For me, in spite of the hard-on that many posters discernibly have for prison, apart from the most dangerous of offenders, it doesn’t work. Locking someone up in a building is essentially a Victorian notion that people blindly assume is the only effective way to deal with offenders. Why is it, with advances in technology, we can’t think of more creative and socially helpful means of punishing people and restricting their liberty?
There is clearly a huge social problem in this country around litter and waste. Not just in city centres, but also on verges next to all sorts of roads up and down the country. It’s shameful the way that otherwise law abiding people dispose of their litter. I frequently have the piss taken out if me for my car resembling a skip, but that’s partly because I refuse to dispose of waste otherwise than in a responsible fashion. I’m far from perfect in terms of my environmental impact because I consume large amount of foodstuffs and drinks that are packaged in plastic, but I refuse to dispose of that packaging in a way that is antisocial and inconsiderate.
It cannot be beyond the wit of man to engage offenders in a national programme with the purpose of cleaning up the litter from this country, with any offender unwilling to engage facing further restrictions on their liberty. This would go some way towards them genuinely make a real effort to repay a debt to society, something that simply sticking them in a cell manifestly fails to do. The technology is there to monitor this programme closely, it just needs the political will to see it through.
