What Skull Cracker and his pals reveal about our pathetic jails
IN THE black comedy that is modern Britain, one of the best jokes is that crime is supposed to be falling, yet the prisons have never been so full. The Government ceaselessly begs judges and magistrates not to send anyone to jail unless they absolutely have to.
The ‘police’ (a word which can now only be used sarcastically), and the Crown Prosecution Service (whose title is itself a joke) do their best to ignore them, forget them and let them off.
But things are so bad that, even so, large numbers of people actually are convicted of crimes. And many of them are so nasty, and have been let off so many times before, that judges do actually sentence them to immediate custody.
Alert people have known for years that these sentences are official lies. ‘Six months’ means ‘out in weeks’, free either to commit more crimes or perhaps to write a weekly column for the Guardian.
BUT IT is only thanks to Mr ‘Skull Cracker’, the ‘ Scarborough Slasher’ and various other picturesquely horrible criminals that we have now found out that it is even worse than that. Such people are officially in prison. But in many cases they aren’t really. They are being let out to wander around. Perhaps one of them is sitting near you as you read this.
Perhaps he has official permission. Perhaps he has just decided to stay out a little longer because the weather is nice today (knowing that he will eventually get a free lift back to prison from the police).
In any case, be nice to any angry-looking men with tattoos you come across. They may only be in the ‘police’, but they could be taking a break from penal servitude. Green trousers are a warning sign. If you spoil their awaydays, they might spoil your whole day too.
This is both grim and funny. But it also tells us an important truth. Britain’s governing elite simply do not believe in punishing criminals.
They maintain prisons only because they are afraid we will be angry if they close them down. That is why the prisons are pointless, anarchic, druginfested warehouses, most of whose inmates arrive through a revolving door and are spat out the same way a few weeks or months later.
If there is such a thing as ‘rehabilitation’, these absurd token detentions don’t offer enough time to attempt it.
As for the liberal myth that prison makes bad people worse, the truth is more or less the opposite. It is weakness that makes bad people worse.
Apart from actual murderers, almost nobody goes to prison for a first offence, or a second, or, in many cases, a tenth. They’re already worse before they get there, and almost wholly unafraid of the law.
In most cases they’ll be out so soon it won’t be worth absconding anyway.
But the cells are so crammed that open prisons are now being used for people who – in a just society – would be detained on an island surrounded by maneating crocodiles.
Prison doesn’t work, on any level, because those in charge of it – our political class – don’t care about you. They care about themselves.
Because they do not believe in any absolute idea of right and wrong, they do not believe in punishment. And so they lack the nerve or conviction to lock up Mr Skull Cracker and Mr Slasher somewhere they cannot crack or slash anyone else.