For Gordon Brown, as leader of the Labour Party, it is true to say "This is your prison scandal, Prime Minister". It may be argued that Camilla Cavendish is involved in the game of Trivial Pursuit by trying to minimalise a serious subject with an analogy to Monopoly. She has erred in the same way that TV companies have recently been criticised for portraying a false impression to deceive viewers, only that she is trying to deceive readers of The Times. It is not true that prisoners have been given get out of jail free cards by the government. The prisoners have paid their debt to society. It is true that the jails are full. And that the government is employing schemes to ease the overcrowding. However, it is not true that "ministers seem more interested in interning terror suspects without charge than incarcerating convicted thugs". Although it is true that they do appear to be paying to greater attention to depriving certain people of their civil liberties. I suppose that Camilla Cavendish really means human beings when she refers to "thugs"?
The principle of proportionate has evolved from the EU and was not a fundamental principle of British justice. Although time for the crime which came over from the US has been with us for longer. I don't know where Camilla Cavendish found these so-called "reasonable people", but prisoners do serve the sentences that they have been given. She refers to the CJA 2003 and prisoners serving 4 years and over being eligible to serve half that time with parole. However, she fails to point out that being eligible is not the same as parole being granted. Moreover, since the present system of parole came into being in 1967, judges have doubled their sentences in the belief that the prisoner will automatically get parole. Less than 20% actually do get parole. She goes onto say that by releasing 25,000 prisoners to ease the prison overcrowding is not justice as we used to know it. She is talking out of her arse. Justice is the process of sentencing and the prisoner serving that sentence and being released from custody.
It is nonsense to claim that sentences have become meaningless, and state that the reason why is because the government has not embarked on a prison building programme. The sentence is imposed to show the offender that the public is not best pleased with his or her conduct, and to act as a deterrent against future re-offending. This should not be confused with the government's cock-up in relation to the CJA 2003 and the IPPs which has led to 3,000 prison places being taken up by lifers who should have received determinate sentences.
Camilla Cavendish states: "There are famously no votes in prisons". Now, if you really want to write an interesting and informative piece, why do you not look at this issue? Given the ECtHR decision that there should be votes in prison, I would be interested in the government's response.
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