A draft (or should that be daft?) proposal how the Prison Service might cut £60M per annum from its budget, written by the Deputy Director General of the Prison Service, Michael Spurr, for the attention of prison managers, has been leaked to the media by a prison governor. The Observer reports that daily cell searches are to be scrapped. However, I fail to see how that will save any money because they are conducted by prison officers who are already being paid a wage. The only way money could be cut like this is to reduce the size of the staff force. These searches are not "cell searches" as such, whereby the cell and prisoner(s) are searched for contraband, but instead merely entail a prison officer checking the cell door to see if the lock and bolt, and window bars, have been tampered with.
Cutting the number of voluntary and mandatory drug tests, on the other hand, would save money, as the kits cost between £10-30 each, and the laboratory analysis of samples may cost as much as £600 each. I can see why the Prison Officer's Association (POA) is up in arms over this, because it is a nice cushy number for their members to be involved in taking the piss rather than having to work for their money.
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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