Best of a Bad Bunch
Law and order
As police forces go, we believe that Surrey is fairly well served and would wish to interfere as little with its running as possible. Where bureaucracy and red tape are getting in the way we would do everything we could to reduce this but we do not believe that politicians should be telling the police force how to do its job. In fact we believe that half the politicians in Westminster should be facing charges for fraud but that is another issue.
It seems to us that it could not be more obvious that whilst someone is in prison he is not out committing crimes. Because of the cost of keeping someone in jail the system is falling over itself looking for cheaper alternatives the priority seems to be saving money rather than dealing with crime efficiently and this short term view is actually costing more in the long run. If a heroin addict has been caught shoplifting then where is the point of fining him? The only way he can pay the fine is by redoubling his criminal efforts.
There is good reason to say that prison does not work very well either but this we believe is because of the way in which the prisons are run. We are neither of us experts on the subject but I was listening to a program on radio four the other day about Muslims being radicalised whilst in prison. They were watching jihadist videos and when asks how they said they were watching them on their play stations!
We believe that a prison more in the style of an army boot camp would be far more appropriate. Not only would this be more of a deterrent but we believe that it could also teach some of these prisoners discipline, respect even trust because as with army boot camps if one of them screwed up they would all loose out so it would instil the idea of teamwork and responsibility in a way that they are clearly not learning at the moment.
We also believe that sentences should be served in full. This would probably mean that the sentence would be lower in the first place but it would at least mean what it said. As we understand it ‘time off for good behaviour’ is actually time off for not getting caught for bad behaviour and if a prisoner is disruptive or violent in prison then he should have his sentence increased.