Balls to later. Political blog now.

Yes three blogs in one day. Machine that I am. Well more like the other two were more diary-esk entries and I'd rather leaving on something of an interesting one to make you laugh or think. Preferably both.

I'm getting fat by the way. Haven't been the gym for a good few weeks and eating rubbish. Work does that. It is suddenly starting to hit me that 5 days of work + 2 evenings of 2 individual languages + guitar lesson + salsa dancing + hopefully 3/4 evenings of gym + 1/2 nights of football will = A whole lotta stress. In fact I may have to create a hole in the space/time continuum to make this work. Or like in that Harry Potter where Hermione gets that time changing thing to fit in more classes.

It will be done. I'm a machine remember?

Anyways - Political Blog Activate!

So should rich prisoners - those who have, say, more then £40,000 in the bank at the time of incarceration and/or had a high five figure / six figure salary job before they were naughty people and got locked up - pay for their enforced lodgings?

It was an idea that was brought to my attention in the comments section of the Evening Standard last week. Sounds like a good idea to me.

According to this article, there are 85,000 prisoners in the UK today, costing around £41,000 a year each to keep locked up. It looks like 10% of the prison population can afford £50 a week for the duration of their incarceration, which raises £23 million, which can be put into the economy, or used to pay for prisoner skills training.

I've been thinking over the pros and cons:

Pros

• Money. Costs ridiculous amounts keeping people inside prisons. Why should honest folk pay the full amount for a criminals food and lodgings, especially while some can afford to pay their own way? Should they lose the right to their own finances as well as their freedom? Haven't they done enough damage to society/ the economy?
• The money wouldn't (or shouldn't) be taken from all prisoners willy-nilly. The poorest prisoners, who stole when they had nothing in the first place, should be exempt. While it might seem unfair to the richer ones, surely lumping already broke prisoners with prison time bills will make them jump back into a life of crime even faster? Panels could be set up to discuss how much each prisoner should pay taking into account family, mental condition, chance of getting a job again outside and likelihood of re-offending, amongst other things. (However these panels probably would take a big chunk out of those millions raised to fund anyway.)

Cons

• It could do harm to families of victims. Certainly innocent relatives should not be fitted with a bill for the jail time of relatives.
• I'm no maths genius but high school maths gave me enough knowledge to be able to work out the following calculation - 85,000 X 41,000 = 3485,000,000. Now I think that article was slightly wrong with its figures because I like to think today we are not paying £3.5 Billion to keep prisoners locked up. An article I just found which is here, gives the same prisoner number, but says the cost per year is roughly 38,000, which still leaves the cost per year at 3230,000,000 or £3.2 Billion. £25 Million isn't really going to make much of a dent here..

Still, if the £25 million was collected in a separate fund and redistributed towards rehabilitation programs nationwide, surely the richer prisoners would be helping the poorer prisoners beat drug and alcohol addictions and teach them new skills to use when they get out? Here you see my socialist way of thinking.

I don't like money sitting in banks while there is injustice going on in the world and people need help. Especially if this money is sitting, waiting for rich criminals to go and collect. (Perhaps with interest whilst they've been in jail...So crime really does pay?)

Ken Clark, Secretary of State for Justice, has put forward another idea - making prisoners work 40 hours a week at minimum wage, with some of their profits going towards their victims. Work at recycling plants etc. This sounds interesting, although, as reports say, this should never effect companies outside. I'm not too sure about the giving of money to criminals either. I've applied to a hundred or two minimum wage jobs since I came out of uni (with no success as you know) and I'm definitely not alone. Plus, won't this encourage people to just live in prisons for profit long term?

Make them work for free? With all profits paying for their prison terms and the rest to victims? Maybe there should be a really crappy, poor quality prison section for those not working, literally boring hell, with nothing there. Then if you work, you can get a better quality cell, more essentials. Then if you work the most, you get prison life which is currently in effect today. Basically today's prisoners would only live as they do now if they worked/studied at least 40 hours a week, while the others would live in extremely cheap cells with cheap living conditions, at a lower cost to the tax payer.

That last idea sounds interesting to me but I fear I would fall against many human rights organisations for the first time. It is a harsh scenario. But hey, on the coach on the way back from the stag doo I watched Death Race, the movie where prisoners are forced to kill each other gruesomely for the public's entertainment on TV after the US economy has crashed and the prison population skyrockets. At least my idea isn't as evil as that one eh?

If prisoners today really are just sitting in their rooms all day watching cable, I think its definitely time we did something about it. ESPECIALLY since we are in a recession and everyone outside is feeling the squeeze. Surely it's madness to keep prison life as comfortable as it ever was while innocent people struggle to get jobs so they can pay for more comfortable prisons? Ideas need to be drawn up and prisoners need to be put to work. Work will be given to them, as if people outside jails would be so lucky..

Political Blog - Deactivate!

What think ye blog reader? Have an idea of your own?