The police state is nearly here - Guardian

[Azrael]

Oh Attica, Attica, you'd moved onto "posh twat", and we were having such fun, but now you're just getting repetitious.

Guess the Bullingdon comment went too far. Well my apologies. Don't worry, sure the Cameroons still have a job for you. And if you ask nicely they might even let you keep your trousers this time.

 

[audiotech]

I couldn't speak for anarchists, baby eating or otherwise (I'm a conservative), but the sloppier liberal wing of the Left tends to view criminals as victims of circumstances engineered by a corrupt system.

I'm annoyed that criminals such as Aitken and Archer for example and part of that 'corrupt system' you mention, have been let out too early meself.

 

[Azrael]

Ditto. Both men were a disgrace and should have served their sentences in full. And Archer should have been handed a lifetime ban on producing material which impersonates a novel.

 

[fela fan]

Hahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha

Your laughter merely exposes your ignorance. Never mind though, it's catching.

 

[The Black Hand]

Your laughter merely exposes your ignorance. Never mind though, it's catching.

Sorry pal - you're so far off the mark it's impossible to approach what you write with a straight face.

 

[rhys gethin]

Ditto. Both men were a disgrace and should have served their sentences in full. And Archer should have been handed a lifetime ban on producing material which impersonates a novel.

Yes, but... some of what you say about law makes sense, but I tried to make the point earlier(64) that a very large number of those who are thrown into prison are in all sorts of ways inadequates paying for the failure of capitalism to educate them or teach them better values. Punishment is undoubtedly better than not caring, compensation better than punishment - but it seems to me that - rather than making their weaknesses an excuse - it would be best and most sensible not to create all these criminals in the first place. But that problem, perhaps, would bump up against your toryism?

 

[Luther Blissett]

Posh Twat - its you who is on the same ground as the Eton Brigade.

Forget class/education/lineage - he's not posh, he's not clever - he's an intolerant automaton regurgitating a script he's picked up (osmosis) - you can find those sentiments in the tabloids - from the Daily Mail to the Sun

 

[Gmart]

It's good to see that the powerless are fighting amongst themselves arguing over who is in which 'class' while the people in power are getting away with murder.

No wonder the UK never changes, they've divided us through allowing the inequality of opportunity to continue, and then there is no one to stop them from turning the UK into a Police State while this is happening.

If we had a constitution then this would be a good check on their power, but they say that the 'unwritten' constitution is wonderful and we believe them. Even when the EU tries to give us a constitution we react against it strangely doing exactly what our elected masters want us to do!

Oh well, maybe we get the system we deserve! Feel free to attack me ad hominem if you want, why not? It's not like we can actually stop them.

Idiots!!

 

[Luther Blissett]

"But the moment we found a way to be free
They invented a dividing line, street credibility
The qualifying factors are politics and class
Left wing macho street fighters willing to kick arse
They said because of racism they'd come out on the street
It was just a form of fascism for the socialist elite
Bigotry and blindness, a Marxist con
Another clever trick to keep us all in line
Neat little labels to keep us all apart
To keep us all divided when the troubles start
Pogo on a Nazi, Spit upon a Jew
Vicious mindless violence that offers nothing new
Left Wing violence, Right Wing violence all seems much the same
Bully boys out fighting, it's just the same old game
Boring fucking politics that'll get us all shot
Left wing, right wing, you can stuff the lot
Keep your petty prejudice, I don't see the point
ANARCHY AND FREEDOM IS WHAT I WANT"
Crass, Stations of the Crass Album 'White Punks on Hope"

 

[gosub]

GMarthews brings up EUrope again like some wonderful panacea that it plainly is not. All this biometric data will be shared with every state in in the EU link and as the UK moves from the traditional model of allowing activities unless they are explicitly unlawful towards the more common European idea of activities need to be permitted even the need to get police permission to protest around Westminster is compatible with the European Human Rights act.

 

[Gmart]

Not letting Europe distract us, but arguing amongst ourselves is not going to help is it Gosub?
Sure we disagree on whether Europe is good or not, but surely we can agree here on this thread that the path of the UK model seems to be going somewhat awry?
If our system in the UK is so great how come it is so weak that our own elected MP's are scared into supporting a war against the wishes of 80% of the population?

 

[TeeJay]

Sorry JHE but I can't be bothered with him - its just right wing shite... Daft abuse it maybe but he's still an asshole.

But he is beating you hands down in putting forward a coherent and rational argument. You are just spouting abuse - it isn't very impressive. If you actually have any beliefs why are you unable to present them? If you think you are right why are you unable to win the argument with him? Looks like you are losing and throwing a tantrum about it. Whether you or your opponent are left wing or right wing makes no difference.

 

[Azrael]

Yes, but... some of what you say about law makes sense, but I tried to make the point earlier(64) that a very large number of those who are thrown into prison are in all sorts of ways inadequates paying for the failure of capitalism to educate them or teach them better values. Punishment is undoubtedly better than not caring, compensation better than punishment - but it seems to me that - rather than making their weaknesses an excuse - it would be best and most sensible not to create all these criminals in the first place. But that problem, perhaps, would bump up against your toryism?

Other than 19th century Liberals and Thatcherites I doubt anyone relies on capitalism for their values. I would have thought that moral teaching is the job of parents, teachers, and peers (of the non-ermine type), roughly in that order.

In the endless crime debate the Left tends to overplay economics and the Right tends to overplay morality. Material wealth is only one element of our lives: moral philosophy from the groups I mentioned (religious or secular) is just as important, if not more so. The scale of temptation may vary with income but all classes of people can access the moral tools needed to resist that temptation. (And as white collar crime shows, succumbing to the pull of Mammon is something no class has a monopoly on.) When Dickensian poverty was endemic crime was low, because crime is caused by choice not circumstance. Our backgrounds influence our choices but they don’t make them for us, and it's dehumanising to treat the poor as pliable hostages to their environment instead of free moral agents. The vast majority of poor people act like decent human beings, just as rich louts like the Bullingdon mob do not. It’s also the poor who suffer most at the hands of cruel and brutal men.

Compassion and punishment aren't mutually exclusive. Doubtless many thugs are ignorant of (or ignore) the consequences of their actions: that doesn't help their victims or mitigate their wrongdoing. A swift, fair, and proportionate punishment remains the best way to demonstrate consequences in real terms. Misplaced sympathy can become a blank cheque for crime. In recent decades courts have let ”minor” criminals escape gaol a score of times to “give them a chance”: the only chance it gives them is to gain delusions of invulnerability, which makes them worse, until they commit a serious crime and get sent away for a long stretch. By then they’re a career felon. This isn’t compassionate to crook or victim.

I've said many times that I want our ridiculous drugs laws cleared off our statue book, and for other victimless crimes to go the same way. "Victimless crime" is an oxymoron and should be treated as such. I want mentally ill prisoners cared for outside slums that would do a Victor Hugo novel proud. I want proper education made available to all prisoners who show application. Ex-convicts should receive help in finding honest work and decent accommodation: it’s only sensible to have a system that capitalises on genuine attempts at personal betterment. The two things that bump up against my conservatism are efforts to pass the buck from criminals and calls for the end of retributive punishment.

As Britain’s tailspin into crime and authoritarianism shows, this only serves to punish us all.

 

[Azrael]

Forget class/education/lineage - he's not posh, he's not clever - he's an intolerant automaton regurgitating a script he's picked up (osmosis) - you can find those sentiments in the tabloids - from the Daily Mail to the Sun

Wow, I didn't realise that the Sun and Daily Mail now support unanimous jury verdicts, the abolition of drug prohibition and the right to silence. Maybe the Digger needs some medical marijuana in his old age. I imagine they might also have something to say on my views of Baroness Thatcher. (I believe "neo-liberal fanatic", "laissez faire drone" and "social vandal" are all phrases I've deployed here before.)

And doubtless my consistent support of trade unions would go down well with the Beast of Whapping. As would my support for secondary picketing and the inclusion of trade union rights in a written constitution.

Remind me: which one of us is the intolerant automaton regurgitating a script?

 

[Azrael]

Not letting Europe distract us, but arguing amongst ourselves is not going to help is it Gosub?
Sure we disagree on whether Europe is good or not, but surely we can agree here on this thread that the path of the UK model seems to be going somewhat awry?
If our system in the UK is so great how come it is so weak that our own elected MP's are scared into supporting a war against the wishes of 80% of the population?

The British constitution is a medieval fag-end built to restrict monarchs not politicians. As a conservative it pains me to say this, but our ancestors have left us an utter shambles to deal with.

However it's a false choice to say it's our way or the highway (or rather, tunnel) to the Continent. We should solve British problems with a British solution. Whether some idealised Euro-state would be preferable is a moot point: no such state exists. We have to deal with what we’ve got, and we've got the EU, a remote and undemocratic centralised bureaucracy eagerly gobbling up power and resources en route to some 1950s federalist dreamland. Its traditions are not ours. As has been pointed out, the useless European Declaration of Human Rights (and its weedy offspring, the Human Rights Act, 1998) offers scant protection from serious government abuse and tyranny.

We should write (another) English Bill of Rights (the Scots, with their separate law and traditions, will doubtless want to create their own). This should enshrine traditional civil liberties such as trial by jury, habeas corpus and a protection from double jeopardy into a special category of law. The Euro convention contains none of these things. It features abstract rights like "privacy", "liberty and security" and "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" instead of cast-iron restrictions on the activity of the state. The Euro rights, being abstract concepts, must be "balanced" against one another, which means in effect that rights can be abridged by the state: a concept that is dangerous beyond the telling of it.

Euro rights are, by and large, positive rights: an idealist concept that aims to offer freedom to do something instead of the freedom from something. Like all idealist concepts, they’re useless in the real world. Unlike our traditional liberties, which regulate how freedom is removed, the Euro rights say it cannot be (although of course they allow it to be severely diminished). This leads to madness like granting gaoled convicts the vote while allowing innocent people to have their DNA filed away. It brings the very concept of having rights into disrepute as a protection for the guilty. Again, dangerous beyond the telling of it. Let’s do the job ourselves and replace the useless Human Rights Act before it’s too late.

 

[detective-boy]

In recent decades courts have let ”minor” criminals escape gaol a score of times to “give them a chance”: the only chance it gives them is to gain delusions of invulnerability, which makes them worse, until they commit a serious crime and get sent away for a long stretch. [my emphasis]

That highlighted bit is the problem - everyone deserves a chance, probably several chances (depending on the seriousness of the various offences) ... but not an infinite number.

The muddle-headed thinking of the libertarians and social "scientists" of the 70s and 80s led to the application of statistics in a fashion as erroneous as Sir Roy Meadows - (a) most offenders given a non-custodial sentence do not re-offend; (b) most offenders given a custodial sentence do re-offend, ergo, (c) if we always give people non-custodial sentences, and never give people custodial sentences, we will reduce offending ...

What they took absolutely no account of was the fact of repeat offending, looking at whether a person re-offending after a first / second / third ... non-custodial sentence was more or less likely to re-offend after a second / third / fourth ... than an offending "virgin" ... (the answer to which is blatantly bleeding obvious)

 

[guinnessdrinker]

This leads to madness like granting gaoled convicts the vote

the ECHR may have voted in favour of the right of jailed convicts to vot in elections, but has the legislation actually been amended?

 

[Fruitloop]

That highlighted bit is the problem - everyone deserves a chance, probably several chances (depending on the seriousness of the various offences) ... but not an infinite number.

The muddle-headed thinking of the libertarians and social "scientists" of the 70s and 80s led to the application of statistics in a fashion as erroneous as Sir Roy Meadows - (a) most offenders given a non-custodial sentence do not re-offend; (b) most offenders given a custodial sentence do re-offend, ergo, (c) if we always give people non-custodial sentences, and never give people custodial sentences, we will reduce offending ...

What they took absolutely no account of was the fact of repeat offending, looking at whether a person re-offending after a first / second / third ... non-custodial sentence was more or less likely to re-offend after a second / third / fourth ... than an offending "virgin" ... (the answer to which is blatantly bleeding obvious)

You don't think the nature of prison, and the way society treats ex-prisoners has somethnig to do with it?

 

[detective-boy]

You don't think the nature of prison, and the way society treats ex-prisoners has somethnig to do with it?

Probably. Lots of things have something to do with it.

But to take to try and justify why people should be given non-custodial sentence after non-custodial sentence is exactly the sort of woolly-minded thinking which got us here.

You don't think that the reason some people constantly re-offend is because they are nasty, violent, thieving scum, may have something to do with it as well?

 

[Fruitloop]

Well, I don't think they were born that way - and if they were then it would be more like a disease than something with associated moral culpability.

 

[detective-boy]

Well, I don't think they were born that way -

But it's not how / what they were born that is the issue is it? It's how / what they are now that we have to find some way of addressing ...

 

[Fruitloop]

And locking them up for eight years to battle it out in the showers in between 23-hour spells crammed like sardines in a room with a bunch of other psychos, before letting them loose on the general population again is really the best we can come up with?

 

[Azrael]

The flaw isn't with the concept of prison but the way we implement it. Our gaols don't have to be overcrowded slums that let unscrupulous and violent convicts terrorise weaker men. The silent and separate systems robbed the school of crime of its teachers by keeping convicts apart. One convict per cell and no talking between convicts. It's extreme, but we're dealing with an extreme situation. It would protect weaker convicts while stripping power and influence from a self-styled criminal aristocracy. All should be punished equally.

Sentence-escalation is a recent problem, used to compensate for the lack of punishment inside. Murderers who weren't hanged used to get out after 10 years (and with no "life license").

This so-called debate gives a false choice: "prison or community sentence". Most arguments against prison could be removed by adopting a different model. I suggest we try that before dumping dangerous men back into the communities they've blighted.

 

[Fruitloop]

Lack of punishment inside? Fuck me, have you been inside one? I wouldn't want to spend a single day there if I could avoid it. What would satisfy you - endlessly repeated floggings like in Saudi Arabia?

 

[Azrael]

Of course you wouldn't. That's the whole point: prison terrifies decent people instead of hardened felons. Gaols are overcrowded slums where violent men terrorise younger or weaker inmates. The point is that those violent and cruel men can get on quite nicely. There's certainly punishment inside, but it's the wrong type and is directed at the wrong people.

I have never said the gaols are pleasant: I said they are purposeless warehouses. Convicts are gaoled as punishment and not for punishment. Liberal reformers claim that loosing one's liberty is all the punishment a convict needs. Therefore prison authorities have no duty to actively punish convicts; merely to keep them secure until release. The overcrowded conditions may be vile but that's not a deliberate punishment.

There should be hard labour, no telephones, certainly no TVs, and one prisoner per cell. It's wrong in principle that prisoners should fear the law less than they fear each other.

 

[Azrael]

Oh yes, and the system I support was championed by penal reformers as a rejection of the arrant brutality represented by stocks, flogging and widespread execution. Endless repeated floggings should stay confined to Soho clubs with a curious clientele.

 

[Fruitloop]

Being let out of a tiny room for maybe one hour a day is punishment in my book. Anyway, hasn't all that chain-gang rock-breaking bullshit been given a good whirl before? Didn't work out famously well as far as I can recall.

 

[Azrael]

Where have I said anything about "chain gangs"? That's an idea found in the southern USA, and not something I'd support. (Punishment should not be a public spectacle.) I said there should be penal servitude inside our gaols, which worked very, very well if the shockingly low penal population of circa. 1900 is anything to go by. (Shockingly low because poverty was widespread and prison was routinely imposed for petty crimes.)

Prisoners are banged up for 23 hours a day in some Victorian slums, yes. It depends on the prison. That's not deliberate punishment but a consequence of overcrowding (itself a consequence of the regime's total lack of deterrence), and there's a free supply of opiates to make it bearable. The prisoners have several cellmates, the much-needed "respect" from weaker inmates, and various criminal enterprises on the go. They also have early release to look forward to. It clearly isn't keeping crooks out because they keep going back.

"Liberal" reformers spend a lot of time demanding prisoners be allowed more "association". Which gives the cruel and strong even more opportunity for mischief. I support a penal system that a) kept cruel men under control b) had a purpose and c) apparently worked. What would you support?

 

[Fruitloop]

I guess the source of my concern is that two-fold; firstly that way too many people are locked up, people that don't present a genuine threat to the public. Secondly, the money spent on individual prisoners is hopelessly inadequate - where is the supervised association that might correct deeply ingrained problems of social relations, where is the actually worthwhile compulsory labour that might equip prisoners with some kind of decent life once they get out? It's all chucked out the window in the name of cost-efficiency, and it's the general populace that suffers. Talk of prison as punishment serves to obscure this fact, plays well with a distinctly unappealing taste for third-party revenge that has been actively fostered by media and political actors, and is counter-productive in terms of rehabilitation, which is from the public's point of view the only truely worthwhile part of the whole vastly expensive business.

 

[Azrael]

Retributive punishment is rooted in moral balance not revenge: a moral debt has been opened and must be repaid. The concept of "rehabilitation" treats crime as a sickness (dehumanising criminals). Rehabilitation is a morally-neutral concept that aims to reacclimatise the prisoner to society; the old prisons placed great importance on reform, a subtly different thing that focused on moral change. They employed a schoolmaster and chaplin because equipping prisoners to make good moral choices was an integral part of their mission. But they remained clear about what crime was: a wrong act done by choice.

I'd argue that public calls for base and demeaning punishments are rooted in frustration and anger at elites who continually denounce a natural and just desire for punishment as "uncivilized". Their calls for "rehabilitation" go hand-in-hand with demands that convicts not be punished. Just as civil liberties are now seen as tools of the guilty, education is seen as a replacement for punishment. If you've just been brutally assaulted by a young hellion, no wonder you don't have time for it.

Punishment itself can reform by teaching prisoners that actions have consequences. Hard labour should be arduous and pointless: that's its punitive function. (Some methods listed here.) It should however be combined with education and the teaching of a useful trade. Prisoners should be helped to pursue that trade outside.

If the public thought that reform would compliment punishment I think you'd be surprised at how readily they'd support it.