Good thing he has appointed the ceo of Timpsons as the minister of prisons via the Lords. I’m sure there’s no conflict of interest there.
Edit: lots of people asking why.
He publicly states a third of people in prison shouldn’t be there and will be working in a government that has to immediately deal with a prison service in crisis over population.
He owns a company that deals with clothing repairs, dry cleaning, security products, etc that with minor adjustments could pivot to specialist products that would stand to make billions.
I’m not saying it will happen, but given the track record of thieving fucks in government, I won’t hold my breath.
There’s no quick fix for this, we need more capacity but it’s going to take awhile to get more prisons up and running.
I was quite pleased to see James Timpson being made minister, the scheme for released prisoners at Timpsons and their prison academies is exactly what we need to be seeing more of.
Part of the solution is more prison capacity, that just hasn’t grown enough. A much more important part is reducing recidivism and trying to prevent people going down the path of needing prison in the first place. If we can get that right the long term savings would be significant.
We need larger capacity and stricter sentencing, total chaos at the moment with prolific offenders running wild due to the policy failure of soft sentencing
This is one of the lesser political issues in the election that needed to be discussed more.
Its all well and good politicians saying “Oh we’ll just build more prisons”, but that takes time and is still just a sticking plaster to the rising level of crime and incarcerations in the UK.
The new Labour Cabinet need to have an extensive and serious discussion on how to bring crime down drastically over the next five years.
We need to recruit more and better staff, give them better and more training, pay them better and have really good support in place for them in terms of managing the stress and emotional impact. You can build as many new prisons as you like but if you can’t staff them well they will remain violent, dirty places full of highly restricted inmates who get angrier rather then rehabilitated.
And we need to improve- vastly, radically improve- community criminal justice services. What the fuck people expect probation officers with stupidly large caseloads and minimal resources to do is beyond me.
The talk about preventing reoffending and intervening to prevent people turning to crime is promising. But it does also need to be acknowledged there are some absolute scumbags out there who get a tap on the wrist, and go out and commit more crimes.
I seem to recall an intervention program aimed at reducing gang violence which was astonishingly successful and was scrapped due to funding cuts instead of being replicated across the country. Even though this would have paid for itself many times over in the amount of resources murder cases take, even not considering the human element.
He said it was impossible to stop the current policy of releasing prisoners early because of the lack of capacity in jails.
Yes it is, just cram them in. When they are all playing sardines instead of Xbox prison might start being a deterrant.
Whilst the Conservatives have most of the responsibility for this mess, a lot of the problems were set in motion by Labour in 97-10 with their relentless drive for tougher sentences, their IPP sentencing, and continuing the relentless increase in prisoners.
It would be nice to have politicians brave enough to acknowledge that what’s about needed is about 25% fewer prisoners, freeing up resources for rehabilitation of those that are in there.
The current ‘stack em high sell em cheap’ approach of warehousing people in cells 23 hours a day just does not work to rehabilitate.
The current prison system makes people more likely to reofend. The Scandinavian prison system is very different from ours and does have better outcomes as regards people reofending. Many people in prison have problems with substance abuse, mental health issues ( lots could be trauma, Autism, ADHD etc mostly undiagnosed before going in prison. The majority of prisoners are non violent offenders, really a lot of money is being wasted, when other options would be more suitable. Another issue is staff retention ,which is not very good at the moment due to low wages and low staff numbers making the job difficult to do. The private system has been a failure in the prison system and needs to go.
If they’d just legalise it already, they would fix so many problems at once and look great on day 1.
This seems like a preview of the next few years.
X is shit because of the Tories. Not saying it’s necessarily wrong, but it’s going to be a convenient shield on every issue
We need to build more prisons and we need to build them fast.
The rhetoric that the average prisoner is one who’s just done one bad deed – an innocent mess up that any one of us could have done – is bullshit.
A person sent to prison is now significantly more likely to have 46 previous convictions or causations than they are to be a first time offender.
You have no business ever being out on the street if you’ve got that many previous convictions/cautions – you need to be locked up permanently.
If there’re not, when they’re out and inevitably victimise someone else and make that number 47 – you really cannot blame them.
They’ve given the state absolutely fucking plenty opportunity to see who they are and deal with them.
No, in that case the only one to blame is the state for being unable to uphold its literal most important job – protecting us from those who intend to harm us – and the social contracts fucking dead.
He can point to every aspect of our country and say it’s a mess because of the Tories and he’d be correct
Its funny how all these things are now issue that the right wing want to talk about now their not in power, nobody cared about prisons being gutted and funds being funnelled elsewhere 6 mouths ago
Many people end up in prison because of illiteracy. Perhaps reading classes could help.
I read an article about James Timpson, and he sounds like the kind of person this country needs in Government.
I am pleasantly surprised that Labour is looking to tackle a wide range of issues head-on rather than just focusing on the electorates top priorities.
He seems quite comfortable delegating and clearly wants ministers with expertise in their brief so I expect Labour are going to have an extremely busy schedule working on multiple issues at once.
We don’t really need more capacity, we need to get people off remand. It’s the growth in people on remand which is mainly due to a backlog from COVID and Barrister’s industrial action. That’s been compounded by delays in bringing online the significant number of new prisons which are in design, should have been partially completed by now but the Justice Department civil servants are frankly a mess (I speak as someone who has worked on design teams for the current prisons programme).
James Timpson is a great person with relevant experience to the long term direction of restorative justice, but that’s a very different problem to the current overcrowding problems.
Personally I’d love to see a much reformed prison programme, I’m a fan of the radical options used in places like Denmark. But, that’s not aligned to the point of view of a “crime crackdown” that politicians have committed to. And, you can’t look at different sentencing options until you’ve had a trial and that brings us back to the remand problem.
I would like for incoming governments to work on fixing things instead of blaming the mess on the previous government. Just once focus on actually fixing things instead of starting off with excuses.
We need more prisons / extensions for existing prisons, but also we need reform around who is and isn’t going to prison. Especially around non violent crimes
Stupid question. Whey can’t they do what they did in Covid for the homeless. Portacabins homes. Put them in a field with a big fence.
20 comments
Good thing he has appointed the ceo of Timpsons as the minister of prisons via the Lords. I’m sure there’s no conflict of interest there.
Edit: lots of people asking why.
He publicly states a third of people in prison shouldn’t be there and will be working in a government that has to immediately deal with a prison service in crisis over population.
He owns a company that deals with clothing repairs, dry cleaning, security products, etc that with minor adjustments could pivot to specialist products that would stand to make billions.
I’m not saying it will happen, but given the track record of thieving fucks in government, I won’t hold my breath.
There’s no quick fix for this, we need more capacity but it’s going to take awhile to get more prisons up and running.
I was quite pleased to see James Timpson being made minister, the scheme for released prisoners at Timpsons and their prison academies is exactly what we need to be seeing more of.
Part of the solution is more prison capacity, that just hasn’t grown enough. A much more important part is reducing recidivism and trying to prevent people going down the path of needing prison in the first place. If we can get that right the long term savings would be significant.
We need larger capacity and stricter sentencing, total chaos at the moment with prolific offenders running wild due to the policy failure of soft sentencing
This is one of the lesser political issues in the election that needed to be discussed more.
Its all well and good politicians saying “Oh we’ll just build more prisons”, but that takes time and is still just a sticking plaster to the rising level of crime and incarcerations in the UK.
The new Labour Cabinet need to have an extensive and serious discussion on how to bring crime down drastically over the next five years.
We need to recruit more and better staff, give them better and more training, pay them better and have really good support in place for them in terms of managing the stress and emotional impact. You can build as many new prisons as you like but if you can’t staff them well they will remain violent, dirty places full of highly restricted inmates who get angrier rather then rehabilitated.
And we need to improve- vastly, radically improve- community criminal justice services. What the fuck people expect probation officers with stupidly large caseloads and minimal resources to do is beyond me.
The talk about preventing reoffending and intervening to prevent people turning to crime is promising. But it does also need to be acknowledged there are some absolute scumbags out there who get a tap on the wrist, and go out and commit more crimes.
I seem to recall an intervention program aimed at reducing gang violence which was astonishingly successful and was scrapped due to funding cuts instead of being replicated across the country. Even though this would have paid for itself many times over in the amount of resources murder cases take, even not considering the human element.
He said it was impossible to stop the current policy of releasing prisoners early because of the lack of capacity in jails.
Yes it is, just cram them in. When they are all playing sardines instead of Xbox prison might start being a deterrant.
Whilst the Conservatives have most of the responsibility for this mess, a lot of the problems were set in motion by Labour in 97-10 with their relentless drive for tougher sentences, their IPP sentencing, and continuing the relentless increase in prisoners.
It would be nice to have politicians brave enough to acknowledge that what’s about needed is about 25% fewer prisoners, freeing up resources for rehabilitation of those that are in there.
The current ‘stack em high sell em cheap’ approach of warehousing people in cells 23 hours a day just does not work to rehabilitate.
The current prison system makes people more likely to reofend.
The Scandinavian prison system is very different from ours and does have better outcomes as regards people reofending.
Many people in prison have problems with substance abuse, mental health issues ( lots could be trauma, Autism, ADHD etc mostly undiagnosed before going in prison.
The majority of prisoners are non violent offenders, really a lot of money is being wasted, when other options would be more suitable.
Another issue is staff retention ,which is not very good at the moment due to low wages and low staff numbers making the job difficult to do.
The private system has been a failure in the prison system and needs to go.
If they’d just legalise it already, they would fix so many problems at once and look great on day 1.
This seems like a preview of the next few years.
X is shit because of the Tories. Not saying it’s necessarily wrong, but it’s going to be a convenient shield on every issue
We need to build more prisons and we need to build them fast.
The rhetoric that the average prisoner is one who’s just done one bad deed – an innocent mess up that any one of us could have done – is bullshit.
A person sent to prison is now significantly more likely to have 46 previous convictions or causations than they are to be a first time offender.
You have no business ever being out on the street if you’ve got that many previous convictions/cautions – you need to be locked up permanently.
If there’re not, when they’re out and inevitably victimise someone else and make that number 47 – you really cannot blame them.
They’ve given the state absolutely fucking plenty opportunity to see who they are and deal with them.
No, in that case the only one to blame is the state for being unable to uphold its literal most important job – protecting us from those who intend to harm us – and the social contracts fucking dead.
He can point to every aspect of our country and say it’s a mess because of the Tories and he’d be correct
Its funny how all these things are now issue that the right wing want to talk about now their not in power, nobody cared about prisons being gutted and funds being funnelled elsewhere 6 mouths ago
Many people end up in prison because of illiteracy. Perhaps reading classes could help.
I read an article about James Timpson, and he sounds like the kind of person this country needs in Government.
I am pleasantly surprised that Labour is looking to tackle a wide range of issues head-on rather than just focusing on the electorates top priorities.
He seems quite comfortable delegating and clearly wants ministers with expertise in their brief so I expect Labour are going to have an extremely busy schedule working on multiple issues at once.
We don’t really need more capacity, we need to get people off remand. It’s the growth in people on remand which is mainly due to a backlog from
COVID and Barrister’s industrial action. That’s been compounded by delays in bringing online the significant number of new prisons which are in design, should have been partially completed by now but the Justice Department civil servants are frankly a mess (I speak as someone who has worked on design teams for the current prisons programme).
James Timpson is a great person with relevant experience to the long term direction of restorative justice, but that’s a very different problem to the current overcrowding problems.
Personally I’d love to see a much reformed prison programme, I’m a fan of the radical options used in places like Denmark. But, that’s not aligned to the point of view of a “crime crackdown” that politicians have committed to. And, you can’t look at different sentencing options until you’ve had a trial and that brings us back to the remand problem.
I would like for incoming governments to work on fixing things instead of blaming the mess on the previous government. Just once focus on actually fixing things instead of starting off with excuses.
We need more prisons / extensions for existing prisons, but also we need reform around who is and isn’t going to prison. Especially around non violent crimes
Stupid question. Whey can’t they do what they did in Covid for the homeless. Portacabins homes. Put them in a field with a big fence.