Ever met a pleasant dog walker ?

At risk of veering off topic:

Agreed that I want criminals out of circulation, even if it is on a temporary basis.

From my limited experience, prison seems warm & dry, with nice food and big TVs and pool tables etc., all at the law-abiding taxpayers' expense.

Prison should be a carefully considered blend of punishment and rehabilitation, factoring in a debt to society. For example, while there are thousands of people in jail for non-violent crimes, there shouldn't be any litter in our public spaces. Companies should be able to apply for prison labour to cover manual unskilled jobs, e.g. sweeping out a grainstore.

People who end up in front of the magistrates and get fines, but have no means to pay their debts should have an hour or two in the stocks on a Sunday morning.

I can tell you that prisoners have a number of freedoms, some are however, limited. You will have a hard time convincing the human rights brigade that prisoners should not have access to telephones. This is the UK, not North Korea.

Debt to society is a myth. There is no way you can equate some crimes against society with some kind of debt. I agree that prisoners should be offered the chance to work for money, but if you are equating the prison system with money then you will face the same problems it already has today- not enough investment or money to operate or expand or upgrade.

It is very much in the interests of society that people are houses in the prison system. Firstly, because if they are in prison they can't harm society any further. Secondly, it is by far the cheapest way to keep someone when you consider the costs of some of the alternatives.

I would be in favour of any prison system that keeps the people contained within it easy to manage and which rehabilitates some of them. They should be offered education and healthcare and all the assistance that society can offer because a portion of them will leave and become useful citizens.

We should also consider that a number of the people in the UK prison population are probably there because they are victims of circumstance and have made poor individual choices. Not because they are inherently evil or crooked or the like.

There is no way of adequately punishing someone who has committed the most heinous crimes.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Do the repeat offender stats show us that prison is not an effective deterrent?

Our horses are in livery with a senior magistrate and he sees the same people over & over again. He says the problem starts when first/second/third offenders keep getting fines, which are paid off at 50p a month. i.e. no deterrent at all. Eventually these characters end up with short custodial sentences, which then becomes an "incarceration hokey-cokey" as he puts it.

If prison were thoroughly unpleasant places, with zero access to drugs and mobile phones, then reoffending would reduce. It's really not rocket science.
Unsure. If prisoners were helped to learn a skill that they could use to earn some money while in prison - even picking motorway ragwort - then when they got out they wouldn't need to rob Tesco three days later.

Prison capacity shouldn't alter policing practice.
 

Sharpy

Member
Livestock Farmer
Having employed 4 ex prisoners who had done from 1 to 10 years inside and talked to them about their time inside they said prison was OK, upside was 3 meals a day, no bills, everything provided and one said the drugs were much better quality and cheaper than those on the outside. (The other 3 weren't hard drug users). Downside was no female company and very little alcohol. They all said it was no deterrent and many of the inmates would be better off permanently inside.
 

Swarfmonkey

Member
Location
Hampshire
A couple of prison screws I know have a novel theory about the prison population. They reckon it can be split into thirds.

1/3rd should be in secure mental health facilities
1/3rd would go straight if given the appropriate schooling/training
1/3rd that will never, ever, go straight.

They also reckon that the second group should be kept well away from the third, seeing them as nothing but a bad influence.
 

bluebell

Member
what about the 1/3 that are foreign born, been here illegaly? commited serious crime? canted be deported because it effects their human rights? what about the victims human rights?
 
Having employed 4 ex prisoners who had done from 1 to 10 years inside and talked to them about their time inside they said prison was OK, upside was 3 meals a day, no bills, everything provided and one said the drugs were much better quality and cheaper than those on the outside. (The other 3 weren't hard drug users). Downside was no female company and very little alcohol. They all said it was no deterrent and many of the inmates would be better off permanently inside.

I'd be in favour of allowing conjugal visits for prisoners who have demonstrated they are safe and can pass routine drug and alcohol screens.
 
A couple of prison screws I know have a novel theory about the prison population. They reckon it can be split into thirds.

1/3rd should be in secure mental health facilities
1/3rd would go straight if given the appropriate schooling/training
1/3rd that will never, ever, go straight.

They also reckon that the second group should be kept well away from the third, seeing them as nothing but a bad influence.

The problem you have there is that putting someone into the secure mental system is far more expensive than having them in prison. Prison is about 40K a year per person. Mental health- be 3 times that, easily. Possibly more depending on the needs of the individual involved.
 
Having employed 4 ex prisoners who had done from 1 to 10 years inside and talked to them about their time inside they said prison was OK, upside was 3 meals a day, no bills, everything provided and one said the drugs were much better quality and cheaper than those on the outside. (The other 3 weren't hard drug users). Downside was no female company and very little alcohol. They all said it was no deterrent and many of the inmates would be better off permanently inside.

Prison is not a deterrent: we should move away from the words deterrent or punishment since they are both terms based on a false premise. The people on this forum and in society at large who are law abiding do not commit crimes because they fear being put in prison. They don't commit crimes because of their value system and beliefs; their moral compass and conscience prevents them from doing anything that they would deem as being unfair or immoral toward others.

And since you clearly can't punish someone for heinous crimes by putting them in a prison, it's hardly a punishment either.
 

Swarfmonkey

Member
Location
Hampshire
The problem you have there is that putting someone into the secure mental system is far more expensive than having them in prison. Prison is about 40K a year per person. Mental health- be 3 times that, easily. Possibly more depending on the needs of the individual involved.

Costs vary quite a bit (all figures from Prison Performance Data 2020 to 2021)

Cat A (Male) - £50k/yr
Cat B (Male) - £35k/yr
Cat C (Male) - £27k
Open Prison (Male) - £26k/yr
Open Prison (Female) - £50k/yr
Male YOI (15-17yrs old) - £127k

As you say, secure mental health facilities are considerably more than that. I've seen figures bandied around of between 165k and 300k. The question is, would removing such individuals from the general prison population lead to savings elsewhere?

 
Costs vary quite a bit (all figures from Prison Performance Data 2020 to 2021)

Cat A (Male) - £50k/yr
Cat B (Male) - £35k/yr
Cat C (Male) - £27k
Open Prison (Male) - £26k/yr
Open Prison (Female) - £50k/yr
Male YOI (15-17yrs old) - £127k

As you say, secure mental health facilities are considerably more than that. I've seen figures bandied around of between 165k and 300k. The question is, would removing such individuals from the general prison population lead to savings elsewhere?


I couldn't tell you, but I do know the construction of secure facilities is extremely expensive. Just the built in furniture will be the best part of 10K I would think.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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