Pampered prisoners

The prison population of Britain now exceeds 80,000. The cost of each prisoner per year is £40,000 pounds according to a recent tv news report. That is £3,200,000,000 per year. There are countries whose entire GDP is not that much. Why the huge expense? Is it that prison officers are paid like princes? I don't think so.

I've seen three documentaries about prisons in the last year or so- I was struck by the very high level of facilities across the board. The accomodation was a higher standard than the general housing in many African countries, higher than quite a few hotels I've stayed in, and higher than the homes of many of the inmates. That is a scandal. If for no other reason that every single penny spent on prisons is public funds, that is a terrible scandal. Prison is about punishment. It ought to be unpleasant, difficult and an experience you would not willingly ever repeat. Instead, the evidence is that criminals see prison as a perfectly viable outcome, many even prefering it to forms of punishment like community service where they might actually have some personal discomfort or have to do some real work.

A prison, in my view should be bleak, clean, functional, boring and completely devoid of the facilities that free people enjoy. There would be no TV, no ping-pong tables, no video games- nothing but a stack of Bibles in the chapel. Prisons are much more like hotels than they are places of punishment- drugs are freely available, many prisoners get weekend passes, and in lower security prisons, the inmates have their own bathrooms, desks, TV's and fridges. Until every English person has a home at least that amenity-rich, I don't want a single law-breaker swanning around in such cushy circumstances.

How we came to have such idiotic ideas about prisons I can't say- but the taxes of the poor pay for these Ritzy places and I want that to stop.