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)
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)
posted by Lesley McDade at 4:30 pm
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