How to Arrest the Rising Prison Population...and its Costs

In no time at all (or maybe even right now) the prison population in the UK will be in excess of 100,000.

Bang Up a
Banker?

Is this a 'scandal', as some of the press would have us believe? It's expensive, yes, but it's not really a 'scandal'. Lots of policy wonks and thinktankery folk have many opinions on why there are so many banged up. The press and media cheerfully blame the government or, more specifically, the government's cuts which, of course, have forced the poor and disadvantaged into thieving, haven't they? Or they blame Ken Clarke for allowing rioters to be imprisoned for ten years for stealing a bottle of water when in fact the Justice Secretary should be locking up bankers for ruining everything but they claim that he hasn't the wit or the desire to invent a charge upon which they could be convicted, such as "Mortgaging Without Due Care and Attention" ...or something. So Dave & Co just dock their pay or remove their honours instead, as that should keep everyone happy for a bit.

We, the ordinary, unqualified people, know where the blame really lies, and it lies with illegal drugs.

Barbara Ellen's (normally) lovely column in the Observer (5th Feb) suggests that people like me, who grew up in the sixties and seventies, are in no position to comment on drug culture in 2012. She contends, with some excellent but slightly flawed journalism that our experimentation or even habitual use of dope back in the day does not provide us with any idea of what is going on right now with things like MDMA, the crack derivatives, powerful skunk or even the 'legal high' dopes. I agree with her. But, at the same time, she cannot possibly deny the link between these drugs and criminality, regardless of whether 2012 drugs are 'A' class apart from those of 1970.


Wicked Weed

So, scratch the surface or dig deeper into criminality here and abroad and there'll be a direct connection with illegal drugs in the majority of crimes committed. Drugs are not that expensive if used recreationally but the habitual, long-term daily use through addiction is a very costly business to the user. This is, largely, because they're illegal and therefore the risks run by suppliers are mitigated by pricing. It's a standard business model. The fact is that the risks being taken are those of arrest and potential loss of liberty and income and they are not that different from, say, the risks of loss of life or injury in deep sea diving to support the oil industry and those guys are handsomely rewarded for the services that they supply, only legally.

There are plenty of perpetrators of crimes that do their dastardly deeds just out of greed or having a dysfunctional moral compass rather than to get enough money to keep their habit going. But there are just as many and more who do and, once you're into that cycle of criminality it's almost inevitable that you'll be suckered into or forced into drug use and its likely outcomes by those that are looking for increased custom. By all accounts, if and when you're convicted of a crime and get banged up, the same porcesses apply inside prisons and it's quite difficult to avoid being sucked in to the drug culture.

So how do we break the chains?

I'm not a user of illegal drugs, so I come at this from an uninformed viewpoint on what that's like. However, the vast majority of the UK population doesn't use illegal drugs so it could be argued that the minority view isn't as important. It seems to me that the easiest way out of this cycle of drug-related criminality is to simply to legitimise the trade. In so doing, various things would happen...

First, but by no means the most important, the cachet of doing something wicked and naughty is immediately removed. This might discourage many recreational users and close down a proportion of the hitherto illegal market, albeit a small proportion seeing as getting an habitual high is more often than not the motivation rather than just being naughty.

Secondly, if the risk factors of illegality are removed from production, distribution and supply (both wholseale and retail), then the price will drop - it is, after all, a market, and consumers will be able to demand lower prices as neither they nor the suppliers will be risking their collective freedoms. Of course, a lot of suppliers will drop out of the market anyway, in search of something that carries greater risks and therefore greater rewards.

Third, and by far the most important by way of societal benefit, is the reduction in crime related to drugs. At the bottom end, where most of the crime is perpetrated, users will have to steal at a significantly reduced rate in order to support their cheaper habit.

You see, I really have no objection to people getting off their skulls and, ultimately, killing themselves through drug-taking. I smoke a little bit and drink alcohol. It's probably having a detrimental affect on my health. In counter-balance, my diet is exceptionally healthy, whereas there are others who ingest potentially fatal quantities of fat. Then there are those that think that fighting is an excellent pastime and others that exercise their right to extreme, risky and even life-threatening behaviour in 'sport'. Almost all of us take risks that, with the rare and privileged exceptions in the wealthy, can be a burden to the NHS and to the public purse in general when it comes to medical and social care after the fact of those risks causing harm to the risk-taker.


Should this behaviour be punished
through the prison system?

Should we judge behaviour on the basis of cost to society, then? If the currently illegal drugs continue to be criminalised, who is to say that the cost to the exchequer of that criminalisation (through the legal system and the outrageous price of keeping people in prisons with all their bloody 'rights') is any more properly spent than banging up smokers, drinkers or the morbidly obese, given that, eventually, they are going to cost the country a fortune.

Just taking those last three groups I mentioned (and they are by no means the exclusive three that have the potential to ruin the economy) would it be the right thing to do to criminalise fags, booze and fatty foods? No, it is not...at least no more than it is to criminalise skunk, crack cocaine or heroin on the basis of costs to our society. By that means, the likes of BAT, Diageo and Tesco would be in the same camp as the Colombian drug cartels as suppliers. Some might argue (maybe even those that sit out St Paul's Cathedral in the Occupy Tent City) that that might be a good thing.

Of course, none of this is going to happen. No government in the UK that wishes to retain its shaky mandate would dream of passing legislation that legalises these drugs. They just couldn't deal with the screaming headlines. They may as well attempt to legalise paedophilia.

As the prison system is costing so much money and its inmate population is more likely to rise than it is to fall, then the issue has to tackled from a cost perspective alone.

Prisoners all over the world - but especially in arguably more enlightened societies like our own - do have the protection of much of the global legislation on Human Rights. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have the 'right' to a TV (Plasma 50-inch or an ordinary one), a games console, comfy beds, conjugal activity, sports, newspapers, computers or the latest movies. They do have the 'right' to daily exercise, sensory stimuli, food, water, a reasonable element of privacy and not to have the shit kicked out of them or to be sexually abused by warders or other prisoners. Actually, they do have a right to a newspaper. There's a paper called "Inside Time", which is just for prisoners...like a trade journal, I suppose. The right to vote? The jury is well and truly out on that one...and may take some time to consider its verdict.

The Good Old Days...?

The cost to the justice system of dealing with criminal offences is massive in terms of policing and doing all the legal stuff, but concentrating solely on the incarceration, it costs about £150,000 to create every new individual prison space and an average of about £50,000 a year to keep each and every felon in the nick. This could quite easily (and legally) be ameliorated through changes to the regimes inside and the cessation of pandering to prison populations for fear of some breach of their human rights (that's the same human rights legislation that most of the UN is signed up to but doesn't bother with, by the way).

Prison serves two purposes. Protection of the public from naughty people, and punishment. The first purpose is quite obviously being served, although for not nearly long enough in many cases with parole working the way it does. But punishment? Don't think so. Tough but fair regimes in prison, along with occupational therapies to aid rehabilitation have to be the future. Clearly, sewing mail bags is a pointless occupation these days but what about breaking rocks? Or transferring some of the high street chains' Asian sweatshop production to the UK prisons? Several lobbyists have been suggesting that prsioners get a 'wage' for such occupation in the nick. No. Wrong. When governments are sponsoring the alleged 'slave labour' of people on benefit working in companies like Tesco, it would be unpalatable to then award the minimum wage to the literally captive audience of working prisoners.

And who knows...the prospect of doing 'hard time' might even act as a deterrent. But we need some government ministers with the balls (and not Balls as a government minister) to see this through. So it'll never happen. Shame.

Government by Celebrity

Mary Portas, or "Queen of Shops" as she has been tagged, was asked last year by the Coalition Government to advise on our retail trade which, if we are to believe reports or perhaps just our eyes, is in decline. Some would have us think that retail, if it were a patient in a cash-strapped hospital, would have the words "Do Not Resusitate" hung over its bed for the moment when the last shop closes on the high street.

Portas - Havant A Clue?

As usual, there are different stories the country over and - no surprises here - the more affluent the community the less boarded-up outlets on the shopping streets. But that doesn't bother La Portas one little bit. No, because like all the other 'Celebrity Politicians', she's a one-trick pony and for her, what she thinks works in Kensington's or Chipping Norton's vibrant high streets will do equally well for the terminal decline of retail in Gosport or Rotherham. Except it won't, of course. And that doesn't matter to Dave or Giddy because they've got a headline. And a positive headline too. Government "thinking outside of the box" sort of thing. I mean, why should the Coalition even consider asking real retail experts when they can hire the likes of Portas, a "TV Personality" regardless of whether she knows anything at all.


"I thought I told you it wasn't
'smart casual' again today..."

 Tony Blair liked to be surrounded by 'Slebs'. From almost his first day at No.10, the great, the good and bloody awful from the worlds of sport and entertainment were invited to the PM's house for drinkies and photo-opportunities. The thing with New Labour, though, was that although they might have basked in the reflected ingloriousness of Bono or Noel Gallagher, actual policy and subsequent legislation were not influenced by their opinions. Millbank was ever the seat of power for New Labour. Even real Celeb experts failed to influence; Lord Sugar of CPC464 being the prime example. He quite clearly didn't realise that he was window-dressing until it was too late for his reputation to recover.

These days, the Coalition has done well at avoiding the Celeb trap but there are signs that the usual mid-term idiocy is on its way; Portas being their prime example thus far. It can only get worse as the Conservaral Libertive agendas make less and less impact and the need to deflect the public becomes greater once the bloody Olympics and the horror of the Queen's diamond jubilee are out of the way and everyone returns to the tawdriness of life in asterity.

To save everyone the time and trouble of speculation on what a "Cabinet of All the Celebrity Talent" will look like when our Secretaries of State and senior Ministers get their star support, this is what we've got to look forward to:

The Prime Minsiter, David Cameron: Dave will be teamed up with Ian Hislop. The diminutive editor of Private Eye isn't, in the true sense of today's mad culture, a celebrity, but a serious journalist with a satrirical sense. It would be demeaning to the highest office of state then to have a proper Celeb so Hislop is the ideal candidate.

The Deputy Prime Minsiter, Nick Clegg: Nick needs a bit of a boost so he gets two for the price of one. Yes! It's Jedward! The terminally dim Irish duo can only add to the profile of the Office of the Deputy PM which, thereafter, will be known as the Jedwegg...

Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, William Hague: Tempting though it may be put globe- and solar system-trotter Richard Branson into the FCO with his universal knowledge of all things foreign, Hague has to be joined by another professional Yorkshireman that might be able to drink fourteen pints in a session and has the added cachet of being gay. Step up the GLA...David Hockney. The UK's foreign policy may then begin and end at Bridlington, but that's no bad thing.

Guiding his namesake
through austerity...

Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne: The inconvenient truth is that nobody actually wants to work with the privileged toff, Osborne, so we'll need someone who has no idea who Giddy is or, indeed, who anyone else is, including himself. With the convenience of namesake, Ozzy Osborne is the ideal partner. His past profligacy apart, the Chancellor will be able to demonstrate via the charmless Ozzy just what spending money on the wrong things actually looks like.

Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, Ken Clarke: The US Celebrity judge, Judith Scheindlin ("Judge Judy") will bring a different prespective to the justice department. Instead of wrangling with pointless stuff like The Law, Ken and Judy can dispense justice on camera in line with what the sponsors woud like to see. OK, the prisons would soon be overflowing with lefties, liberals, gays, lesbians and black people (all Democrats in the US) but Daily Mail readers will be happy...

Secretary of State for the Home Department and Minister for Women & Equality, Theresa May: Jeremy Clarkson is a shoe-in for this Celeb post, given his fair-mindedness, proven track record on all matters of equality and tolerance of humanity generally. A formidable pairing, that's for sure. Terrorists will be choosing anywhere but Britain to ply their fiendish trades.

Secretary of State for Defence, Philip Hammond: When it comes to war, we need a balanced set of opinions in cabinet, especially in gender. We also need a woman that is battle-hardened in conflicts with a variety of foes. Billie Piper!

Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Dr Vince Cable: It's a shame that Brian Wilde died in 2008. Close your eyes and listen to Cable - yes, it's Mr Barraclough from Porridge. Instead, we'll have to make do with Katie Price. There'll then be three huge tits in the Department for BIS.


OGWT - Quietly

 Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith: The "Quiet Man" couldn't operate with anyone noisy, so the Celeb pool is shallower for him than for the others. Thankfully, BBC Radio has the ideal man in "Whisperin' Bob" Harris. IDS  and Bob will have to move to a very small office where the pair can communicate easily, whispering in one another's ears their ideas to cut benefits with some indie rock/jazz/folk fusion burbling in the background.

Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, Ed Davey: Seriously now, folks, no Celeb culture here - it's too important...George Monbiot.

Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley: His reforms are deeply unpopular with the NHS. He needs, as his partner in cabinet, an example of what will happen to people if the NHS fails; Keith Richard.

Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove: Govey is rated one of the brightest of politicians (which, given the competition, is damning with faint praise), along with his side-kick, "Two-Brains" Willetts, the universities minister. Findig a Celeb of equal intelligence would have been impossible had it not been for the fragrant Carol Vorderman. And as an added bonus, she can help Giddy do the adding up and when he gets his sums wrong, she can arrange a lovely loan from Ocean Finance of £1tn to bail the country out.

Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government, Eric Pickles: Celebrity Chef Anthony Worrall-Thompson will be on hand to feed Pickles his seventeen meals a day with the added advantage of savings to the minstry as AW-T doesn't have to pay for any of the food he gets at the supermarket...allegedly.

Secretary of State for Transport, Justine Greening: Jeremy Clarkson might have been seen as the obvious choice but with him having teamed-up with Theresa May, then Justine will have to make do with either the 'Hamster' or 'Captain Slow'. On the basis that Richard Hammond is probably smaller than Ms Greening, then it has to be him.


Henson with other
Cabinet members

 Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Carline Spelman: Adam Henson, the farmer from the BBC's Countryfile knows a bit about Spelman's department. In fact, he knows everything about everything and tells viewers this in such a patronising, holier-than-thou manner, he's ideally suited to government. He can even run his sheepdogs round the cabinet room rounding up Liberals that have foolishly chosen not to vote with Dave (although Huhne's gone now)

Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell: Benjamin Zephaniah - a voice of reason in this, the silliest of departments that continues colonial thinking in a modern world. He can also write some nice poetry about what it's like ebing in the Cabinet..."I used to think nurses / Were women, / I used to think police / Were men, / I used to think poets / Were boring, / Until I became one of them." Zepphaniah;s 'Who's Who', will need an extra couplet; perhaps it could run: "I used to think Politicians were idiots / Well, they are, mostly"

Secretary of State for Scotland, Owen Paterson: Doesn't get a Celeb assistant as the office will be remaindered soon with the delivery of Salmon's independence.

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Michael Moore: Obviously, documentary film-maker and scourge of United States' NRA, the real Michael Moore will assist here and do radio interviews so that presenters only have to remember one name.

Secretary of State for Wales, Cheryl Gillan: It's tempting to suggest Charlotte Church but by 2013, the most famous Welsh Celeb will be the dancer, Robbie Savage.

An Ambassador of all that
is great about UK Sport

Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media & Sport, Jeremy Hunt: As this new cabinet will not be formed until after the Olympics and Hunt's department will be reduced to a three-letter acronym again, the focus will have turned to England's failure to win anything at football. Hunt will need a credible spokesperson; Gazza.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander: Nobody really knows what this job entails. I mean, if we have the Prime Minister as the First Lord of the Treasury and a Chancellor of the Exchequer that has the country's debit card, then what does Danny Boy do? Still, one mustn't be churlish; Danny has to have a Celeb. One that would suit would be Peter Andre, as nobody knows why he is there, either.

Leader of the House of Lords & Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Strathclyde: Thomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde, is a personification of the anachronism that is the House of Lords and must be partnered with the equivalent anachronistic irrelevance from the world of entertainment...Bruce Forsyth.

Minister Without Portflio (Minister of State), Baroness Warsi: Provided that the former England soccer captain is found innocent in July, then who better to be the champion of multi-culturalism with Warsi than John Terry. And the "without portfolio" bit, will mean that he can dick off on a Saturday afternoon to kick a ball about a bit, too.

Peerlessness

After the Forfeiture Committee made their decision on Mr Goodwin - as I insisted a few days ago - maybe this previously little known Civil Service and Cabinet Office process could now be used to deal with Parliament's redundant second chamber once and for all.

"Mr" Goodwin

With IDS's benefits bill being driven through without listening to the Lords and other legislation in the past being authorised by the Commons via the Parliament Act of 1997 without their Lordships' now pointless assents, it really is time for this anachronism to call it a day. The Forfeiture Committee was only supposed to consider removing titles and honours from recipients that had had the misfortune to have been imprisoned for a period greater than three months as a result of a criminal act or had been struck off from a professional body related to the occupation for which the honour was originally bestowed. But now a precedent has been set. Goodwin had his knighthood taken away as a result of his being incompetent (in the field for which he had received his honour - banking) and although many believe he should have been imprisoned or struck off from something (or struck with something, perhaps), he wasn't. He wasn't even found to be "incompetent" in the FSA report on RBS...just "cold" and "calculating". He was, for the most part, just found wanting in the court of public opinion and became a scapegoat for politicians.

Very 21st Century...?

So, all that has to be done now is the placing of a microscope over the Upper House in order that their Lordships can be scrutinised in such a way as to make the public and the Commons find it impossible to justify any other action but to demand forfeiture of title. The Forfeiture Committee can only deal with individuals so, regrettably, there will have to be over eight hundred cases to be submitted to Her Maj.

Yes! Eight-bleeding-hundred of them - that's almost 25% more than there are MPs - and they come in four classic styles:

a) Lords Spiritual. These are bishops, and there are 26 of them

b) Lords Temporal. These are not bishops and there are 672 of these, all given peerages on the recommendation of successive Prime Ministers.

c) Hereditary Peers. These aren't bishops, either, and are a different type of Lord Temporal and number 90 privileged toffs

d) Peers on "Leave of Absence" (which recently, in the case of Lord Taylor of Warwick, meant "in prison") and there are about 20 of these.

To make life easier for the Forfeiture Committee it would be sensible to come up with reasons for foretiture of title in each of the four categories rather than on an individual basis, otherwise this will take far too long.

More tea, Vicar?

The first category is simple. The Lords Spiritual are all Anglican bishops. Around about 1.7 million people attend anglican services on a regular basis. That's about three per cent of the population and falling rapidly. Not good enough, is it? Smacks of incompetence, really, to be losing market share like that. This doesn't happen in Islam. They have a more or less 100% take up. On the Goodwin Scale of messing up in your profession, the bishops are at least an '8'. (The Goodwin Scale ranges from: 1 = Contributing absolutely nothing to society or to The Treasury through to 10 = Costing The Treasury in excess of 5% of GDP and pissing off at least 80% of the population. (The cost element of the scale is sigmoidally curvy). The bishops piss off about 90% of the population but, to be fair, they don't cost an awful lot as they are mostly self-funded but that does include income from vast tracts of land and thousands of properties that, arguably, should belong to the state. Anyway, any score above a '6' on the Goodwin Scale has to result in automatic forfieture of title, so off go the first 26. This will also help a great deal in easing in the much needed legislation on the separation of church and state through secularisation.

The twenty or so peers on leave of absence will piss off at least 99.9999997% of the population (i.e. everyone except themselves, as they're just not doing what they are required to do by dint of their honour. So that's those done away with.

The bulk of the Lords Temporal can also be deemed not to be doing their jobs because the Commons can, as mentioned above, enact legislation without them. This makes their adminstration costs, premises costs, attendance allowances and other remuneration a complete waste of money. On the Goodwin Scale curve of cost to the economy, this is a solid '7', bordering on an '8' so even if less than 80% of the population aren't pissed off (just midly annoyed, say), then that'll do it for another 672.

The final group is the trickiest as hereditary titles, however wrong they are, do not come under the remit of the Forfeiture Committee. The Acts of Parliament that changed the House of Lords allowed for ninety hereditary peers to remain but their successors to their titles will not take up the seats. That means we could wait for all of them to die but realistically that could be another fifty or sixty years and in that period, the House of Lords would subsist and, worse still, as a result of having got rid of the others, would be populated solely be a bunch of privileged arseholes falling asleep on their red leather and just getting in the way. And there isn't a minimum quorum in the Lords. Additional legislation will take too long and the hereditary peers, although falling into the category of the Lords Temporal, could legitimately argue their right to remain despite being within the Goodwin Scale parameters for forfeiture. No, the thing to do is to make the House of Lords so unattractive as to make them go of their own accord. Give them more work to do! With only ninety left, the work previously allocated to eight hundred will mean that the remaining few will be unable to cope and the impact on their lives will become intolerable, especially if the majority of that work is allocated from 12th August annually for three months or so. It should only take a couple of years before they're all screaming to sign the new amendments to the Parliament Act to release them from the burden of public service and the Upper House will be no more.

No! No! NO! This can't be right....

There is, however, a major problem in amongst all of this. Under the constitutional laws around "de-peering", the Forfeiture Committee can only recommend action and, just like all Acts of Parliament too, Royal Assent is required. So, Her Maj will have to agree to every Lord, whether Spiritual or Temporal (but not hereditary) being stripped of his or her title. OK, in the cases of Taylor of Warwick, Two-Jags Prescott and possibly the odious story-teller, Archer, she might sign without demur but as for doing for the rest of them...? Maybe I'm worrying unduly. The non-hereditary Lords Temporal are all political appointments and what with the Royal Family believing that they are there by right and privilege and not at the whim of transient politicians, she might be attracted to the idea of these 'commoners' being returned to their deserved common status. But, as head of the Church of England, she may not feel so gung-ho with her fountain pen where the Lords Spiritual are concerned. However, she assented to Goodwin's forfeiture so, on that basis, she has to agree with Goodwin Scale. And besides, if Rowan Williams, John Sentamu and the rest don't have to bother with parliamentary crap any more then they'll have more time for the anglican pastoral work that I imagine Her Maj might rather they get on with before mosque attendance volume outstrips that of the Church of England.

Next Steps:

1) A forfeiture system for members of the Royal Family

2) A forfeiture system for MPs

3) Independence for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and...

4) The appointment of Ken Livingstone as "Mayor of All England"

Job done...and off we all can "Trot".

He's the Man...