Alternatives to jail will slash UK prison numbers
(Daily Mail): Tens of thousands of criminals will be forced into full-time community work instead of being jailed. The work could range from repairing benches to filling holes in the road. The offenders will be made to wear tags and adhere to strict curfews while they complete their tasks. After months of bitter wrangling, the Coalition has finally agreed hugely controversial plans to slash the prison population by 3,000. Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke will resist Lib Dem demands for all prison sentences of less than six months to be scrapped. But he will next week insist large numbers of criminals convicted of non-violent offences should be given community penalties instead. Mr Clarke will say they must begin the sentences within days of being sentenced by the courts, and complete full working days.
Currently offenders can carry out only a few hours of ‘punishment’ a week, which is tailored to their convenience. The sentencing review will also propose ending a defendant’s right to change a not guilty plea once a trial has begun. The move is designed to encourage earlier guilty pleas, thus saving the cost of trials.
Category: World News
Did una actually read the (original) article? HM Prisons will not be sending out chain gangs. They are privatizing the ‘management’ of those convicted of community service (and planning to sentence more people to community service rather than custodial sentences). In exchange for watching out for the state’s low-risk criminals you get a ‘free’ work force. So you won’t get chain gangs clearing the roads. Company X will put in a bid for the contract to clear the roads and then put in a bid for community services convicts to do the work for them.
And? Sounds fine to me! I don’t think someone who has smoked a stick of ganja in his backyard needs to be maintained in prison. Make them work for the community!
This is exactly what iv’e been sayin we need to do in Cayman. CI$50,000 a year per prisoner? We may as well make them work it off!!
Can you imagine how clean our Island could finally be if we would make low risk criminials work for their stay, AC, TV food? Perhaps that would also cut down that cell phone usage as they either wouldn’t have any time or be too tired to make calls.
I did a posting not long ago about Sheriff Joe Arpaio,also known as Sheriff Joe the Toughest Sheriff in America, in Phoenix Az. He has his inmates doing everything from cleaning the streets to working at the local animal Shelter. He created Tent City for his inmates and banned all cigarettes, coffee, movies,magazine, salt & pepper. They wear striped black & white prison clothing and PINK underwear, socks & flip flops. If it is cold they can have a pink sweater to wear. Sheriff Joe feels that if you break the law then you must pay for it. This means you work everyday and you will go without any form of "extras". This also includes no AC in the summer and the summers in AZ are really hot. No jail or prison time should be a vacation or a place to hang out until you have done your time. It should be a place that creates no cost to the taxpayers but pays back to the community. It should also be a place that you do not want to have to find yourself in again. There is always going to be the bleeding hearts that feel we must treat every person as an equal but come on this is punishment for a crime against your community so they need to feel like they are being punished. Maybe our government needs to have Sheriff Joe take a paid vacation to our island and tell us what we can do to fix our problems. It seems we are always paying someone to "look in to it". It never hurts to admit we have a problem and ask for the help. Sheriff Joe may not of fixed all the problems but he has made a difference and saved the county a lot of money.
I remember going out to report on a Northward work party clearing Smith Cove – has this kind of thing now stopped in Cayman?
Don’t get too excited about the UK plans, this is just the latest in a series of ill-considered headline grabbing proposals the coalition government has made recently to divert attention from the state of the country.
There’s a slight lack of joined up thinking in all this. We have nearly 3 million people unemployed but the government is going to use community service orders instead of jail and force people to work for their welfare benefits while trying to create paid employment at the same time – that’ll never happen!
What will happen is that organsations with access to this free pool of labour will simply use it as an excuse to get rid of even more employees and the unpaid workers will just take over their work. It has already happened here with numerous schemes operated by previous governments.
In addition to the first comment I’d like to see them clearing the rubble and debris from all beaches in the Eastern Districts at dawn each day. Then perhaps use all the rocks and rubble to make stone walls between the beaches and the roads? That way we (in the Eastern districts) too can enjoy lovely sandy beaches such as those on SMB and West Bay Road. Keeping this up throughout the year would not only benefit the general community but if our beaches weren’t so cluttered with rocks and washed up debris all year round, I’ve no doubt we could attract a heck of a lot more tourists. They already love the area – just disgusted at the state of the beaches in areas which otherwise carry so much natural beauty.
This is what I’d like to see with the ‘guests’ at Northward ‘hotel’! Don’t the human right standards which the UK adheres to not apply here? Yes, more and more they do (or are coming). So, if the UK can do this with their prisoners why can’t we?
I hope the acquisition of the non-lethal guns recently announced by Northward is the precursor to implementing prisoner work details such as these chain gangs; I hope the chains and dogs have been ordered.
When can we expect to see our guests from HM Prison in Northward performing such menial tasks along the roadsides and around government buildings? It used to happen years ago when prisoners painted government buildings and cleaned the grounds around them. I guess, human rights did not allow for that to happen in our small corner on planet earth, but now that the mother country has decided to make the change, we should be seeing more clean-ups and manicuring of the roadsides and government properties at less cost to the taxpayer.
I hope we will have a change of heart and implement the same community effort in step with the UK. Our way of doing things is by ‘following the leader’.
Bad direction of Northward Prison that is what. They get video, cd player, celphone, internet and all the trimmings. Bad management.