dave you say we can't keep filling up prisons and secure hospitals?
well, as for prisons, a significant percentage of prisoners ought either to be doing non-custodial sentences or be in psychiatric care.
prisons are used as dustbins too often. as soon as somebody gets sent to prison it gets far more difficult to rehabilitate them because they have the black mark of prison on their record.
How many ex-cons go back to crime because they can't find straight jobs afterwards?
really, community service, and remedial educational classes, should sort out a lot of them. In Norway, minor prison sentences are served over a series of weekends, which means they get punished, but don't have to lose jobs or family.
then with those who are mentally ill, banging them up in prison is going to make their condition far worse.
Do you know for instance that Styal prison, soon to be europe's biggest women's prison, does not have a single resident psychiatrist? Not one! And they are notorious for suicides. Surprise surprise.
Obviously a percentage of criminals need locking up and possibly locking up for life, and a percentage of mental patients cannot be either cured or at least stabilized sufficiently to be allowed to be free, but we as a country do nothing like enough to tackle the majority who can be salvaged.
That is why we have the biggest prison population in Europe , and it is a huge waste of people, and adds to society's insecurity simply so that people like alan can think they've been "punished".
