Labour's early prisoner release programme and why it's (still) a terrible idea

[musicalfrog]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0ejwedl1gno

The family of PC Andrew Harper have rightly come out today to criticise this policy. My heart breaks for them - it really is the biggest insult.

If prisons are getting too full then build new ones - why this wasn't initiated two years ago when it was already a big problem I have no idea.

The police and CPS have gone to a lot of time and effort to get these convictions - and that ain't exactly cheap! A good number of these criminals will re-offend upon release and the process starts again - sooner than it would have if they'd served their full sentence. Not exactly saving much time and money there.

Plus the blindingly obvious fact that a larger general population will naturally bring with it a larger prison population.

You let criminals out early, the general population suffers more, you put the police and CPS under additional pressure, nobody wins except the criminals who think they have even less to fear from the process than ever before.

What exactly are Labour trying to achieve here because I can't see it?

Build the bloody prisons!

Anyone who is not a national should be deported immediately if they commit a single crime. If it's a serious crime they should be imprisoned and then shipped out at the end of their sentence.

I think victims of their crimes might be unhappy that they just get to go home.

And they may not have committed a crime in the eyes of their home country - see sexual offences 😒

As I said serious crimes prison then deported, whole family should go with them too. Should also be a lifetime ban on entering the UK.

We can only be accepting those that have something to offer us. If your going to be a problem then I'm afraid you should be deported.

I'm reading so many stories of people known to have serious mental health disorders being allowed to settle in the UK. The priority is to help British citizens with mental health issues....theres years of back logs ...so why on earth do we want more. Some of these people go on to commit horrendous crimes ....the students in Nottingham for example or the Southport killer. For me they should never have been here, second prison should be four walls with no entertainment and 12 hours of work every day for the rest of their lives with zero chance of release.

I might sound harsh but we can't keep accepting that this sort of violence is somehow forgivable....it's not and it never will. The families involved in this have had there lives ruined. No one gets over that neither should the criminal.

Heartily agree @dwordle.

I agree with this.
It can’t be a blanket approach to early release.
Victims have so few rights this is another example of their loss / feelings/ right for some kind of punishment being ignored.
I do worry though about early release fir other types of crime too, although needs must, because as a society we let low level antisocial behaviour make peoples lives miserable

But victims of crimes you consider minor might still want to see the perpetrator locked up not just sent home.

I haven't read the whole thread but in the case of PC Andrew Harper, a pp said they knew he was attached to the rope. Well the jury didn't agree which is why they reached a verdict of manslaughter resulting in the sentences they got. Remember juries..
the best thing since sliced bread and the outcry there was when the Government proposed abolishing them for certain cases to reduce the courts backlog.

This whole problem is the result of the last Tory government not building the prisons....they new they needed them but they didn't want to spend the money.

Yes, the population of the UK has increased by approx 10 million in the last 20 years. But hardly any new prisons have been built to keep pace with this increase. Crazy situation.

Terrible, tragic case. The two who were involved in PC Harper's death should not be eligible for early release. They were laughing when they were arrested and showed no remorse at all.

So what's your alternative?

The Tories knew this situation was coming and did nothing. New prisons don't appear overnight (even if you're happy to pay the taxes to pay for them) so we have no capacity for new prisoners within a matter of weeks.

The problem has less to do with the size of the population and more the fact we send too many people to prison for too long.

Report in The Times today points out that another growing cohort is those released on licence and recalled to prison - twice as many last year as in 2019. I'm going to say that's down to failings of a grossly overloaded probation service.

Once you start making a value judgement about the offending and in particular whether or not there is remorse you turn early release into something akin to parole.

We haven't the time or cell space for that. Prisons will be full before Christmas with nowhere to send the newly sentenced, remanded or arrested.

It makes no sense to me that violent criminals including those guilty of manslaughter are being released early to make way for people who have done far lesser crimes.

Careful, you're making an argument for rational sentencing.

Politicos and the MSM won't wear that.

Yes, agree the majority of prisoners should never go prison in the first place (is that what you meant?).

Also if we invested properly in addiction treatments and supportjng struggling families and young people, I'm sure we'd see far fewer offenders, but change won't come overnight and no-one wants to spend money on being "nice" to people facing often self inflicted hadlrdship, regardless of the benefit for wider society.

Recently I've seen lots of groups doing things like litter picking, cutting back brambles on paths. They wear a jacket or Tabard that says Community Payback. I assume this is something as an alternative to prison for less serious offences. Seems like a good idea. They are supervised.

It takes an average 8 years to build a prison.... planning, local consultation, objections, probably 200 to 400 million. The Tories are renowned for putting off unpopular decisions.

It's not new, it's been done for some sentencing for a long time, and it's a good thing.

I had some of them do some grounds work for the charity I worked for. They find it really difficult to find meaningful jobs for them to do because people don't always want them.

Well quite. I don't know how Badenoch has the nerve to stand up and criticise Labour over this one with a straight face.

The government have built 3000 prison places in the last two years, but it takes time to get to where it needs to be. And the fact is the public don’t care enough to see money invested in criminal justice. They want it spent - understandably - on healthcare, on education, roads and welfare. Well, maybe they don’t want it spent on welfare but…

I've worked on numerous prison projects. The are incredibly complicated projects and before work starts on a new prison there's years consultation, people object for obvious reasons because they impact house prices.

It's a political football and the Tories are quick to blame when they know full well they put if off.

It was the same with social care. They didn't want to make the right decision. They knew it would involve upsetting there boomer vote. People moaning about death tax, they don't want to pay via property but then somehow expect it to be paid for by the tax man....aka as everyone else. But leaving for the younger generation to slump for the cash like the Tories tried to do is outrageous especially considering it was the boomer gen who stitched the rest up by voting for Brexit.

Everyone is quick to moan about tax but forget that without it nothing gets done. We are the lowest taxed country in Western Europe yet we expect everything to be paid for because we've paid a bit of tax.

It's tiring listening to selfish people complaining about tax and expecting everything done for the them. Blaming welfare claimants when the biggest claimants are pensioners. It's exactly the same with prisons....they want people locking up but don't want to fund it.

I've never seen them before but seen groups of them over the last few weeks. I wonder why they seem to be here so much when they weren't before. I think it's a great idea in many ways.

I'm a boomer, I have no issue with paying tax but I do think it's fair I get my pension. I started full-time work at 15 and retired at 70. I've been my husband's carer for over 30 years which will have saved tax payers a small fortune. The Conservatives never had my boomer vote.

Generalising to blame one group for a whole heap of issues isn't fair.