A curse?

[chickenfeet]

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make Home Secretary. Is it the job that sends people mad or is it that only raving loonies get made Home Secretary? The last sane one I can remember was Roy Jenkins (for some value of sane).

Comments

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

If you were home secretary, what would you do?

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Use Eric to weed out young offenders.

[frankie-ecap.livejournal.com]

And then what?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have the quick and easy action plan for fixing the various FUBAR's satrapies of the Home Office but as far as prisons and penal policy go I'd start with something like:

1. Get the mentally ill and the driug addicted out of the general prison population and into treatment programmes

2. Get young offenders out of the general prison population. There has to be some hope of rehabilitating them. HMPs are one of the most effective vocational training systems in the country and I don't want them getting a brilliant education in how to be a hardened criminal.

3. Recognise that determining sentencing policy according to the latest Daily Mail editorial is wrong and stupid. Keep sentences short (at least for non-violent offenders) unless and until there is data to prove that something else works.

4. Give some thought to how to stop cross contamination between "prisons for locking up people society can't cope with and v.v" and "prisons for likely one-time rehabilitable offenders".

Beyong the prison service and penal policy, I think I'd take Immigration and Nationality and, perhaps, policing away from the Home Office. It says something very wrong about the country's attitude to immigration that it's lumped in with a bunch of other stuff that's mostly about criminals.