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A new report by Rob Allen, published by the Criminal Justice Alliance, not only reminds us that England and Wales has the dubious accolade of locking up more people per head of population than any other country in Western Europe, but that we are now falling even further behind in tackling high prison levels.
Since the middle of the last decade several European countries, particularly the Netherlands and Germany, have seen sharp falls in their prison populations - so too has Finland and Portugal. In stark contrast, in England and Wales prison numbers have continued to grow despite falling crime.
Since 2004 the total numbers incarcerated in the Netherlands has fallen from more than 20,000 to less than 15,000. The Dutch Ministry of Justice expects the number of prisoners to continue to decline and to average less than 9,000 by 2015. The Netherlands now uses the spare capacity to lease space at Tilburg jail to house 500 prisoners from Belgium, whose prisons are severely overcrowded. Last week the new French Justice Minister outlined plans to reform prisons, and she is widely expected to re-orientate budgets away from prison building to rehabilitation.
This trend is not restricted to Europe. US states like New York have seen their prison numbers decline since 2000. Although the causes remain contested, what is clear is that investing in drug treatment programmes for nonviolent offenders, rather than custody, contributed to the drop. More recently Texas has curbed its prison binge through, amongst other things, an expansion of treatment and diversion programmes and reforms to the use of breach.
While some may hit back that the crime drop in England and Wales is due to higher levels of prison this flouts international evidence. Comparative studies find no straightforward relationship between the size of the prison population in a country and the level of recorded crime. An EU study by Van Dijk and colleagues concluded that "sentencing policies in Europe as a whole are considerably less punitive than in the USA... and yet crime is falling just as steeply in Europe as it is in the USA. No relationship between the severity of sentencing of countries and trends in national levels of crime is therefore in evidence."
This recent Criminal Justice Alliance report points to a number of features in continental justice systems that are associated with a more moderate use of prison. These include greater availability of mediation and restorative justice options at various stages of the criminal justice process (a key CJA campaign), more flexibility in dealing with breach and infrequent use of life and indeterminate sentences. We should take note. An ever-expanding, bloated penal system is not an inevitable; working towards lower levels of imprisonment is a possible and credible policy to pursue.
Follow Vicki Helyar-Cardwell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cjalliance
The justice system is 'designed' to make the working class, poor, impoversihed, the 'underclas', why? because these are the 'food' sustenance that maintains the middle and upper classes; nothing like moral indignity to functiona justice system designed to castiget the masses into a caste system, (like India), of which keeps the nurses, police, lawyers, judges, politicians, etc in their well-paid jobs.. Think about it, if there were no criminals, we wouldn't need a harsh justice system. It's precisely because we have a harsh justice system, we have the highest oppression, poor, and impoverishment in Europe; second only to Russia and KKKmerica!
Don't fool us, and yourself, Westminster is 'designed' to have a harsjh penal system; how else would they surive without 'eating' us?
Solient Green !
allymax.
When the vast majority of this countries people are living life on a on a financial knife edge; where food and fuel are equally balanced so that families can just get through to pay day; when jobs and lives are crushed and long paying taxpayers end their days in miserable poverty with only basic care; It is at THIS time, when we are ALL suffering, that those who CHOOSE to prey on others MUST be made to pay. Yes, i mean harsh and HARD!
If you want to be part of a community, part of your town or city, work with it and help the people in it; if you really DONT understand that we are all one and the same in this current climate; the you deserve prison?
Maybe we should offer prison to our pensioners and let the poor prisoners survive in a pensioners home and on their money?
Prisons and crime don't affect them, they are too far distant to be vulnerable.
Their control of the media has made Britain a country where too many people prefer problems to solutions, and punitive by nature,
We can't eradicate wasps if we don't like them, but we can keep them to a minimum by not creating ideal conditions for them.
Crime is similar, we will never eradicate it, but we can keep that to a minimum as well, without the human dustbin of prisons.
Its the elite, well represented in the legal profession and the judiciary, who typically hold liberal views and are prepared to explore alternatives to prison.
The constant rise in the UK prison population is absolutely NOT driven by the elite, rather its driven by populist politicians bending a knee to the readership of the Sun and the Daily Mail and obsessed by the need to stay in Murdoch's good books. How often have we seen the red tops publish a sensationalist crime horror story, typically blowing it out of all proportion, only to see weak politicians scrabbling to pass laws imposing heavier and heavier jail sentences?
The elite are also represented by groups other than the legal profession and judiciary, who couldn't care less, because they know that distant crime is a small price to pay for their own 'success', and we are constantly being told that if we don't rob the poor to pay for the rich, they will take their wealth oversees. Let them disappear with their ill gotten gains, we don't need them.
Society is here for everyone, not just the elite.
increased number of crimes by 24%.
Theft and burglaries increased by 9%
Homicide increased by 12.7%
assaults and battery increased by 13%
drug addiction increased by 44.6%
police department costs rose by 11.4%
legalise and regulate cannabis, MDMA, psychedelics
decriminalise all other drugs (at least)
introduce legal heroin-injecting houses to separate heroin users from the rest of the population
increase scientific research into drug addiction and how to minimise prevelance and harm from it
come back after that, and then see how things improve
Fanned and faved.
Well, aren't you the lucky one.