James Shaw resigns

[Lilith7]

I do want our prisons vastly reorganised. Did you know most of those inside have difficulty with reading and writing, have clear evidence of untreated mental health issues, and are the victims of intergenerational institutionalisation? We aren't rehabilitating, we are generating new inmates simply by allowing these places to exist. The Scandinavians have a better system, research it and see how much we could improve our own. Soft on crine? We create it by continuing these archaic methods of so called justice.

Just because many disagree with you does not mean we are brainwashed, or ignorant, or not sane, as you put it. It never occurs to you that those countless ones might be right, and you might be the one brainwashed, ignorant, or not sane - but really? To be a balanced thinker, a critical balanced thinker, that is the possibility we all have to allow for - but it requires us to put aside our own fears and examine the facts, thereby risking becoming educated in ways we didn't expect.

Scary thought, and exactly why so many adults become set in their attitudes. And conditioning. Sad really, because learning inspires change, and change is a good thing...

Indeed - there's a reason that the left are seen by some as 'soft on crime', & that's because they tend to more readily understand the causes & try to address them with a view to preventing future crime as far as possible. 

In contrast to the political right which refuses to look at anything other than the tried old 'lock them up & thrown away the key' which just does not work.
Although - it is very good at creating people who tend to continue on with a life of crime, & given the way the right pushes that 'lock 'em up,get tough on crime' whenever there's an election within cooee you do have to wonder whether or not that's their motive - since to always have that handy at election time, they need a high crime rate.

Norway now has Europe's lowest rate of recidivism by being what many on the right would claim is 'soft on crime.'


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013...ike-people


"In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking. In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings."
A clinical psychologist by profession, Nilsen shrugs off any notion that he is running a holiday camp. I sense his frustration. "You don't change people by power," he says. "For the victim, the offender is in prison. That is justice. I'm not stupid. I'm a realist. Here I give prisoners respect; this way we teach them to respect others. But we are watching them all the time. It is important that when they are released they are less likely to commit more crimes. That is justice for society."