“Vote Tory! More Prison Ships For All!”
It’s not the likeliest of election slogans, but that’s the message that the U.K.’s Conservative leader, David Cameron, is actually gunning for these days. Saddled with a prison overcrowding problem that rivals even the United States, the U.K. is now considering setting inmates out to sea.
It’s a measure that Cameron is advancing over a previous attempt to ease overcrowding by allowing certain non-violent offenders to be released from prison up to 18 days early. Prison ships, says Cameron, are a “timely and cost-effective” solution. (You know a debate on criminal justice has reached its bizarre apotheosis when a politician starts to call the prospect of building a giant barge, filling it up with guards and prisoners, and directing them to set sail on the ocean “cost-effective.”)
Fortunately, even some members of the U.K.’s right are dismissing Cameron’s plans as tinged with delusion. Cameron’s own Shadow Prisons Minister, Alan Duncan, has dubbed the prison ship proposal “repulsively simplistic.” The last U.K. prison boat was, after all, retired in 2005, after being rejected by the country’s prison inspector as being unfit for habitation, due to lack of fresh air and space for exercise.
Even the right-wing MP John Redwood has come out against Cameron’s proposal, saying that there should be fewer people in jail altogether. His argument? People “who commit crimes by taking money or property that does not belong to them do not deserve to be in jail and should pay compensation instead”.
The smarter option for Cameron might be to take a nice long sit and read through what his colleagues in Parliament have produced — a report, two years in the making, that focuses on strategies to shrink the prison population through alternative sentencing and reentry programs. For now, it’s a pretty low moment when, faced with the very real questions of justice and recidivism, the best public policy option a prominent politico can come up with is a floating jail.
Photo Credit: Ahmed Rabia