Home | Friday 15th February 2008 | Issue 620

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OUT OF WARDER

As we have recently reported, the Neo-Labour mission has been to introduce hundreds of new laws and criminalise an ever greater proportion of the population. And they’ve been locking up record numbers of people too, even faster than they can do private sector deals to build new ‘super’ prisons to house them (see SchNEWS 614).

Now, the prison service officially declared the entire national prison infrastructure ‘full’ (for some reason images come to mind of them putting up the sign in the front window like a B&B). No room at the inn for new inmates as last week the population hit 81,681 - a far cry from those now-rose tinted days of the mid-nineties, under reasonable, friendly Tory types like that nice Mr Michael Howard, when we were raging against a then record population of only 56,000!

A huge number of those now inside are there for short sentences; non-serious, non-public-threatening stuff, like non-payment of fines, protesting, or being a foreign national. The usual overflow is police station cells but with these also rammed to bursting it means that the newly incarcerated are being put into court cells. Not only are conditions at yer local magistrates or nick even worse than your average prison – often even more cramped, lacking natural light or exercise facilities, it’s costing a fortune too. It costs £420 a night in a police cell and £300 in a court cell, compared to just 75 quid usually (you wonder why they don’t just sentence everyone to a stay in a Travel Lodge – but then there is human rights to consider..)

Meanwhile it’s been revealed that Jack ‘Boot’ Straw from the Orwellian Ministry of Justice is out trawling ebay looking for second hand prison ships. Rule Britannia!

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