Police Use London Bus For Disguise
London has been having trouble with Eastern European con artists, so they used the obvious solution of how do you get lots of boys in blue to the area, without the con-artists knowing. You use a big red London bus and cram it full of police. The story is here in the Evening Standard. More than 25 were detained and a dozen or so were charged.
Surely though, the choice of a Number 2 bus was wrong. Perhaps it should have been a 49 or 99, or perhaps one that went past a convenient prison like Wandsworth, Pentonville or Wormwood Scrubs. That would give a whole new meaning to the phrase “Go Directly To Jail”
Wedding of the Century Ends in Jail
Kirsty Lane wanted an amazing wedding. So she nicked £200,000 to pay for it. It’s all here in the Mail.
She’ll have 0f plenty of time to mull it all over in jail. Jail might also help her to lose a bit of weight!
Floyd Mayweather Doesn’t Like the Jail Food
Then he shouldn’t have beaten his wife. It’s here in the Telegraph.
Prison or Tagging
The debate this morning on BBC Radio 5 is about punishment for crimes.
Most seem to be in favour of more prisons, but would we accept the extra taxes and where would we build them and where would we find the prison officers.
Having been over a prison recently, the biggest problem would appear to be lack of education and lack of jobs when they come out. In fact most of those I met, were extremely courteous to me and all the officers and others that worked and visitors. So the basics are there, it just needs to motivate them in the right way.
I am constantly reminded of the book, Menace to Society by Bill Fletcher. Fletcher had been in minor trouble for many years and had had all sorts of punishment. None had worked. In the 1960s, he ended up in Bow Street Magistrates Court in front of a Stipendiary Magistrate, who said he was going to give him the worst punishment he ever had. He let him go into the care of The Apex Trust, an organisation that rehabilitated offenders and still do. They taught him to read and write and he ended up as the doorman of the Shaw Theatre in London. I don’t think he was ever in trouble again.
I would agree that many offenders are beyond reform. On the other hand, a lot are good people underneath it all and with the application of a bit of training and a job, they can be set on the straight and narrow.
Surprise! Surprise!
The Police don’t like an external regulator. Judging by the Blobbies I see in some of my travels, I can see why!
When did the Police ever accept that someone outside their ranks could be right in anything?
Strangely, the Chief Inspector of Prisons is often an outsider.
Government To Ban Forced Marriages
Both The Times and The Guardian are saying that the Government is to ban forced marriage. The report in the latter is here. This is the first paragraph.
PM to announce whether forcing someone to marry should be outlawed amid speculation it could carry jail term.
We should have had this law in place several years ago.
Some might thing that The Times is particularly anti-Muslim today, as in addition, it has a leader very critical of Rotherham Council about covering up a report about the grooming of young girls by men of Pakistani origin and a report about Muslim thuggery in Whitemoor Prison.
I don’t.
All of these abuses must be removed from this country and I support those devout Muslims, who are working to that end.
This Story Beggars Belief
The man who ordered this book-burning in Afghanistan has a functioning brain as poor as that of Dominique Strauss-Khan. Surely, he should have known that to burn anything slightly sensitive would have caused a riot. And of course it did!
Today, the day after the Times has leader entitled, Flaming Idiocy, on the subject.
An Obituary For an Unknown in the Fight Against Capital Punishment in the UK
I have said before that C used to visit prisoners in Holloway Prison in the early 1970s.
Yesterday, the Times and other papers carried reports of the death or full obituaries of the death of Stella Cunliffe.
Here is the report of her death on the Surrey Today website.
I have a feeling that C used to visit Holloway prison in a group, which involved this formidable lady. She seems to have provided the statistical evidence for the abolishment of capital punishment in parts or all of the UK. The obituaries vary.
There’s more here on Wikipedia, which states she was one of the first civilians to go into Belsen.
I think I met her a couple of times in about 1970 and we never knew what she did. Her male friend and they were just that, was a senior hospital manager and one of the best practical jokers that I’ve ever come across. I have to admit to stealing one of his best jokes.
Why Not A John Lewis Prison?
John Podmore, who has run prisons for many years has written a book called Out of Sight, Out of Mind, which describes why Britain’s prisons are failing.
On BBC Breakfast this morning, he talked about how he went some of the way to making Brixton a community prison, by opening the doors to local businesses, charities and churches. He also indicated seriously that local prisons could be run on John Lewis lines, with all the community having a share.
Now there’s an idea! But I think a good one, as our current penal policy is unsustainable.
The Untold Story of Hurricane Irene
I do find it strange to hear of a hurricane with the same name as my mother, who was a rather placid woman. In fact, I suspect too much so. On the other hand, I think she was rather calm under pressure!
I have just been reading a piece about how New York will be treating the city’s prisoners during the hurricane.
“We are not evacuating Rikers Island,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a news conference this afternoon. Bloomberg annouced a host of extreme measures being taken by New York City in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, including a shutdown of the public transit system and the unprecedented mandatory evacuation of some 250,000 people from low-lying areas.
But in response to a reporter’s question, the mayor stated in no uncertain terms (and with more than a hint of annoyance) that one group of New Yorkers on vulnerable ground will be staying put.
New York City is surrounded by small islands and barrier beaches, and a glance at the city’s evacuation map reveals all of them to be in Zone A (already under a mandatory evacuation order) or Zone B–all, that is, save one. Rikers Island, which lies in the waters between Queens and the Bronx, is not highlighted at all, meaning it is not to be evacuated under any circumstances.
According to the New York City Department of Corrections’ own website, more than three-quarters of Rikers Island’s 400 acres are built on landfill–which is generally thought to be more vulnerable to natural disasters. Its ten jails have a capacity of close to 17,000 inmates, and normally house at least 12,000, including juveniles and large numbers of prisoners with mental illness.
We were not able to reach anyone at the NYC DOC for comment–but the New York Times’s City Room blog reported: “According to the city’s Department of Correction, no hypothetical evacuation plan for the roughly 12,000 inmates that the facility may house on a given day even exists. Contingencies do exist for smaller-scale relocations from one facility to another.”
So hard luck guys and gals!
Hopefully, they won’t have to endure the horrors of when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. This report is from the ACLU.
A culture of neglect was evident in the days before Katrina, when the sheriff declared that the prisoners would remain “where they belong,” despite the mayor’s decision to declare the city’s first-ever mandatory evacuation. OPP even accepted prisoners, including juveniles as young as 10, from other facilities to ride out the storm.
As floodwaters rose in the OPP buildings, power was lost, and entire buildings were plunged into darkness. Deputies left their posts wholesale, leaving behind prisoners in locked cells, some standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests …
Prisoners went days without food, water and ventilation, and deputies admit that they received no emergency training and were entirely unaware of any evacuation plan. Even some prison guards were left locked in at their posts to fend for themselves, unable to provide assistance to prisoners in need.
When is the United States justice system going to raise its standards to the level of the civilised world?
I suspect we’d be hearing more of this if Dominique Strauss-Kahn was still in prison on Rikers Island.
The Anonymous Widower 