This is why they want mega-prisons?

Why counter the proposals?

If they are good ideas, then support them – if they are bad ideas then oppose them, but don’t decide to oppose something simply because it was proposed by a political opponent.

Personally, I would like to see more talk about rehabilitation and post-prison support to help ex-prisoners re-enter conventional society. Not to say that isn’t going on already, I just haven’t been in a position to read about it.

However, the proposals as presented above sound like a interesting idea with quite a few upsides and negligible downsides.

As you seek views to counter the plans, I presume you object to them but you failed to say why.

If you think they are bad ideas, why didn’t you say so? If you object to them on grounds of petty politics, then that is frankly, just petty, and actually worrying where a very important issue is concerned.

[2]

Well put. You don’t have to disagree with something just because it was proposed by someone you often disagree with. The only politicians don’t do that more often is because they love to be able to smear by association – and you can’t do that if you accept it’s possible to sometime agree with an opponent.

The classic smears go ‘person X agreed with person Y on issue A. Person Y holds controversial views on issue B. Therefore person X holds the same views on issue B’. If you start saying “I can agree with you on A but not B” then you lose the ability to smear, and politicians aren’t going to give that up so easily.

Wonderfullly creative, we will then have a captive army of reserve labour.

The Association of Prisoners is totally opposed to this “some would be paid into a victims’ fund”. It is up to magistrates and judges to impose penalties upon offenders, and not the Executive with this nonsense “victim tax”. No taxation without representation. In Hirst v UK(No2), Prisoners Votes Case, the European Court of Human Rights stated that because convicted prisoners are denied their human right to vote they are victims.

“In 1919, the Labour Party established a Prison System Enquiry Committee…It’s report (Hobhouse and Fenner Brockway, 1922)…argued strongly for a system of payment for prison work…The right course is to demand that it should be done under Trade Union conditions”(Prison Labour: Salvation or Slavery?, Zyl Smit and Dunbkel).

I understand that Eric Allison has visited Ben Gunn, General Secretay of the AoP, in HM Prison Shepton Mallet prior to writing his articles for the Guardian. Ben’s Prison Blog can be read here. But you fence sitters will need to be quick because there is a danger that the MoJ will gag him.

£4 a week is disgraceful: if you want to ‘incentivise them into seeing a connection between effort and reward’ then paying them less in a week than someone outside will earn in an hour, even on minimum wage, isn’t the way to go about it.

What this teaches prisoners is that the system is exploitative.

It also deprives non-prisoners of work, as do schemes to work in the community. The Right are always arguing that people convicted of crimes should be picking up litter, etc. without a thought to people who do that as a living.

I agree that magistrates should be the ones to impose damages to be paid to victims, but I don’t see any problem with using contracted out prison labour when extracting that compensation.

Nick: I suggest you go and read Ben Gunn’s “Bloody Victims!” post for a different perspective.

I think that before the Tories commit themselves to paying prisoners at least the minimum wage for the work they do they need to establish who actually pays the inmates’ wages. Is it the companies who provide the “work”, or the prison service itself….?

Why counter the proposals?

If they are good ideas, then support them – if they are bad ideas then oppose them, but don’t decide to oppose something simply because it was proposed by a political opponent.

Absolutely. The Tories may be vile, but if they have a good idea (y’know, even a stopped clock is right twice a day), you can’t dismiss it because of its source.

Cath Elliott: In some cases it is the taxpayers and others the companies. It is wrong for the MoJ to sell prison labour at well below the National Minimum Wage.

jailhouselawyer I agree completely. However, I think it’s unrealistic for the Tories to claim they’ll instigate the minimum wage in prisons, when doing so will lead to a massive increase in public sector spending, especially when they’re committed to reducing it.

If they instead decide to insist that all companies who have these contracts with the service will have to pay the wages themselves, and at the same rates they pay outside of prisons, all that will happen is that companies will see no benefit to providing work in prisons and they’ll withdraw. Then no one will be getting paid, as there won’t be any jobs.

Shatterface @6 I tend to agree with paragraph 1. Paying prisoners a reasonable wage, even if less than a civilian might earn, should be part of rehabilitation. No doubt there are discussion papers written by those with far more knowledge than us that discuss how prisoners might build up a bank account for their release (or to give away, in the case of offenders who will never be released). There is a problem that the bank account would become a “smuggled drugs account”, but it isn’t insurmountable.

I think that you are missing something in paragraph 3, relating to community service. Rather than being a green and pleasant land, much of Britain is a shit hole. Council employees struggle to cope with the public space for which they are responsible, and they get my respect. What is wrong with those performing community service cleaning up the stuff that is currently ignored (ie exempt from council responsibility)? There are a lot of undeveloped sites close to my home, where the owners have erected fencing but the sites still suffer from fly tipping. So why not create schemes to clean them up? It doesn’t have to mean stealing jobs or drudgery for those performing manual work.

The ever excellent _The Magistrate’s Blog_ and others have discussed the reluctance of voluntary organisations to employ community service workers. Taking on an offender who has been convicted of petty theft or anti-social behaviour imposes a serious management cost on those organisations. Thus there are more people waiting to provide community service than vacancies.

I don’t have the knowledge to conduct a debate about how community service ought to be reconstructed, but I can see that there are missed opportunities. There’s been no public debate on the subject, apart from the offensive requirement for public humiliation, and there’s no sign of one in the immediate future.

Ben’s Prison Blog has this offering today…

Prison Slave Labour

And a problem for Ben’s Prison Blog…

MoJ in bid to silence Ben’s Prison Blog

Is one to assume from the lack of comments that nobody cares?

I’m with #2 here. Good ideas are good ideas (just to repeat my favourite one of the moment: Enoch Powell used to argue for the universality of human rights at a time when it was deeply unfashionable to do so).

Cath has someting there about insisting upon minimum wage in prison, or the same rates as are paid outside. If there’s no benefit to a company using the prisn labour then they won’t. So perhaps better to have lower wages but have the jobs.

However, there’s one bit in the original report. It’s that the wages are deliberately kept low by government fiat. Brown specifically is stated as having refused to allow a rise to £5.50 from £4.00.

Yes, I know I bang on about markets but that does seem the best way to work out what the pay should be: see how much companies are prepared to apy and then let them pay it.

As to what to do with the money: I’m not averse to the idea that there should be a restriction on how much someone inside is actually allowed to spend while inside. Imagine that wages were halfway between outside ones and their current level. Say £100 a week? (just to imagine what more market orientated ones might be). That’s a hell of a lot of disposable income after bed and board are paid for (yes, I know, it’s not voluntary but still).

How about a forced savings scheme? Some amount is on tick at the prison shop (whatever, £5, £10, who knows) and the rest into a deposit account waiting for the day of release? That’s if it’s not sent on to family to pay bills etc?

Wouldn’t it be a reasonably sensible idea for prisoners just out of serving a sentence to actually have some savings? A deposit on a flat (rental I mean), a few sets of clothes, all that?

Enoch Powell used to argue for the universality of human rights at a time when it was deeply unfashionable to do so

He also wasn’t very fond of black people at a time when it was deeply fashionable to express that opinion.
You know, just saying.

AN ECO-SOLUTION

Send them to the galleys!

Save fossil fuel and inflict REAL punishment on criminals at the same time!

Re Ian, Mark & others. I think my use of the word ‘counter’ gives the wrong impression.
To be clear: from our research the prison labour industry is secretive, has little oversight, is of varying quality, good practice isn’t exported to other prisons and its effect on rehabilitation is hard to quantify.
And there is little sign of this changing.
The Conservatives are proposing changes and have studied the issue. You may like or dislike their proposals in part or in total; but either way it presents a challenge (invitation?) to other politicians and people interested in prison policy – and I’m waiting to see how they answer that challenge.
The debate on this thread suggests at the very least that the status quo isn’t acceptable.