Current Affairs

I do think about writing about current news items, the reason I often don't is because other people express opinions better.

Take the recent prison story of all the UK prisons being full up.

There are no great answers and it is a very complicated situation trying to balance suitable punishment with effective rehabilitation.

If the prisons are full then I am sorry Mr Reid you have to build more prisons not release prisoners early or send memo's tell judge's who are trying to keep Britain safe not to send people to jail.

Of course the media loved this story, they camped in courts waiting for a judge saying he was giving a lesser sentence because of a memo. Even better if it was someone like a persistent violent offender or a sex offender.

Sadly if you read some of the blogs like the most excellent Inspector Gadget you will see that there is a lot wrong with the criminal justice system and lenient sentencing was rife even before this latest furore. The only difference is that this time the media could try to force a politician to resign.

Mr Reid is proving to be a bit of a Teflon minister (Teflinister or Teflonitician), however much criticism the media throws at him none of it seems to stick. Perhaps he would even make a suitable prime minister, a steady hand at the wheel.

Anyway back to prisons, I worried about the figure of 80,000 prisoners after all it is a prison population three times the size of my town. In reality it equates to less than 0.002% of the UK population, however again the prison population doesn't represent the number of people that should actually be in prison.

On rehabilitation I have mixed feelings, at least if people are locked up they are not out on the street. On the other hand they will be at some point and rehabilitation is the only chance of breaking the cycle of crime and reducing itin the long term.

On rehabilitation I would say that there are a lot of very dedicated professionals who work for little or know pay making a difference to people's lives. In many instances they save lives.

You could consider military service as a suitable intervention, a lot of troublesome teens have joined up, get straightened out and on leaving go on to better things. Perhaps military service could be an alternative to prison sentences.

After any length of thought you can only come to the conclusion that being locked up can only ever be a short term solution or for the most serious of cases. There must be another solution and one that is not a media led knee jerk reaction.

This is why I don't often write about current affairs, there are no easy answers, no solutions that haven't already been tried and far, far greater minds with greater ideas.