Clarke thinks prison doesn’t work; well what in our criminal justice system does?
London Riots
Yesterday on Newsnight, Ken Clarke said that prison “is an extremely expensive way to accommodating people for a time and making no progress whatever in stopping them being criminals.” Clarke never seems to be happy unless he’s infuriating the law and order conservatives, and so last night shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.
Today we learn that the 11-year-old rioter, the youngest of all those arrested over the summer riots, has been arrested again (via Evening Standard).
During the riots he stole a £50 bin, was given an 18-month rehabilitation order, and was told by the judge “You can’t get away with behaviour like this.” Days later he was arrested again. This time for assault and shoplifting at the Liberty shopping centre in Romford. These are not his first two convictions.
The Mail reports today Christopher Williams, a convicted paedophile, who had previously been banned from his local park which contains a children’s play area, has had the decision overturned because it breaches his human rights.
Following the riots, David Cameron stood up and gave a speech that could have been penned four years ago: Broken Britain, broken society, social breakdown, crime. Issues that are important to conservatives. These are issues that need solving.
Yet with a Justice Secretary believing that prison doesn’t work, Human Rights legislation that gives criminals more power than their victims, and the existing methods for policing the young, failing generation after generation of British youth, one wonders if this Government is up to the job.
We wait with bated breath for Priti Patel’s contribution in ‘After the Coalition‘, as she pens the chapter on criminal justice. Perhaps we will find some sense there.
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