Will the VOO do?

More inane post-prison crap from a government that has abandoned both punishment and rehabilitation.

The point of prison, in fact the whole point of a judicial system is when you have committed a crime and served the state-mandated consequences of it are:

• You are punished for your transgression
• You recognize the error of your ways, or if you do not, then you are at least deterred from repeating the crime
• Any victims feel a measure of vengeance

There are only three parts to it, and third ones pretty much down to the victim(s) thus leaving the state with two things to manage. Shouldn't be particularly hard for a nation that's been knocking around longer than most, managed to dominate most of the planet at one time or another and has exported it's language, laws and science across the globe.

In short, punishment is something you should seek to avoid having repeated on you, and whilst being punished be provided some form of counselling to see where you went wrong, and how you can be placed onto a path that isn't going to criminally inconvenience anyone when your sentence is completed.

Crime and Punishment. Criminal and Rehabilitation. Where is the complexity in understanding the relation between the left hand side of those, and the right hand side?

New Labour can't understand it. In their little fucked-up corner of criminology you send a criminal to prison to get them out of your, and societies hair, for a while. It means you get numbers. And New Labour like numbers, it allows them to trot a large amount of meaningless statistics, compiled by meaningless civil servants, and delivered by some meaningless ministers to an uncaring public who'd just wish someone would do something about the little bastards turning their local area into something like the OK Corral.

Numbers mean it looks like they're doing something, and that's something else New Labour like. Being seen to be doing something. Doesn't matter is there's no end product, it's the display of effort that counts in their minds. After close to 12 years people are getting a little tired at seeing their taxes being flung in the general direction of a problem without any plan, thought or strategy in sight.

So now we have the VOO, or Violent Offender Orders, which are described as 'ASBO style', which given ASBO's have been abject failures and turned into the junior criminal fraternities version of a Scout badge, isn't high praise or placing a high bar on success.

Essentially New Labour have decided that since their punishments don't work, and their feeble attempts at rehabilitation don't work, and they really could do with a bit more prison space, so people who have served their time can be punished further. Not sure how that'll fly with Human Rights Act, but the Howard League for Penal Reform are already bashing it.

Rather than combating their failure of caretaking the judicial system, they're plastering over the faults and hoping the whole thing will stick together. Just like the bunch of political cowboys they are.

ASBO's, VOO's and their ilk are implicit admissions of utter failure, and the fact people have lost faith in the ability of the police, courts and prisons to do their functions shows that's its not lost on the general public.

You do the crime, you do the time. On occasion the time may be longer than you'll live, and that is reflective of the severity if what you've done. But if your crime attracts a length of time within your lifespan, then that should be it - slate cleansed. Sure, the state needs to keep track of what you've done, so if you do another crime your past exploits can be taken into account for sentencing.

But if you keep your nose clean, that should be that. Now though the state wants to keep punishing you, which means either they haven't done their job properly, or they're just bastards. Or both.

If you are not rehabilitated, or not suitable chastised, you should not be freed. That is the point of justice, it isn't a bloody holiday camp, it's not there to temporarily keep criminals out of society.

Crime and Punishment. Criminal and Rehabilitation. They used to be linked, time to reforge them.