Bring back real discipline in prisons, Lynn News Letters

This malaise in our prisons goes back decades in the prison service from the 60s through to the present day and the demise in these institutions in essence must be charted at source.

The rot started in the 70s with modernisation and progressive penal reforms. The increase of relative inmate freedom ran correspondingly with a reduction in staff having jurisdiction over their charges, coupled with a major influx of do gooders into the system. The rest is history.

Solutions are offered through more staff and money, for example, but such measures will do no more than paper up cracks which will inevitably become an avalanche. The service was functional and structured in the 60s because there was real discipline and the same applied to schools, until Labour introduced comprehensive education with all its ramifications.

The only solution for rescuing a beleaguered prison service is to create the conditions of imprisonment which will make offenders not want to come back. Unfortunately two barriers will be the human rights acts and pernicious prisoner litigation culture. It’s common sense but common sense ain’t common, yet nonsensical political correctness is in abundant supply.

The drawback for massive recruitment is that the new employees will be brainwashed in liberalism through years of failing schools and will merely exacerbate the ongoing failures in prisons. Ministers are transient figures at the Justice Department, here today gone tomorrow, and have no more acumen than the prison cat.

David Fleming

Downham