Social Injustice to social justice - an update

The Daily Mail ran an article by Mark Howarth "Scandal of Scotland's stay-at-home prisoners - criminals can even claim benefits as they near the end of sentence" on 17 August 2010. The article had a slant against the Scottish Government's policy of serving their jail sentences in their own homes, which it considered a soft-touch justice policy.

My reading of the article was however factual and it would appear that the policy is successful as 423 prisoners now participate in Home Detention Curfews (HDC) and the policy is working for the last 6 months of a prison sentence or for some prisoners complete sentence.

Whilst the article does clearly state that the policy is for cost cutting, it does not clearly also show that there is a social injustice reason for the policy too. It costs £31,000 in Scotland (£45,000 in England) to keep a prisoner in jail for a year. A person not having committed a crime but living on benefits gets about £12,000-£15,000 in benefits. Therefore keeping people out of jail on Home Detention Curfews and letting them exist on benefits frees up a considerable sum of money with plus value added benefits for prisoner's families when they stay at home and/or increases their employability prospects - surely not a societal wrong. Prisoners are not free, they are fitted with an electronic tag to make sure they do not leave home between certain hours which was a Labour policy in 2006, the SNP have only extended the policy on prisoners qualification criteria for the scheme.

What I would have liked to see in the article is a more positive message showing what the Scottish Government are doing with the considerable cost saving the Home Detention Curfew policy is achieving!

...

Another interesting article in the Scotsman provided another social injustice policy issue the head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Stephen Hester, informing that the next time a bank is bust it should not be to big to fail. If it happens again, he informs the RBS or any other bank should not be bailed out by the taxpayer. I concur - if the bank was bankrupt, then the situation would have been resolved quicker if lawyers had stepped in and carved up what was salvageable, with the remainder being written off, as happens to ordinary companies every day when an Administrator or Receiver steps in upon bankruptcy or sequestration in Scotland. It would make for a much better marketplace with lessons learned.

Article in The Scotsman 25 August 2010 by Nathalie Thomas entitled "We must let bust banks collapse says RBS chief (Click Here)

Doriand Au diable le paradis 1996

The song "Au diable le paradis" was playing in Paris in 1996 when I went on vacation over Christmas and New Year to write my dissertation : "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink". I was staying in a little hotel, the Cosy Monceau, in the Malesherbes district of Paris. I would read and write in the mornings and go shopping and sightseeing in the afternoon and it was freezing. I thoroughly enjoyed my two week stay and had to write 12,000 words. What seemed a lot of writing to my horror on return was only 7000 words. I had another 5000 words of padding to go. My tutor, Professor Nicola Lacey, suggested I change the dissertation around, I was not amused so I decided not to change the beginning or the ending and with the help of sellotape and scissors cut the thing to pieces and stuck it back together again. I did enjoy my time in Paris ... and the song was on the album "Contact" which I bought. I thought it pertinent because I was writing about Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) being in the legal system of England & Wales via the Woolf Reforms and this song, which is quite catchy, kept ringing in my ears ... the devil in paradise ... which I thought was most apt to the material I was writing about.

Well why is this still relevant to my blog, Doriand has brought out another album "Le Grand Bain" and I bought it on Amazon the other day and have been listening to it today and rather liking it.

My Gran gave me some money to buy a Christmas present so I bought a large pink glass goblet in Montmatre district. With the remainder I bought pink tulips the first week and purple tulips the next from a local florist to sit on my desk. Fond memories indeed ...