- Joe Priestley

Go directly to jail

In the name of freedom and equality

“The streets must be made safe. Criminals should be locked up. We need to build more prisons.”

Such is the logic of the new tough-talkers. Not long ago a good many of these very same tough-talkers could be heard going on about prison not working and about how we should be more “creative” in our approach to criminality. Their solution then was non-custodial sentencing.

Sections within the LibLabCon party still believe in community sentences for all but the most serious crimes; Tory leader David Cameron for instance wants us to cuddle people wearing hoodies. Yet the tide has turned; the incarceration option has become acceptable amongst the great and the good. What’s happening?

Liberals used to view control as incompatible with freedom and equality, and thus as something to be relaxed. And they extrapolated from this the idea that punishment was unnecessary and counterproductive. In their eyes criminal behaviour was a function of inequality; thus they concentrated on ‘eliminating inequality’ and they let the behaviour more or less take care of itself.

And now they want to build more prisons!

Our equality-befuddled liberal establishment has always had a problem with the concept of control. In their perfect world it would be unnecessary, but paradoxically they’ll not achieve that ‘perfection’ without it.

This tension is illustrated in the attitude of the establishment to ‘thought criminals’ such as Nick Griffin and Mark Collett relative to its attitude to criminals in general. The former it regards as products of too little control, the latter of too much.

But back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s when liberalism was at its most confident and rampant, the focus was on letting go. And our traditions and our identity and our way of seeing things were obstacles to the realisation of the establishment’s egalitarian utopia, so they set about destroying them with gay abandon. They encouraged alien cultures to develop in our midst, they undermined our religion and made space for others, they ‘revolutionised’ education, they opened our borders, and they went soft on crime - all in the name of freedom and equality.

Criminals - the soft target

But their ‘wishfulthinkingness’ betrayed them; they ignored the causal relationship between relinquishing control and losing control and instead trusted to luck. And now the alien cultures they encouraged to grow threaten to bite the hand that feeds them. Our own religion is now so dilute its adherents believe in either anything or nothing, yet alien faiths grow apace. Illiteracy and innumeracy approach third world levels. Immigration and asylum run out of control. Crime stalks every street. And most importantly the natives are getting restless - and by natives I mean the indigenous British people. There lies the clue to the tough talk riddle.

The liberal establishment is faced with a dilemma: Although there’s a growing dissatisfaction with its failure to deal with society’s problems, and it knows something must be done, it can’t properly address those problems without revealing the part it played in their development.

It is clear that the threat posed by huge alien communities growing in our midst should have the highest priority, but the LibLabCons don’t want to spoil their picnic by disturbing that particular hornet’s nest. They and their predecessors are responsible in one way and another for the Balkanisation of Britain; for the past 50-odd years or so they’ve been telling us what a good idea it is. The last thing they want is for the population to start thinking about it.

The same can be said for crime of course. The criminals that the LibLabCons and their cohorts in the media now want to put behind bars are the spawn of LibLabCon policies and ideas; they are the bastard children of the “prison doesn’t work/crime as illness/prisoners’ rights” lobby and the egalitarian fantasists.

But there’s a significant difference between the two, and it’s that that encourages the establishment to act tough on the problem of crime yet turn a blind eye to the problem of aggressive and demanding alien communities.

That difference is power.

In the grand scheme of things criminals as a group are powerless, whereas the power of Britain’s third world communities is on the increase - in some parts of Britain the LibLabCons are now dependent upon third world support to maintain their position. And anyway, they’ve already learnt to tiptoe carefully around the ever so delicate sensibilities of our ‘minority communities’. And given that the LibLabCons’ number one priority is their own self interest, it’s hardly surprising that they chose crime and criminals as the focus of their new ‘get tough’ straight talking approach and decided to leave minorities to their own devices*.

A good idea at the time

This gibberish about the need to build more prisons is the establishment’s knee-jerk reaction to the increase in disorder in British society and to the rumblings of discontent that can be heard coming from the British people.

The establishment hopes that it can regain some credibility by seeming tougher, and it hopes it can head off the public’s growing anger by appealing to its more punitive instincts.

But it’s a knee-jerk reaction don’t forget. It’s not a revolution in thinking - which is what is needed. The establishment still worships at the altar of freedom and equality, and so nothing of any significance will come of their get tough approach. This change in tack is about one thing only, prolonging the lifespan of the liberal establishment. Their ‘build more prisons’ brainwave is a good idea in a panic - it’s the answer to their problem because that’s what they hope it will be.

And like every other problem in society, increasing lawlessness is a consequence of egalitarianism. If you act on a false premise you shouldn’t be surprised if things don’t turn out as you’d intended. Universal equality doesn’t lead to a better life; it leads to anarchy. Yet in spite of all, equality remains society’s frame of reference.

Building more prisons doesn’t solve problems, it merely avoids the question. It doesn’t tackle criminal behaviour, it caters for it. And when their new prisons are full of new prisoners, what then?

Prison doesn’t work

The establishment’s support for mass immigration and asylum seekers obviously impacts on law and order in Britain. The fact that our prison population has a disproportionately high number of third world immigrants, illegal migrants, and asylum seekers suggests an immediate solution to at least part of the problem - tighten up on our borders and deport those that have no right to be here. But of course both those actions run contrary to liberal orthodoxy.

Immigrant issues aside, prison fails because its operation is governed by equality cult dogma and because of the liberal establishment’s problematic and guilt-ridden relationship with punishment.

While prison does have a responsibility to educate and to improve, primarily it exists to hold those individuals who by way of their actions have lost the right to live freely in society. Prison punishes by restricting rights.

As you’d expect, that reality doesn’t go down too well with the liberal way of thinking. It is as if the liberal feels a need to compensate the prisoner for the punishment he receives by making his incarceration as comfortable as possible. Thus liberals concentrate on the welfare role of prisons rather than on their punishment role; hence the emphasis on ‘prisoners’ rights’.

The problem is prison isn’t working; both crime and recidivism are on the increase. And if prison does work, why do we need to build more?

Prisoners’ rights

Liberals see welfare and punishment as mutually exclusive, and in spite of their tough talk their world view ensures they still see criminals** as victims of the inequalities in society. And because of this obsession with equality and thus with prisoners’ ‘rights’, the punishment role of prisons has been rendered impotent and prison has become ineffective.

The liberal’s argument that ‘prison doesn’t work’ is a self fulfilling prophesy; liberals haven’t allowed it to work.

Contrary to liberal ideology, welfare and punishment go hand in hand, and the welfare aspect of prison life can only work when the punishment aspect is working too. Criminals are effectively out of control and the purpose of prison is to bring them back under control. If that control is undermined by ‘rights’, then prison loses its purpose and thus its effectiveness.

The issue of illegal drug use in prison illustrates my point. The establishment line is that nothing can be done about drugs in British jails, but what they mean is that they have neither the will nor the desire to do anything about it.

Drugs are brought into prison by prison visitors and on occasions by corrupt officials. So where’s the problem? Tighten up on visiting procedures and vet staff more closely, problem solved, or if not further tighten procedures and vetting.

The establishment’s get out is that it can’t interfere with prisoners’ visiting rights without violating human rights. But the harsh reality is illegal drug use is not seen as a problem in prison. The very opposite; without the narcotic effects of illegal drugs, under the egalitarian regime, prisons would be virtually ungovernable.

In its current form prison can’t do the job it’s meant to do, which is to punish, deter, educate, and rehabilitate. The key is control; a prison must be in control of its population if it is to be effective. But prisons aren’t in control - they function only by ‘buying’ prisoners’ co-operation.

Punish, deter, educate, rehabilitate

We don’t need more prisons. We need a change in thinking. The underlying problem, not just with law and order but with every aspect of British life, is the establishment’s adherence to the ‘equality idea’.

A prisoner should have no rights, which is not to say that prison has no responsibility to maintain his wellbeing. Far from it; it is only when the prison is in control that it can look after the prisoners’ welfare and prepare him for a constructive life in society.

The first function of prison is to punish serious transgressions of the law by withdrawing from the transgressor the freedoms and rights enjoyed by the rest of society. This is an essential part of the process of taking control without which prison must fail. And it is utterly counterproductive to compensate the prisoner for his plight by allowing luxuries such as television in cells, a menu choice at mealtimes, extensive leisure time, etc.

Whether such luxuries should be ever allowed is debatable; prison isn’t meant to be amenable, and if it is its secondary function of deterrence is undone. The idea surely is to discourage those from committing crime who otherwise might be tempted. Any luxury that the prisoner is afforded must be earned; if it comes as of right then deterrence is undermined.

Sentence remission for good behaviour is a luxury that puts the cart before the horse. It shouldn’t be necessary to reward good behaviour, it should be expected. And bad behaviour should be punished. Remission should be earned only by productive labour - say for example every day spent in productive labour reduces the sentence by one day.

Prison is responsible for taking control of the prisoner’s life through punishment and deterrence, and it has the task of returning that control through education and rehabilitation. The one can’t happen without the other.

No change in direction

But it’s not going to happen is it? Like every other establishment initiative, the ‘get tough on criminals’ scheme will be characterised by waste and incompetence. Blinded to the contradictions of their approach by the rose-tinted spectacles they’ve got welded to their heads, like so many madmen the establishment will continue doing the same thing over again in the belief that this time it will be different. It won’t.

The rise in crime is a function of the prevailing world view. The arguments for mass third world immigration, for putting ‘asylum seekers’ before our own people, for the denigration of our culture and standards, all are of the same order as the argument for giving prisoners control over their own lives. They are all based on the equality of man idea. And because that idea is a falsehood, anything founded on it is doomed to failure.

The assault on our culture, open door immigration and asylum policies, trendy teaching, the loss of authority, easy-going jail, and the list goes on; all in their own way have contributed to the rise in crime. ‘Equality thinking’ has thrown our system of law and order into confusion, and our prisons have been rendered ineffective by it.

Building more prisons and tightening up on the regime may have some effect on the rising tide of crime, but without addressing the other factors involved any effect is likely to remain marginal.

In order to solve a problem that has a number of causes one looks for a common denominator. In this case one doesn’t have to look very far; the common denominator is ‘equality thinking’. But it would require the sort of conversion that occurred on the road to Damascus for the establishment to consider the part its cornerstone has played in the demise of our nation - and it’s not going to happen. Commitment to universal egalitarianism is a prerequisite of success in the world of the LibLabCons, and they are fully committed to it, that’s why they’re where they are! And it’s unlikely they’ll turn their backs on it at this late hour, for what would they be looking at then?

* PM Blair said just last week that the Muslim community must root out its own terrorists
** This of course does not include thought criminals who are pursued with the utmost vigour

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