The Kintyre Forum

What an absolute disgrace, the cost.. £2m and rising. The officer on charge that night, should face disciplinary procedures.
The Minster should resign with immediate effect. Two Officers and Four support staff, appears to take cost cutting to a whole new ball game, with dangerous precedent.. For everyone involved.....

An ex-inmate was on the radio this morning.He stated that the inmates regularly go"over the wall"and nip down to the local Tesco to buy drink.Ionns you are spot-on.Heads should roll.

Which makes me think.... Two or Three ( pissed off ) Officers, cost the taxpayer Millions.

I'm always amazed when people get all freaked out over a prison riot. Prisoners are criminals and criminals like to smash stuff and set fire to it. It's what they do. That's why they're there in the first place.

I dunno why they don't construct prisons with 6ft thick reinforced concrete walls, foundations and roofs. They could easily use all metal furnishings and upholster everything in fireproof materials.

Those buildings look like the old style army barrack buildings which were prefab and highly flammable. Probably a decommissioned military base turned into a prison with private funding.

To be honest I never saw the point of "open" prisons. If a prisoner is considered safe enough to be allowed out on occassion then why not just release him?

Also it's easy to judge and condemn but prison warders are cooped up all day with society's bad apples. If they make a mistake, it can, and often does, result in them being injured.

Prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. This is'nt a new situation. It has been the defacto operating condition for over a decade now. Being a prison warder is a highly stressful occupation and it takes a lot of courage to do it day in and day out.

Everyday you pick up the paper and read about some horrific murder or rape or gangland torture killing, the perpetrators of which has just been imprisoned. Everybody thinks "phew thank god he's inside". Not quite. They just continue their criminal behaviour inside on each other and their guards.

The job is made more difficult by the fact that many inmates suffer from varying degrees of mental illness or have permanent drug induced psychoses which makes them very unpredictable and difficult to control. Even the ones that don't have had difficult childhoods, are often illiterate or poorly educated which makes life on the outside hard so they just re-offend to get back inside and relax in their "comfort zone".

The only good thing about this incident is that no-one was killed. Buildings can be rebuilt. Lessons can be learned. Operating procedures can be improved.

As regards finding a scapegoat? If you pay peanuts - you get monkeys.

It must be a really difficult job. I enjoyed reading your post.

Good insight Mr Plod, although I would agree with Ken Clarke, maybe not on the detail, that there are too many people locked up for trivial offences, purely because of legal procedure and obligatory jail sentences. At the end of the day, the whole thing should be about rehabilitation. There are too many people in the prisons, and actually, many of them are disadvantaged through having learning difficulties such as dyslexia, and there are wider social problems that lead to a life of custody.

Rehabilitation is a nice notion. Might work on a rare occasion. A good dose of military prison style punishment early on in the criminal career would be more likely to stop reoffending. I dont mean the sanitised short, sharp shock bollocks of the 90s, I mean brutality. Retribution is the way to go. It said it in the bible, didnt it Ionsaigh.

gizmo wrote:Retribution is the way to go. It said it in the bible, didnt it Ionsaigh.

Karl Marx " let him that is without sin, cast the first stone " or words to that effect. Mao correctly identified the fluctuation between antagonistic, and non antagonistic contradictions.

ionnsaigh wrote:Karl Marx " let him that is without sin, cast the first stone " or words to that effect. Mao correctly identified the fluctuation between antagonistic, and non antagonistic contradictions.

??? Whoosh!! Right ower ma heid................

Mr Plod wrote:??? Whoosh!! Right ower ma heid................

It wisnae aimed... it yer heid....

Mao was a mass murderer.

Why would anything he had to say be relevant to the modern British Prison system, given that his country sytematically imprisons dissenters and if all else fails, executes them with impunity? .

Also, I think "Let he who is without sin etc etc" is a biblical and not communist quotation.

Whoosh - right ower ma heid, again.

Karl Marx " let him that is without sin, cast the first stone "

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? - Groucho Marx

He also said he would never wish to join any club that would have him as a member.

re the rehabilitation side of things. I remember whilst on a hitch-hiking tour of the Agean 33 years ago I was on a very small greek island, and as was the case in those days I was travelling between islands on small ferries and sleeping on the roofs of peoples homes for 50 drachmas or so a night etc.

Anyhoo I met a middle aged fellow who was imprisoned for killing another family member many years previous. He was on the small ferry heading off to prison for the weekend. He was allowed out monday to thursday to work on his home island, and spent his weekends in prison. This being the local way to deal with re-introducing a prisoner to society.

I only struck up a conversation with him because the ferry was very small and apart from about 50 or so goats and some donkeys, he and I were the only passengers onboard and it seemed rude not to speak to him, the greeks being very polite and hospitable to travellers.

We were soon conversing and laughing and sharing cigarettes. He made no secret as to who he was or where he was going. Indeed he was wearing his prison uniform shirt. It was a very strange encounter, one of many on that 4 week journey. But over the years I often recalled that chance encounter with a rehabilitated murderer with something akin to wonder. Especially in view of the prison regimes in operation in the UK at that time, which were draconian by comparison.

Mr Plod wrote:Mao was a mass murderer.

Why would anything he had to say be relevant to the modern British Prison system, given that his country sytematically imprisons dissenters and if all else fails, executes them with impunity? .

Also, I think "Let he who is without sin etc etc" is a biblical and not communist quotation.

Whoosh - right ower ma heid, again.

Have a wee look at Chinese history ( you might learn something )