Prisoners, licences and recalls

Jack Straw has actually tried to say the recall system is working well.

Now in the last 9 years less than 1% of recalled prisoners are still out there. 1%. Doesn't sound a lot, and then you look at the actual number of recalled prisoners out there: 935. That's a lot, quite a lot.

It also means close to 100,000 prisoners have been recalled back to prison for being bad boys. That's averaging over 10,000 a year who have gone on to justify being sent back to the big house, including murderers and rapists. Sorry? We're putting rapists and murderers out on licence? Charming folk like Dano Sonnex, who went and tortured and killed a couple of French students.

Perhaps the problem isn't so much the recall system itself, but just who the fuck is being put out on licence? If over 10,000 people a year are justifying a return back to the overcrowded prison system that indicates to me we've set a seriously low bar for people going out on licence.

Straw's justification is that Labour have introduced much more stringent recall criteria, which is a bit like saying you've bought a loud hailer to call the horse back after its exited the unbolted stable doors in the hope no one will notice that maybe, just maybe you should've bolted the fucking stable doors on the first place.

The criteria for recall should be fairly loose, the criteria for being out on licence in first place is what needs to be rigorous, harsh and tight.