David Davis has really bamboozled Brian Barder!
Here, Brian describes Davis’s speech to the Tory faithful a couple of weeks ago in these glowing terms.
“There's a genuinely liberal, reformist passage about the need to reduce re-offending by tackling the lack of education and skills training in prisons, by getting prisoners off drug and alcohol dependency, and by ensuring that they maintain their links with their families while in prison and that they have homes and jobs to go to when they come out.”
Don’t be deceived. Davis’s argument is that he wants to build more and more prisons,
“so that while the criminal is in prison we should be providing basic education so he can get a job.We've got to get him off drugs so he can hold down that job.
And we have to encourage his family to help him go straight.
And understand … this will make prison tougher not softer.
But our responsibility can't end when he gets out. At the moment he's got to deal with a bewildering variety of different agencies …
housing, health, employment…"
The problem with this is that to provide education even basic education- whatever that is- "to get him off drugs", (Davis fails to mention alcohol) will take a long time.
Most of those sent into custody are sentenced by magistrates. Their power to incarcerate is limited to 12 months. According to the Home Office:
“Between 1993 and 2003, the number of adults sent to prison for sentences of less than 12 months, more than doubled fro 21,000 to 49,000. In 2003 over half of those sent to prison were there for jail terms of 6 months or less.” Though not all these sentences have been handed down by magistrates, the important point is the length of the sentence. Half sent to prison for six months or less. Astounding.
Assuming that Davis neither wants to increase magistrates’ sentencing powers nor abolish the 50% remission on sentence- and if both were binned the prison population would rise dramatically-then the maximum period the prison service have to perform Davis’s education and rehabilitation miracles is six months- twenty eight weeks- one hundred and eighty days.
The first few weeks allows the prisoner to bed down, and the last two or three weeks of his sentence helps him to get used to his release.
Davis does not mention the other problems.
The Prison Reform Trust do. Last year they reported that:
“The average prisoner is 10 times more likely to have truanted, and 25 times more likely to have been excluded from school: three times more likely to be illiterate and innumerate than the outside population: thirteen times more likely to be unemployed when sentenced and no less than 300 times more likely to be homeless than the general population. And by factors of 10 more likely to suffer mental disorder, alcohol and drug related problems.”
There’s absolutely no chance that basic education could be given to a prisoner in that period, let alone assisting (usually) him with the other problems highlighted by the PRT.
And our courts, and Davis, know that perfectly well.
Before the prisoner ends up in jail he has passed through at least one, possibly two, community based punishments. These are intended to address his problems. They have failed. And it’s hardly surprising. After all, those sentenced to a Community Punishment (the old Community Service Order) and Community Rehabilitation (Probation Orders)- have these problems when they enter the programmes. No wonder they fail. Re-naming the Orders, or compelling those on them to wear fluorescent vests will not change that. And the next stop on the punishment roundabout is a short and for the taxpayer an expensive confinement. But if Davis has his way, it will be just as useless.
No, Tony, I'm not bamboozled. And what you quote in your post as my description "in glowing terms" of "Davis' [sic] speech" is no such thing, as you'll see if you read it more carefully. I was expressly referring only to one passage in Davis's [sic] speech, which I continue to assert fully deserves my description of it.
But it's unfair to drag me into self-defence when I'm laid up, almost wholly unable to use a computer and about to undergo an unpleasant operation on my grossly distended knee tomorrow morning! (See http://www.barder.com/ephems/581.)
Ta-ra -- and please don't expect any further comments, posts or messages for a few days or more....
Another copy of this is on http://www.barder.com/ephems/ in reply to your trackback.
Brian
Posted by: Brian B. | 10 October 2006 at 08:50 PM