisoner have no real family support, you’re basically screwed and can expect to return in a few months. The prison system is in dire need of reform in order to reduce re offending rates, the author should ask those with firsthand experience of that system before making judgements.

david elder

Say that again? He doesn't want history taught beyond early teen years?! Britons like him don't realise what they have got in their long historical legacy - if you're an Australian like me, you love your country, but you know it doesn't have the depth of history of Britain whence we (indigenous people aside) mostly came, and whose institutions have given us such a fortunate inheritance. Shakespeare, Newton, Blake, Burke, Wilberforce and the Clapham set, Wesley and the Methodist strand leading to the trade unions (their later excesses notwithstanding), the Victorian intellectual spectrum from Huxley across to Balfour, Churchill ... just some of the figures that should be closely (not uncritically) studied even here, never mind back there in the mother country. And is it too much to ask that older students gain at least some detailed familiarity with foundational cultures like Israel, Greece and Rome, rising powers like China and Japan, and Britain's most energetic offspring the USA?

crockhamtown

I trust Ken Clarke to do the right thing at the right time and to rectify matters if it doesn't work.

David, Thailand

Jeri: "we came to realise that prison was just a dumping ground for those whom society has deemed as misfits."

No, not misfits, criminals.

And in case that's difficult to comprehend, I believe it is long overdue for our spineless politicians to regard the rights of law abiding citizens as far outweighing those of criminals.

Neil Craig

I have a higher opinion of Clarke because I prefer people who speak their minds & stand by their principles, even when I disagree with them, tham I do those who follow fashion. However the problem this tine is that Clarke has allegedly had this Damascene conversion only a few weeks after an election when the Tories stood on a platform saying the opposite.

Osred

Clarke is studiously avoiding the issue of foreign prisoners being a great proportion of the increase. Also crime in a 'multicultural' menagerie does not go uniformly up and down acroos the nationalities, races, or ages. A one size fits all, economically driven 'policy' of keeping criminals out of jail at a time of economic stress is guaranteed to fail. Perhaps thats what cuddly Ken wants as a way of forcing a more centre left govt direction?

Linda Smith

Has "crime has gone down", or is less crime reported by the victims because they think nothing will be done by the police? Have the parameters of recordable crime been changed so that those offences that once were recorded now fall outside the list?

Linda Smith

Instead of filling his noddle with all that jazz, Ken Clarke would have benefited from an evening watching West Side Story:
"......
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!.....

In the opinion of this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home. ....

................
Dear kindly social worker,
They say go earn a buck.
Like be a soda jerker,
Which means like be a schumck.
It's not I'm anti-social,
I'm only anti-work.
Gloryosky! That's why I'm a jerk!

Eek!
Officer Krupke, you've done it again.
This boy don't need a job, he needs a year in the pen.
It ain't just a question of misunderstood;
Deep down inside him, he's no good!"

John Holland

Linda Smith- I'm glad someone's at last had the good sense to base social and political ideas on their favourite musicals.
I myself have long regarded Starlight Express as the blueprint for a radical new national transport policy.
Mind you, Linda, have you seen Porridge? They all seem to have quite a nice time on that, apart from that Prison Officer McKiye, I don't like him at all!

Ian Hills

Clarke may have a point. Often, courts in the Isle of Man used to birch criminals instead of gaoling them. After Thatcher leaned on them to stop this practice, crime shot up.

john

He's a mediocre saxophonist, pomposity itself as a jazz critic, utterly pleased with himself and a complete disaster as a politician. We need to be saved from these empty sacks of wind

Frank P

BTW Melanie; that picture is a cracker. Doesn't it remind you of the one of Bob Quick just before he fell from grace? Ken at least had the common sense to cover his devious game-plans with a hard cover, to avoid the tele-lenses of jack-the-lad snappers. I suppose that's a slight improvement in the security of the nation, even though he does look like a beached whale gasping for air.

Bob, son of Bob

The point about our criminal loving establishment is that they are not secret or subtle about it – most MPs, the legal system, most judges, the BBC - they clearly love the criminals. This is not a complex issue either like so many others in politics, so the voters do not have the defence that they were deceived into voting for criminal-loving MPs. So voters have no excuse, and those who have voted for criminal lovers are in effect asking for the crime that results for themselves and their families. When they are a victim they are only getting what they voted for.

Dick Barton

An overnourished, out-of-touch, Panglossian Tory re-tread.

Just what the country needs.

Stuart Seacole Smith

John Holland, July 1st: try Midnight Express for your inspiration. The Turks know a thing or two about deterrent incarceration.

Randy McDonald

Stuart:

I hope that you're not favouring the introduction of torture, one way or another, into a prison system.

Stuart Seacole Smith

Randy: of course not. But prison sentences need to be and be seen to be "punishment". Images of criminals lounging on comfy sofas watching TV don't quite do it for me.

John Holland

Stuart;I'm sorry images of prisoners on comfy sofas don't "do it" for you.Perhaps we could spice things up a bit.
It's easy to forget that the true test of penal policy is not empirical results, of what actually works to reduce crime, but the titillation of the self-righteous.

Stuart Seacole Smith

John Holland: so in your view prison is not about punishment, but "the titillation of the self-righteous".

Absurd. I'd much prefer that the prison population was precisely zero. But once the wasters get themselves in there, better to make it an experience they'd rather not repeat.

By the way, I'm not suggesting violence being used against them. Take ideas from how we punish children: denial of priveledges (sofas, TVs come to mind), doing work and chores and keeping them busy etc etc.

I know it's not simple and there has to be an element of giving people the chance to reform. But there's a strong element of punishment too. Either you get that or you don't. And apparently you don't. But don't worry, there's plenty more like you out there, and look where it's got us.