Colin Pitchfork

If you give a lifer work to do and he tells you to eff off,what do you do then ?

There should be encouragements for people to fit into the system.

I'd be all in favour of prisoners having swimming pools, gyms, even conjugal visits or an university education (remote access or OU etc) if they did 45 hours of work a week.

I don't have any experience of working in a prison, but I work somewhere just like one. You'd be surprised how you can get many people to conform to rules.
 
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neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
There are, traditionally, four things it is for:

1) To protect the public;

2) To deter potential offenders;

3) To punish convicted offenders;

4) To reform where possible.

The order's mine, just as they came to mind. Expecting 100% from any human endeavour is optimistic...

Obviously some can’t/won’t be rehabilitated successfully, and it’s the Parole Board’s job to decide if they are safe for release. If they are judged to still be a danger to society, they don’t get out.
That’s what they’re for, rather than it being a populist politician’s decision.

Personally, I’d bring back capital punishment for such cases, and the issue would then never arise. However, there seems little appetite for such a regime, so we have a penal system based on the premise that people can change for the better.
 

Danllan

Member
Location
Sir Gar / Carms
Obviously some can’t/won’t be rehabilitated successfully, and it’s the Parole Board’s job to decide if they are safe for release. If they are judged to still be a danger to society, they don’t get out.
That’s what they’re for, rather than it being a populist politician’s decision.

Personally, I’d bring back capital punishment for such cases, and the issue would then never arise. However, there seems little appetite for such a regime, so we have a penal system based on the premise that people can change for the better.
The fact is that poll after poll shows a clear majority of the electorate do want there to be a capital sentencing option, but our MPs know better... or did. We couldn't have a capital option while a member of the EU, we now can and, if a sufficient number of MPs pull their act together we may get it again. But note I use the word 'option', rather than it being a mandatory thing.

As for Parole Boards... getting things entirely wrong, year in year out, between one in twenty and one in ten times is an appalling rate! And it's one that would most certainly see a Barrister disbarred or a Doctor struck off - I can't see how they should be treated any differently when their wrong decisions affect so many lives and even see some ended.

Would you be happy to see your children cross a bridge or using a plane, knowing that its likelihood of catastrophically failing was between five and ten percent? Put like that, their failings become far more obvious. This is another reason that I advocate for a life sentence to be just that; it would remove the Parole Boards and their awful record from the equation altogether.

Anyway, I'm not one for the word 'populist', it generally seems to mean a politician who advocates something that most people want, but that the commentator / critic doesn't.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
The fact is that poll after poll shows a clear majority of the electorate do want there to be a capital sentencing option, but our MPs know better... or did. We couldn't have a capital option while a member of the EU, we now can and, if a sufficient number of MPs pull their act together we may get it again. But note I use the word 'option', rather than it being a mandatory thing.

As for Parole Boards... getting things entirely wrong, year in year out, between one in twenty and one in ten times is an appalling rate! And it's one that would most certainly see a Barrister disbarred or a Doctor struck off - I can't see how they should be treated any differently when their wrong decisions affect so many lives and even see some ended.

Would you be happy to see your children cross a bridge or using a plane, knowing that its likelihood of catastrophically failing was between five and ten percent? Put like that, their failings become far more obvious. This is another reason that I advocate for a life sentence to be just that; it would remove the Parole Boards and their awful record from the equation altogether.

Anyway, I'm not one for the word 'populist', it generally seems to mean a politician who advocates something that most people want, but that the commentator / critic doesn't.

To me, populist politicians are those that chop and change, to fit whatever will grab this week’s popular vote. More often than not, thanks the thing that public have been manipulated to think they want, through pr, social media campaigns, etc.

Boris and Trump would be the two most high profile examples that spring to mind. Abhorrent characters in my view, but able and willing to manipulate public opinion to their own ends.
Obviously I don’t expect you to agree, but I’m sure I can live with that.;)
 

The Agrarian

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northern Ireland
Just because you think public opinion is moving in the direction of a certain kind of justice or sentencing, doesn't make it 'right', or good practice. The Romans thought that putting prisoners or whoever annoyed the emperor in an arena with hungry big cats was good entertainment.
 

Danllan

Member
Location
Sir Gar / Carms
Just because you think public opinion is moving in the direction of a certain kind of justice or sentencing, doesn't make it 'right', or good practice. The Romans thought that putting prisoners or whoever annoyed the emperor in an arena with hungry big cats was good entertainment.
A democracy and the laws within it have to reflect public opinion, or they will be neither democracy nor law but, instead, dictatorship and diktat.

It doesn't matter how anyone wants to paint this, and call something 'populist' etc., in a democracy if a country's mood is not reflected by a government and its legislation, it will be replaced by one that does so.

Any alternative to this cannot be called a democracy and anyone pretending otherwise is a fool and a liar.
 

Muck Spreader

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Limousin
There should be encouragements for people to fit into the system.

I'd be all in favour of prisoners having swimming pools, gyms, even conjugal visits or an university education (remote access or OU etc) if they did 45 hours of work a week.

I don't have any experience of working in a prison, but I work somewhere just like one. You'd be surprised how you can get many people to conform to rules.

I do remember many years ago a prison governor being reluctant to show me around the the blocks in his new prison, as he remarked that the standard of accommodation and facilities available was probably better than my university students had and this would be embarrassing for him. No idea what they are like nowadays, but I suspect pretty horrible.
 

The Agrarian

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northern Ireland
I think it needs to straddle the uncomfortable and unpopular place that sits between democracy and dictatorship. There are often times when government action against public opinion is in the best interests of the population, e.g. covid restrictions, the coming vaccine passport/negative test regs, road speed limits, and so on. We can't have a crowd baying for blood as the basis of justice.
 

Highland Mule

Member
Livestock Farmer
I do remember many years ago a prison governor being reluctant to show me around the the blocks in his new prison, as he remarked that the standard of accommodation and facilities available was probably better than my university students had and this would be embarrassing for him. No idea what they are like nowadays, but I suspect pretty horrible.

Student accommodation I had in the 1990s was supposed to have been based on the architecture of a Swedish open prison. Fairly sure the same buildings are still in use today.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
A democracy and the laws within it have to reflect public opinion, or they will be neither democracy nor law but, instead, dictatorship and diktat.

It doesn't matter how anyone wants to paint this, and call something 'populist' etc., in a democracy if a country's mood is not reflected by a government and its legislation, it will be replaced by one that does so.

Any alternative to this cannot be called a democracy and anyone pretending otherwise is a fool and a liar.

Public opinion changes with the wind, especially in these days of professional social media managers. It needs to be tempered against radical changes, as it will swing a different way next week with whatever new story comes along.

Do you believe it is possible for people to be rehabilitated, or not? If so, somebody has to judge whether that has been successful, and the public's perception from seeing emotive accounts of their crimes is never the way to do so. It's what the offender is like now that is important, not back then, unless you believe that rehabilitation is never successful?
 

Ashtree

Member
Oh dear….
A very simple analysis of judgements handed down by the British or most other democratic countries justice system over the past say 50 years, would very very quickly lead you to the headstones of numerous (probably dozens) totally innocent people, who would have been executed if capital punishment was on the statue book.
I rest my case…..
 
I am unsure about commenting but w
Oh dear….
A very simple analysis of judgements handed down by the British or most other democratic countries justice system over the past say 50 years, would very very quickly lead you to the headstones of numerous (probably dozens) totally innocent people, who would have been executed if capital punishment was on the statue book.
I rest my case…..
They say just one wrong conviction that leads to a death sentence is enough.
But imo all the others that need necking with a blunt spade get away with it
Too softnowadays.
Need more reliable convictions - isn't that much more likely now rather than some complete maniac costing the taxpayer a load?
 
Location
southwest
Is there that much difference between those who kill, and the mob that bays for blood in the name of "populist justice"?

I suspect that for both groups causing the death of a person either directly or indirectly is a way of improving poor self esteem.
 

essex man

Member
Location
colchester
Think the parents of the victims should decide at this stage.
If they have been able to forgive then maybe consider him for parole.
If they would rather he dead then leave him in there
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Think the parents of the victims should decide at this stage.
If they have been able to forgive then maybe consider him for parole.
If they would rather he dead then leave him in there

Absolutely not. No bereaved parent is ever going to be able to make an unbiased decision.

Either Society believes in, and trusts in, our penal system to rehabilitate offenders, or we may as well just hang ‘em high and be done with it.
 
If you give a lifer work to do and he tells you to eff off,what do you do then ?

Very simple to encourage compliance by reducing living standards.

IMHO our CJ system should have access to a much wider range of punishments, including some of those not currently compatible with the concept of human rights.

e.g. time in the stocks for criminals without the means to pay fines and productive manual work for custodial guests (such as litter picking, ditch cleaning, road sweeping, snow clearing etc)
 

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