Looks like we are paying for the cuts in both ways.

[jodevizes]

Andrew Bridges of the Probation Service has questioned whether it was worth keeping thousands of violent and dangerous offenders locked up for longer than the minimum jail term set by a court just to stop a few of them committing new crimes.

Full story here www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7884501/Probation-watchdog-serious-crimes-may-b e-price-to-pay-for-cutting-cost-of-justice.html

Lovely, just what we need or is this being 'flown' so that the real proposals will be more readily accepted.

Personally, I think they should chuck a few tents onto Rockall and put them all there until they die. We are already under serious threat already by thugs out on bail, probation or tags so the further these people are from 'polite' society, the better.

I would prefer it if sent the right people to prison in the first place.

For sure. That is the biggest reason not to bring back hanging.

Aside from the sheer brutality and hideousness of it and the fact that it doesn't work of course.

What I meant was that we shouldn't be sending people to prison for minor crimes - I would rather see better implementation of tagging and community service rather than prison services - for some it serves no purpose and crowds the prisons.

what are 'minoe crimes' tho??

its those that need nipping in the bud imo,to prevent escalation to bigger crimes

eh?

Are you saying that sending those that commit minor crimes to prison stops them reoffending? Because I'm not sure that is the case.

You can punish someone without sending them to prison.

i think sometimes you can! they lose out alot more by going to prison than say with,a fine,or a tag..

i think a portion of society will always reoffend. but alot wont want to return to prison, so perhaps might think twice!

I find this quite interesting. I guess it comes down to whether you see crime and punishment as about rehabilitation, justice, keeping the public safe from harm, retribution for the victims of crime, or a mix of these.

I don't have stats to hand, but I'm pretty sure that a huge amount of violent crime is committed by people known to each other, and that violent crime against random strangers is actually quite rare (statistically speaking). Therefore, you could argue that releasing murderers early (most of whom will have killed someone well known to them) poses less risk to the community than releasing a petty thief, who probably will steal again. The odds on the thief stealing are way, way higher than the odds of the murderer striking again. So if your main concern is about rehabilitation and keeping the general public safe, these proposals could make sense, though it goes without saying that a huge amount of thought would need to go into drawing up the plans and assessing each prisoner's risk to the community. That in itself could end up costing almost as much as the money saved by releasing prisoners early, unless they bring in an automatic blanket policy of 'release as soon as minimum term is served', which will probably save loads of money but will also leave many victims feeling shortchanged and the general public with little faith in the system. I suspect we'd see a rise in vigilantism.

Call me a woolly-thinking, lefty liberalist if you like (in fairness, I probably am), but I personally believe we should throw most of our money at crime prevention when we can make a difference - when people are young. There are always going to be cases where an offender has never done anything wrong before and will never do so again, but IMO most crimes are predictable when you do some background digging. I've seen too many cases where the minimum is spent on a troubled teen who then grows up to achieve a life of petty crime (sometimes graduating to more serious crimes). Significant money spent at an earlier stage, involving intensive counselling and training (including the wider family in some cases) would save the long-term cost to the state in terms of NHS care (drink and drug abuse, patching up the victims of violent crime) and prison.

Just my opinion...

Optimists - that's what SureStart and parenting classes were about - trying to tackle crime at root and when people are young. Long term measures. However, long term measures aren't vote winners, are they?