Jailhouse cock-up

2 September 2008.

Apparently a charity is bidding to run two prisons due to open in 2010. What kind of country have we become when we allow an organisation to ask for donations so that it can dish out hard-earned law-abiding citizens’ cash to prisoners to help them find accommodation, employment and benefits upon their release (a release which is probably two-thirds sooner than they were jailed for in the first place)?

Nacro, the charity that attempts to reintegrate prisoners back in to society upon their release, must be about as successful as trying to get Jonathan Woodgate, Ledley King and Michael Owen on a football pitch at the same time simply because none of the criminals want to leave their allegedly overcrowded havens. Apart from those guilty only of a miscarriage of justice, these people are about as deserving of help as a man who loses his wife, home and children because he gambles away the life savings betting that Alistair Darling would get a back, sack and crack at the local beauty parlour.

The money donated to Nacro could be spent purchasing water, food and basic healthcare to the millions not able to eat for the next week rather than bailing out reprobates who erroneously claim excessive benefits or resent having to work as a dustman (probably now known as a recycling generation executive these days, sorry for being so un-PC) because no other employer will have them on their departure from jail.

We already have “charitable” causes that waste half of the money raised on bureaucracy, advertising and business-class flights for the workforce. If you’ve ever watched an Oxfam advert asking for £15 a month, that advert is where the £180 a year has gone. The man in the advert that Oxfam professes will be able to feed his family for a lifetime upon the provision of some basic fishing equipment is probably still spending every daylight hour – and possibly burning the midnight oil too – scrabbling around trying to catch fish with his bare hands, only now to see charity employees fly past onboard Emirates Airlines.

It was also suggested recently that, owing to the likes of Gazza heading to rehab, a charity should be established which facilitates a smoother transition for footballers retiring from the sport back to normal life – “normal” presumably translates as a mere five homes, model wife and Swiss bank account.

I could be missing something but I thought they already have a charity, namely the Russian and Arab investors lining their gold-coated pockets with £180,000 per week until they sulk themselves to a transfer and pay rise at an even wealthier oil exporter-owned club. The rest of us have to scrimp to provide for our measly pensions so is it really too much to ask for these prima donnas to consider putting a few bob aside for this transition themselves if it’s so traumatic rather than promulgating a need for external help?

Next you’ll be hearing money from both idiotic charities has gone to Joey Barton, Marlon King, Jermaine Pennant and Lee Hughes. Giving money to these imbeciles would be more painful than a post-excretion wipe involving the surrogacy of sand paper in the absence of toilet roll and as useful as Polo manufacturing the nappies needed to survive the following week.

The very fact that the system of putting murderers, rapists and burglars behind bars is named the penal system infers criminals are being penalised. In reality they are earning money and have access to their own room, video games and endless drugs, such that people wish to break into prisons now rather than escape. Get rid of clostridium difficile in hospitals before you start purchasing Nintendo Wiis for prisoners. How many criminals contribute to their TV licence inside do you think?

There are some simple solutions to the problems with the world’s most expensive judicial system, however. The best option would be to use preventative methods rather than a cure for once – or, to put it in 13 year old council estate adolescent terms, using a condom rather than an abortion) – but here are some ideas on how to tackle key UK criminality issues and negate the need for pointless charities such as Nacro:

1. By all means let Broadmarsh’s inhabitants work to earn money, but that money should not be allowed to ever reach the criminal, instead first reimbursing the taxpayer for that misfit’s cost to the Exchequer in housing, feeding and clothing them for duration of their time in jail. Any outstanding can then be passed on to charities which do something worthwhile.

2. To avoid any shortfall left by 1), create a crime proceeds tax and cut off the problem at source. Although often difficult to establish the full amount extorted, and despite many victims never receiving their cash or belongings back following an attack, establish a tax which requires perhaps 30% of the cash value of all money and assets stolen in the crime the assailant is being prosecuted for to be paid, which can then fund their time inside.

This should be in addition to, rather than instead of full restitution of victims’ assets, and will serve as a better deterrent than simply locking them up for a few weeks, with early parole for “good behaviour” intertwined with sporadic day release so they can imminently re-offend with no real loss to themselves. It is almost a criminals’ pension scheme – you pay up front and receive the benefit while you retire in your new holiday home that is jail.

3. Bring in/back more effective forms of punishment. If you want to see the effect more severe sentences have, look at the desperate appeal to the Home Secretary from the Brit who hacked into US military computers in the hope he might be granted a reprieve from extradition to a nation where he’ll face a real punishment, presumably something akin to having 837kgs of dynamite inserted into his rectum and detonated if Guantanamo Bay torture allegations are anything to go by. If that doesn’t rehabilitate, nothing will.

Aside from the fact that a little dose of the cane in schools rather than production of an ASBO might sort out anti-social behaviour in children, a few cracks of a whip rather than a short prison spell would free up prison cells. Frankly, letting a criminal sit in a cell no bigger than my left toe with no light and nothing but a bag of brussel sprouts for a week seems like it would have the desired effect to me but the human rights activists would probably manage to throw any such advocate in there with them the UK is so overrun with farcical legislation.

Community service projects are useful, but up the hours. This would alleviate further council tax hikes as issues such as the recent story which revealed a council ordered its worker to wash off only the most offensive graffiti on a wall would be a thing of the past since criminals would be washing it off for free until it was all gone.

4. Let victims exact some revenge. Far from helping recovery, the recent proposal to encourage criminals to visit victims at their hospital bedside is barbaric. The opposite action may help, though: Those that regain the testicular fortitude to come face-to-face with their attacker should be allowed to visit the assailant in a special locked room, close the door and do, within reason, whatever they choose to the criminal. If it helps the victim only then does it constitute real justice.

Letting a murderer out on parole after five years to prowl the streets for further victims is about as beneficial as the hospital nurse passing you a mirror to examine the third degree burns gained as a result of arson burning your uninsured flat to the floor which have rendered your face disfigured and genitalia ineffective for the rest of your life.