Do you think that in a civilised society prison should only be imposed for the most heinous offences?

Call me a nasty old cynic, but I found her sudden mental collapse unconvincing. I remember a couple of high profile fraudsters who claimed to be suffering from physical or mental illnesses and made a miraculous recovery once they got out of jail.

Ana the repayment of the money might already be in place, hence a judgement but not an order. If civil proceedings for recovery have started, the court will not intervene unless reparation is not complete. Perhaps she is paying up?

Seems to me we all have roughly the same mindset about all this: imprison the dangerous ones, try to change them through prison/probation programs, thieves and others to make reparation, foreigners who commit the worst crimes to be deported. But we realise that all this costs too much money and there are insufficient resources and staff. I would add my own view that the people in power do not have to live near the social problems caused by crims, or school problems caused by kids from chaotic neglectful and violent homes, so it is all academic to them.

What gets me though is this: there is high unemployment, and the unemployed are being (rightly) paid benefits to live. Many of these unemployed, especially the long term ones, are older people with lots of skills. Would it not be better if many were trained and paid to help with rehabilitating the criminals? Or trained in security to protect the ones doing the training/rehab?

Take my family for instance: I have the skills to teach English as a second language, and bookkeeping; my husband has the skills to teach painting and decorating. He is also ex military with training in both unarmed combat and firearms. We are just your average couple. Western countries like the UK and Australia are full of people like us. We are past retirement age now, but we both lost our jobs in our 50s, and never really got proper work since.

The current system is a wicked waste of people, skills and potential.

Hmm - just discovered that the MP in question was not, in fact, ordered to pay any of the expenses she fraudulently claimed back:

The judge also said that his rulings were limited to criminal proceedings. "They do not affect any steps that may be taken through the civil courts to recover any money that Mrs Moran has received to which she was not entitled."

Are any steps being taken? I doubt it...

I'm more than a little worried by the government plan to close prisons before building new private facilities. I think men and women who have been sent to gaol shouldn't have the additional and unintended punishment of living in slum conditions but this isn't the way to deal with it. I'd much rather that people guilty of minor crimes stayed in the community but I'm very much afraid that the position of offenders is very like that of the elderly and infirm and of people with mental health problems; the necessary resources aren't and won't be put into any meaningful programme of support.

Yes. it's called the proceeds of crime act. It's quite effective. There are some surprising places where money and bonds etc are kept and stored. And the police can be very persistent in pursuing the depositors.

I'm pretty sure they can and do.

Does the state seize property bought through profits of crime? If not they should!

There is no doubt that the whole system is a mess, and that there are no simple solutions. But, as when points out, costs could be greatly reduced by using reparative justice with "intensive" police and probation supervision.

Violence against the person has to lead to imprisonment, of course. But take, for example, acquisitive theft - to fuel a drug habit, perhaps. Decriminalisation of certain drugs might reduce that type of theft.

There are hardened criminals, to be sure, as anyone involved in the prison service can tell us. But they way things work, we are probably breeding more of them!

And then - money and the will to change - from where will that come?

Thanks, when - there was no mention of that in the report I read.

Ana the reparation judgement is that she pays the £60,000 back that she had wrongly claimed.

Brilliant thread by the way....

She was given a two year supervision and treatment order. I don't know about reparation.

When criminals go to prison they usually learn new tricks from other in mates.

I think that the Law in the UK is toooooo lenient on serious crimes like Murder

I believe that in stead of chucking offenders in a place were they can only get worse they should be offered help with gaining good life skills--because lets face it most criminals have had a horrid start to life and sometimes they need good guidance and helped with gaining life skills..... I think they should still be punished for their crime but be made use of in the community rather than send them to jail...

Jail IMHO should be for criminals that are of any danger to the public in any way..

There was an MP not fit to stand trial recently, wasn't there? She was well aware of what she had done, but her mental health had deteriorated sufficiently for the authorities to decide it wasn't in the public interest to make her stand trial, and I think they did some sort of bargain to ensure she continued with psychiatric treatment and made reparation.

The ones who fake mental illness tend to get found out, as it's not easy to keep it up, especially when cases are adjourned for assessments which can take weeks or months. Offenders who brag that they fooled the judge are kidding themselves. Any highly dangerous offender who tries this tactic wouldn't tell others they are doing it unless they are the type who perceive status in being judged mentally ill, and that would come to the attention of the authorities soon enough. It's a bit of a myth that you can fool the court into believing false claims of mental illness. Easy to claim depression, but that wouldn't affect the outcome.

Thank you for that when very interesting. I guess you know a lot more about it than me which I must confess is very little. However I wonder, is it really possible to fool the authorities/courts/whatever into thinking one is "mentally ill" or would the "act" be quickly uncovered?

I think what I was getting at is that I have heard quite a few news items where the "criminal" is deemed not mentally fit to stand trial (yet mentally aware enough to commit the crime?)

gillybob there are many mentally ill prisoners who don't want to be taken out of the prison system because they (usually wrongly) fear they will stay locked up for longer than a fixed term in prison. Claiming mental illness in relation to serious crime so the Health department has responsibility means that, if accepted and placed in a locked health unit, the secretary of state has to agree every stage that restrictions are reduced, such as being allowed to move accompanied within the perimeter of a locked area of regional secure units or special hospitals, or getting ground parole. Many mentally ill prisoners would rather take their chances of seeing a psychiatrist on the hospital wing of a prison, and be released to the psychiatric unit of a local hospital on their fixed release date.

The whole system is a mess, with many mentally ill people being diverted from custody when they need a secure setting for their own and the public's protection, and many mentally ill people locked up when they just need treatment.

janthea I have two problems with this.

One being if there is "no time off for good behaviour" then there is no incentive to behave in prison. I think there needs to be some incentive and the only one I think that can really work is the though of getting out a wee bit early. Although I don't mean halving a sentence.

Genuine mentally ill patients should not go to prison I agree but how many cases do you hear of where a criminal plays the "I am mentally ill and therefore......." card? in some cases they claim mental illness in order to avoid a trial completely.

Not sure what the real answer is though.

whenim64 There should be some way of ensuring that they served their sentences back in their country. Impossible, I know, but this is only hypothetical anyway.

Ok, I see what you mean, Janthea. Here's a challenge - a Jamaican man I interviewed was charged with three sexual assaults of prostitutes. He was threatened with immediate deportation as soon as he was convicted. Probation argued that he should serve his sentence here, as he would walk off the plane and not serve a sentence or be supervised, and would be a very high risk of doing the same again. He stayed in the UK and wasn't deported immediately. I think that was the right thing to do, although it cost UK taxpayers a lot of money. (I do think we should be able to recoup money from other countries, but nothing in place).

whenim64 I was referring to foreign criminals who committed heinous crimes, not low level crimes. Murders and other violent crimes such as have been in the papers recently.

I would be concerned about some foreign criminals being deported. For example, a young man I met who sought asylum in the UK to escape the tyrrany of the Taliban. When he was living on the streets and could not get benefits he broke into a warehouse, stole money from the office drawer, returned next night for shelter and was arrested. He got a short prison sentence and was threatened with deportation but allowed to remain because his lfe was in danger if he returned home. He had been forced to live on his wits, and the threat of prosecution was not a deterrent when his life was threatened.

I think there should be prison time for murder, rape, robbery, burglary, any violent crimes and the lengths of their sentences should be as ordered by the judge - not time out for good behaviour! And the sentences should be long!!

Lesser crimes - perhaps they could be put to work which may solve staff shortages in certain areas. And then rehabilitation.

Crimes involving fraud, etc. - they should have to repay their ill gotten gains. Drug dealers' profits should go to their victims.

Foreign criminals should be deported immediately. No European Human Rights Courts disallowing this.
Mentally ill people should receive medical treatment, not prison sentences.

Elegran That's a good point. It's a fraction of the cost of prison to have offenders under intensive probation and police supervision. If the serial short-sentenced offenders were under appropriate suervision and intervention, the cost of imprsonment would be vastly reduced and prison numbers would fall.