Is this really a problem?

Every few months you will no doubt hear in the media about a new plan the government and/or justice department have come up with to reduce the overcrowding in our prisons.

Some of these initiatives (that’s what they call them) have been genuinely awe-inspiring. One of my favourites was from the Lord Chief Justice, who said that long sentences shouldn’t be given to murderers, as they spend 30 years in prison so it’s a bit of a waste of space.

Great plan, I agree, why should somebody who’s taken the life of another human being be punished? We should just tell them off. Or maybe remind them that it’s really not OK to kill people, then send them on their way. This guys title is a combination of the words Lord, Chief and Justice. I would assume that the Justice part of his title implies that this is the particular area his job is focused on. I would further assume that the Chief part is a suggestion that he is in command of a rather large amount of said area. And the Lord part then says to me that he is the person in charge of all of the people that are in charge of all of the Justice.

If this is correct, I really don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to expect him to have a vague understanding of what the word ”Justice” actually means. But evidentially it is, because he plainly has no clue. And the thing is, it wouldn’t even help reduce overcrowding anyway, it would just result in more people being put in prison for shorter times. If somebody murdered someone I loved, and they got out of prison after anything less than 25 years, I’m pretty sure I would have to kill them. I mean really, I don’t see how I’d have any other choice. So letting him out early wouldn’t have achieved anything in the long run, as I’d end up in prison instead of him.

Another suggestion was to stop putting burglars in prison, which, for anyone who’s wondering, is an entire fleet of stupid. Burglars, muggers and people who break into cars should all be put in prison for an absolute minimum of 5 years for the first offence, they should have a hand cut off for the second offence, and they should be boiled alive for the third offence. I’m not even joking, we shouldn’t tolerate these crimes even the tiniest amount, they are inexcusable. I genuinely think these are the worst three crimes in the world. They affect everyone every single day, whether you are a victim that day or not. Even though I haven’t been burgled for years, every time I leave my house I’m worried that some illiterate prick will break in to my house and steal my shit. Every time I’m out in shitty parts of London I have to be weary of getting mugged. And every time I come to my car in the morning, I’m almost expecting that some prick will have keyed it or smashed the window to steal my parking change. Even when you are not a direct victim of these crimes, they affect you, and it shouldn’t be like this, it’s easy to stamp out. We just have to start punishing it properly.

So not putting thieves in prison was patently a shit idea too. But my favourite idea for reducing the prison population, my absolute favourite idea of all, was the suggestion that heroin addicts should be given HMV vouchers as an incentive to stay off smack. Brilliant. I think there is a chance that they are perhaps overestimating the potential lure a discounted sugerbabes album would have to a hardened smack addict. In all my years of being friends with fucked up druggies, I never once met anyone who was considering giving up smack so they could concentrate on their CD collection. This idea is so utterly and completely ill conceived it should be put under a microscope and studied.

My suggestion makes a lot more sense. I will demonstrate it as follows.

You have a container that holds 1000 marbles. It currently has 1000 marbles in it. You have another 1000 marbles you need to contain. Would you:

a) Remove the 1000 marbles you currently have in the container, then add the new 1000 marbles
b) Remove the marbles that have been in the container the longest, and replace them with new marbles
c) Send some of the marbles on extensive training and therapy in order to convince them to stop being marbles
d) Discard the new marbles
e) Buy another container that can hold another 1000 marbles

If you’re answer was E, congratulations, you are more intelligent than every single member of our Government. Seriously, how expensive would a new prison be? It would be nothing compared to the millions of pounds they are spending on initiatives and schemes to find ways around not having enough room to store criminals. It would be nothing compared to the huge amounts of money spent on a police force who constantly have to track down and arrest the same criminals, just for them to be released on the grounds there isn’t room to put them in prison.

Something like 80% of England is basically a big expanse of green. There is plenty of room for new prisons. Arsenal just built a new football stadium, the FA just build a new Wembley, and Liverpool are about to replace Anfield. Down the road from my house someone is building a giant shopping centre, and over the road from my hotel at the moment a bigger hotel is being built. It’s possible to build things, I know it is, I’ve seen people do it, they do it all the time.

They spent god knows how many hundreds of millions of pounds on the millennium dome, why not spend some money on a giant new prison. Pick anywhere in the UK, then build a fucking giant prison there. Dig a moat around it, create a few hundred jobs for new prison staff, job done. It really isn’t complicated.

Or we should just empty criminals into the middle of the sea. I’m happy either way.