Cures?

As usual after an event like the English riots everyone and their uncle start putting forward their solutions to the problems highlighted. Sadly most of them become tainted by the desire to exact revenge and punish. Perfectly understandable of course especially if you happened to be the owner of one of the pillaged businesses. But a more reasoned look at the cause and effect shows, I believe, that the hang-em and flog-em brigade are barking up the wrong tree. I make no apology for yet again singing the praise of our friends from Scandinavia. Not only do they have lower numbers of people incarcerated in their prisons but they also have lower levels of criminality and anti social behaviour/obesity/teenage pregnancy etc.

Bring back corporal punishment, its the only way to instil respect in the young is a cry sometimes heard. The riposte to that idea is the fact that for the last 25 years or so Sweden has banned the smacking of children and as shown above has lower crime rates, lower anti social behaviour etc. So we really should be concentrating on the old adage that prevention is better than cure. We should start by accepting that inequality which is rife in the UK must be addressed before we slip further into the mire of lawlessness. Secondly we need to accept that prison incarceration without an attempt to rehabilitate is doomed to failure. The re-offending rate is 70% in the UK, that 70% of the male prison population suffer with two or more Mental health problems and it costs £41,000 per prisoner per annum, prison looks like an expensive failure.
I am open to be convinced otherwise but I cannot think of any modern western democracy that shows that a more draconian punishment and prison regime works. Can you?

Britnot: UK - RIP?

Britnot: UK - RIP?: "I fear that given the inherent cancers at the heart of UK society the recent riots in England are no more than part of a continuing trend. I..."

UK - RIP?

I fear that given the inherent cancers at the heart of UK society the recent riots in England are no more than part of a continuing trend. In recent months we have seen the corruption at the very heart of British society exposed and dragged blinking into the light of day. Even though I am a unashamed advocate of a free Welsh state it is painful to witness the unravelling of a society hopelessly compromised by inequality and corruption. In the vacuum left by an ineffectual British state it is hardly surprising that there are fervent cries for a English parliament and I think those cries will grow ever louder.

The harm done to British society by consecutive right of centre governments (both Tory and Labour) have served to eat away at the cement of social cohesion that used to bind us. Inequality between the greedy rich and the rest are approaching Victorian levels and we seem inexorably to be approaching a tipping point. On the one hand the public rightly bay for the perpetrators of the riots to be punished. Sadly, it is atypical of a British state controlled by and for the very rich that those people who bankrupted this country have got away with impunity! The Bankers and fund managers who gambled us into debt still pay themselves seven figure salaries and lottery sized bonuses. 

There are no signs that those in power are willing to confront the demons within the heart of British society. With what I see as undue haste we are already witnessing those with a vested interest earnestly preaching that these problems are not signs of what most people se as Broken Britain. The siren voices claim that it has nothing to do with poverty or the crushing inequalities at the heart of British society. But I think we know different. If a society is unwilling to evolve and even admit its shortcomings then it doesn't deserve to survive.