PRISON CRISIS? - WHAT PRISON CRISIS?
Director General of HM Prison Service - Mr Phil Wheatley
Like his two immediate predecessors before him, New Labour Government Ministers David Blunkett and Charles Clark, his back is firmly up against the wall - wondering which embarrassing latest-revealed Home Office disaster will result in the death knell to end his tenure - haunted by the vision of his having to resign or be sacked - his only distinction being that he will have held the post of Home Secretary for the shortest period of time in recent memory. Should he resign? Might he be sacked? Who can possibly say? Will it be he, himself whom history eventually judges as UNFIT FOR PURPOSE?
He is accused of being full of bullying and bluster techniques and has reportedly quietly & unceremoniously walked away from previous Ministries - tail between his legs - leaving those important tasks unfinished too - for someone else to clear up the mess - bobbing about from one wave trough to the next - like a piece of flotsam which refuses to sink.
However, many more generous members of the long-suffering public - particularly victims of crime or the surviving relatives of murdered ones, may consider that he has hardly been Captain of HMS Home Office for long enough to make the slightest difference. Nevertheless, they will certainly be wise enough to feel the power of the impending, widely predicted Force 15 gale and rising seas, which will eventually engulf him - and all of those in his ill-fated, God-unblessed Department who sail with him.
Many questions remain unanswered.
• Why hasn’t he sacked the Director General of the Prison Service, Mr Phil Wheatley - pictured on the TV news clips entering the new multi-£million, luxurious Home Office building with a half-empty rucksack on his back? Why isn’t that very rucksack shown on his back bursting at the seams with overnight files of documents taken to his residence as homework for overnight, solution-seeking private study?
• How can he possibly be allowed to remain in post any longer when during a widely seen recent TV news interview he nonchalantly declared - “It’s my job to lock them up - it’s the job of the Police to locate them and bring them back!” Surely his own expression ‘to lock them up’ includes his own official, sworn duty to keep them locked up - properly, individually risk assessed and categorised? Instead, almost daily, we hear of the latest simple walk outs from open prisons by convicted murderers, paedophiles etc.
• When asked for the actual numbers of post, re-arrested by police, absconders from his many jails - he flippantly replies, “We have - or had - no such database in place!” - or words to that effect. Why the devil not? The buck stops with him! Why isn’t the comparatively recently introduced National Offender Management Service (NOMS) actually managing offenders?
• Why is that non-productive, man, Admiral of the HMP Fleet DG Phil Wheatley, still in post after so many years cruising in the lap of luxury - issuing more and more liberal edicts to savage and undermine the crews’ morale - such as prisoners not to be referred to as ‘convicts’ - to be courteously addressed by their first names, nick names - or as 'Mr.......' - meal times not to be known as ‘feeding time’ (when almost every on-board crew-members’ daily work pattern is severely disrupted at the tannoyed bosun’s pipe call ‘All hands on deck’ - this to summon disgruntled, under-paid, individual crew members to the prison hulk galleys to supervise cooked meal handouts 3 times a day - and God help them if, due to some minor ship’s victualling continuity disruption, sandwiches are handed out instead! The already dank, foul air in the confined, allegedly over-populated messing halls is then further polluted by angry shouts of “**** yer ****** mother gov!” and “I’ll have you ******* followed home from the staff car park on the jetty, you ******* bitch, Miss!”)
• Why hasn’t he, Admiral Wheatley - been first keel-hauled, then nailed to the HMS Home Office main-mast in front of the entire, disgruntled, low-moraled, frustrated, unsupported HMS Prison Service crew which he has commanded for far too long on an unfruitful voyage - where the only spoils go to the convicts in the brig - not shared among the hard-pressed, demoralised, unappreciated crew members?
• Why has he been allowed to remain confined in his luxury cabin as his entire, apparently leaderless fleet drifts into currently becalmed but immensely troubled waters?
• What kind of figurehead has he turned out to be?
• What has he ever done for HMS Prison Service since accepting the Queen’s Shilling all those years ago?
The answer to all of the above - and the ridiculously misnamed ‘Prisons Overcrowding Crisis’ so called Problem - is clear to anyone who is not even studying for the lowest level of a Master’s Ticket - even to the newest, fledgling Midshipman at BRNC, Dartmouth!
Why should these low-life, deliberately unemployed, self-induced drug-crazed, career criminals - to most of whom human life is far from sacred - be handsomely rewarded in jail with:
1. An en-suite, single occupancy cabin for their own, personal, exclusive use?
2. A personal TV set @ £1.00 per week rental?
3. Game Boys software-programmed with violent Cops/Robbers battles etc?
4. Play Stations ditto.
5. Access to Internet facilities under certain, normally unsupervised conditions - due to HMS Prison Service being forever run on a skeleton crew?
6. The right, under certain legal circumstances, for their incoming mail to be expressly not opened and censored by official ships’ crew members?
7. The newly-mooted, crazy idea to allow them to have an electoral vote?
8. Unlimited toilet roll issues per week - whereby crew members are overwhelmed with endless requests - or even demands for replacement loo rolls during ‘Big Brother’ TV programmes - but which are mostly wastefully utilised as ropes or strings for swinging from cabin port holes for exchange/delivery of contraband, including drugs, mobile phones, CDs, tobacco, stolen workshop tools etc?
9. The right to look like intimidating thugs by having their head shaved at all times - even being allowed in-cabin, own, personal electric barbers’ haircutters for this express purpose? (Subject to there being no outstanding criminal Police Identification Parades pending)
That’s a total of just NINE listed HMP Prison Service individual, personal so-called Human Rights. The listed table of 9 above is all that time and space for this article will allow. There are dozens more of them.
However the figure 9 could be a highly appropriate, relevant but totally emotive and controversial numeral. Coincidentally, this was the precise number of leather thongs incorporated into the highly successful, law enforcement measures utilised in warships-of-the-line of old - for punishing wrong-doers on the upper deck in front of the assembled entire ships’ company - by awarding detailed numbers of strokes of THE CAT’O’ NINE TAILS!
(It is at this precise juncture, that the Sentencing Advisory Panel, Liberty, NACRO, Prison Reform Trust, Amnesty International and the Liberal Politically Elite etc - reach for their mobile phones, quill pens, fax machines etc with cries of “SHAME!” )
However it is the majority of law abiding citizenry of this country - particularly existing or former victims of crime - who have more right than any do-gooders outfit or liberals to reverberate around this ill-forsaken country with the cries of “SHAME!”
Having worked for in excess of 25 years wearing various hats within our ill-fated criminal ‘justice’ system - meaning justice for the offender - NOT the victim - including employment in both the Police Service AND HM Prison Service - part of the latter on the wing landings - my solution to the ridiculously inappropriate & highly deceptive 'PRISONS BURSTING AT THE SEAMS' publicly proclaimed almost daily fiasco - is simple.
All HM Prison Service governing Governors should be immediately ordered by Dr John Reed MP - Home Secretary - in no uncertain terms - to immediately commence NON-HMYOI FELTHAM - style convict - adult and juvenile - individual RISK ASSESSMENTS.
HMP WANDSWORTH, TRINITY ROAD, LONDON, SW
Having thereby sorted out the wheat from the chaff so far as the ability to live in peaceful harmony with a co-defendant or other landing or wing cell occupant - and, most definitely avoiding a different ethnic origin mix or a clash of personalties/violent crimes background etc - DOUBLE THEM UP BY INSTALLING TV’s Porridge-style and military fashion strong metal bunk beds securely fixed to the floor and wall.
RESULT: PRISON CRISIS? ELIMINATED AT A STROKE! MANY PLACES TO SPARE.
Why should these ungrateful, predatory ne’er-do-wells be cosseted in en-suite, almost luxurious facilities and tax payer-funded in-cell amusements plus 4 good meals a day including the fairly recently introduced supper meal?
Why should these good behavioural opted-out misfits receive from do-gooder & charitable organisations alike, huge, expensive food and entertainment strong, plastic seasonal Christmas Gift Sacks 4 feet high when there are thousands of under-privileged, under-nourished, needy children up and down the land - who deserve those items more than career hooligans, thieves, sex offenders, fraudsmen, disqualified drivers and robbers?
Why should it be alright for our long-suffering soldiers, sailors and airmen to have to rough it either in their ships’ bunks, tents, barrack blocks, or in the guardroom in multi-tiered sleeping scenarios whilst on guard duty - but not OK for uncaring, ungrateful, unrepentant, recidivist prisoners?
Home Secretary Dr John Reed, MP - DOUBLE THEM UP! You might even double up your own image and poll ratings at the same time - to wide applause from a long-suffering general public, disillusioned with New Labour’s hollow, undelivered promises “TOUGH ON CRIME - TOUGH ON THE CAUSES OF CRIME !!”
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