Letters | 30 August 2018

Venezuelan sanctions

Sir: Contrary to the impression given by Jason Mitchell, Venezuela does not have a socialist economy (‘Maduro’s madness’, 25 August). It has a ‘mixed’ economy (and therein lies some of its problems; such as food hoarding by private companies hostile to the regime). The private sector is large, and involved in numerous sectors within the economy; food distribution, pharmaceuticals and so on.

The US sanctions against Venezuela have always been about regime change, and these sanctions amount to a blockade of the country. US and European banks have refused to handle Venezuelan payments for medical supplies, and pharmaceutical companies have refused to issue export certificates for cancer drugs — therefore stopping them being imported into Venezuela. Despite these sanctions being illegal under international law, they continue, and will continue until the ‘social democracy experiment’ in Venezuela is crushed. No country could survive this economic strangulation, irrespective of their political hue.
A.D. Baley
London SE19

Too many prisoners

Sir: Will Heaven’s article (‘Jail breaks’, 25 August) performed the vital task of highlighting that the problems facing prisons in England and Wales are endemic. What has been ignored for too long, however, is that to make meaningful improvements in prison conditions, we need to reform prison sentencing. What largely determines the size of the prison population is how many people are sent to prison and for how long. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 stipulates that a custodial sentence must not be passed unless the offence was so serious that neither a fine nor a community sentence can be justified. As the Sentencing Council makes clear: ‘The clear intention of the threshold test is to reserve prison as punishment for the most serious offences.’ Too often, this threshold is not being met in practice. Moreover, the average length of prison terms has increased markedly in recent years.