True conservatice thinking.

[rory_20_uk]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They are considering allocating £15 billion to create more places in Britain's near-capacity prisons.

The plans, revealed by the Sunday Telegraph, would be funded by scrapping government plans for identity cards.

The Chief Inspector of Prisons has also warned prisons are close to putting up "house full" notices with less than 1,800 places left.

The Conservative plans follow a row over the early release of offenders after it emerged last week that serial paedophile Craig Sweeney could be free in five years.

Tory leader David Cameron wants criminals to serve greater proportions of their term behind bars and is looking at ways to fund additional prison space.

Options include using the money saved from ditching ID cards, due to be introduced from 2008.

'Decent and humane'

Shadow home secretary David Davis told BBC's Sunday AM programme he was "quite sure" that more prisons are needed.

"At the moment, if you're a prisoner and let's say you can't read, you haven't got any skills, you're addicted to crack cocaine, to sort out any of those problems takes time in prison, takes courses.

"If you're being transferred after three or four weeks to another prison, then to another you'll never complete that.

"So actually, to do the job of a decent and humane as well as effective prison system, you need more prisons."

Mr Davis also said he did not know how many more prisons were needed.

But a party spokeswoman stressed that no spending commitments had been made over this issue.

She said: "This is certainly something that we are looking at. We definitely recognise that prison places need to be expanded.

"One option for funding that would be re-directing money that would be spent on ID cards.

"But there are no spending commitments at this time. They will be made closer to the next general election."

Rising numbers

The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, told The Sunday Times that with fewer than 1,800 of 79,500 prison places left, jails were close to capacity.

"We are looking at a system where prison numbers are rising inside what is already a hugely pressured area," she said.

"That may hit the buffers soon at a point where there are not any more spaces.

"I think the point will come at which prisons have to put up 'house full' notices."

Commons leader Jack Straw, also speaking on Sunday AM, said "We have built more prisons and prison places and the chances are that more have to be provided.

"I have never had a problem about building more prisons.

"I was one of the home secretaries who greatly increased the capacity of the prison service.

"I faced similar pressures with far fewer places nine years ago and the prison service does have an extraordinary capacity for coping with pressures."

The prison population stood at 77,785 on Friday, leaving room for 1,715 more criminals.

But there have been 148 more inmates a week since May, the paper said.

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said public money would be far better spent on community rehabilitation.

£15,000,000,000 going on this to supposedly help sort out societies ills. Talk about a kneejerk Tory thing to do!

Good idea or bad?

[KukriKhan]

Maybe spend a third of that, and just out-source Brit prisons to, say... Australia? :)

[Duke Malcolm]

We tried that once, but the damned Australians just released them and gave them great hulking chunks of land to play with...

[rory_20_uk]

I thought that paying others to look over the worst criminals would be a good idea. Russia / China / Egypt / Iraq... Somewhere we can be sure they won't be coming back.

[Taffy_is_a_Taff]

lease some salt mines in Siberia

[UltraWar]

I thought that paying others to look over the worst criminals would be a good idea. Russia / China / Egypt / Iraq... Somewhere we can be sure they won't be coming back.

Bermuda Triangle?

[Duke Malcolm]

no, we own that, the Bermuda Coastguard will fish them out and send them to one of our prisons...

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

I like the bit about funding it by scrapping the ID card plans.

[English assassin]

Well, although it is a bit predictable, at least its honest. It makes my blood boil to hear politicians like John Reid slagging off the judges for giving lenient sentences when they can't lock anyone else up because politicians like John Reid haven't built any more prisons.

I see the judges are thinking about ending the rule tnat they don't make statements to the press. Go Judges! Its time someone put these morons right.

[King Ragnar]

One Solution bring back death penalty, so then we can get rid of the worst scum ( like kiddie fiddlers, rapist, killers etc). This allowing more room for less petty crimes.

[Papewaio]

First. Put $5 Billion into schools for children with special needs (in this case "dad in jail", or potential hoons).

Second. Put $5 Billion into the police system more partols and a few more overnight stays for delinquents, reduce oppourtunity and change the approach to community policing where possible... a velvet glove over steel gauntlet.

Third. Put $5 Billion into the health system (Private and Public) to deal with drug use as a health issue.

Fourth. Death penalty for trafficking, humans, weapons and drugs.

[rory_20_uk]

What is the money for the children with special needs to be spent on? More importantly, why should a poor family that's trying hard get ignored for one that's not trying at all?

If drugs were legalised they'd pay for the cost of treating those that want to be treated. Rather like cigarettes.

Death for weapons and drugs? Why 5 billion to failing children when so many are going to be killed for weaponry and / or posession.

[English assassin]

First. Put $5 Billion into schools for children with special needs (in this case "dad in jail", or potential hoons).

Second. Put $5 Billion into the police system more partols and a few more overnight stays for delinquents, reduce oppourtunity and change the approach to community policing where possible... a velvet glove over steel gauntlet.

Third. Put $5 Billion into the health system (Private and Public) to deal with drug use as a health issue.

Fourth. Death penalty for trafficking, humans, weapons and drugs.

I vote for items 1-3. There, its not so hard to bring crime down. Pape for president.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I like item 1-3, but item 4 is IMO pretty tragical - to be prepared to kill those who are accidentally wrongfully accused just because the society can't afford a decent system of justice... Of course you could have those given prison get death penalty with their consent as an alternative to prison, but that too is risky and might cause problems like those currently in China where death to criminals is used as a way of plundering organs, sometimes in cases where it's not clear if the criminal was really a criminal - because the requests for organs is huge.

A good solution to lack of prisons for those accused of petty crimes is to attach to their legs an electronical device currently used in many countries. They may not leave a certain area around their home or try to take off the electronical device, then an alarm is sounded. Also the device has GPS functions in it so it's easy to localize the criminal if he tries to take it off or he moves out of his territory or he has committed a new robbery or similar and tries to escape from the scene of crime. That way you outsource prison to the homes of the criminal. It's not as bad as prison, but it serves well at keeping the criminal from committing more crimes. They can't really commit crimes while that device is attached to them. It's a form of surveillance that is acceptable for two reasons - the guys getting it have shown that they're criminals AND they're aware of the surveillance. Research seems to show that criminals given such devices instead of prison don't break the law when they wear the device. Remember also that since the device is a lighter form of punishment than prison, you could convert 1 year in prison for robbery or similar to 2 or 3 years of wearing the device. Going back to crime after wearing the device is also less common - people who use it don't get institutionalized. The costs for using the devices are perhaps high in starting cost, but extremely cheap in maintenance, as they can be reprogrammed and used for a new "inmates" after another has used it. These electronical devices could replace prison for most petty crimes and prison could be reserved for murder, rape, pedophiliacs, drugs, mafia, trafficking and large-scale economical corruption affairs.

By the way increase in prison capacity should be proportional to population growth. If the population has grown building new prisons isn't a far-fetched or strange idea IMO.