LOCK ME UP

The other half is looking a little more than anxious since I announced at the weekend that now might be a good time for me to hasten his demise as the new Government was planning on reducing prison sentences. His counter offensive was ‘yeah but who’d empty the bins or deal with the spiders?’ Good point!

Build more prisons!

Why is it that when we have a housing crisis the answer is to build more houses yet when we have a prison overcrowding problem, the answer is not to build more prisons but to let ‘bad ‘uns’ go free? Am I the only person here who thinks this is a potential recipe for disaster?

In America, prison overcrowding would likely have been resolved via lethal injection, in Britain the Government is hoping for a lethal injection of cash to fix the issue. However, whilst the politicos have fingers in pies, there’s little appetite for any actual baking. No doubt, secretly hoping that the private sector might stump up a few readies to move things along. Wouldn’t hold your breath Rachel love, the only PFI initiatives they’re interested in are those that spell ProFIt.

Prison overcrowding is not a simple problem to fix. For starters, there appears to be no shortage of ‘bad ‘uns’ queuing up for a stint at His Majesty’s pleasure. I noticed a notable lack of statistics relating to re-offending in the tabloid articles on this topic. I’m curious to know what percentage of career criminals doing a stretch go on to re-offend as soon as they are let out. Bob the Burglar isn’t likely to be the sort of person who ‘tried it once but didn’t like it’ is he? Are we just expected to offer him a cuppa then turn a blind eye whilst he makes off with the family silver? I don’t think so!

And talking of statistics – has anyone taken a look to see what the correlation is between ethnicity and knife/gun crime? I’m guessing there aren’t going to be too many white, middle-aged men wearing twinsets and pearls who now call themselves Georgina in that number. For fear of being cancelled as racist, I have an inkling I know why no-one’s publishing that diversity data.

Building a few more prisons may be costly but surely there’ll be greater benefits than just generating more cells for sheep rustlers, sycamore tree fellers or postmasters. I’m thinking job creation for the masses particularly in places like Port Talbot where soon to be redundant steel workers could be retrained as prison warders.

Private prisons – what a gold mine! Just think of all those lucrative Government contracts you could set up to recharge the Treasury for the cost of babysitting rapists and murderers. Surely there’s some enterprising venture capitalists out there who’d love to have their own high security haven for hell-raisers?

To appease the tofu-eating Wokerati, in future prison sentences could be referred to as ‘sleepovers’ so as not to appear too harsh to those in society who think it’s OK to kill people then take them to Bristol in a suitcase. Good job they weren’t flying Ryanair – imagine the excess baggage charges!

When the new future luxury haven for hell-raisers is eventually built, please lock me up so I won’t have to do any more painting or worry about dealing with bins or spiders.

Gary Larson's spider problem