DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Freeing crooks won't make streets safer
What’s the best way to avert a massive crime wave? Release more criminals, of course!
No, not the inverted logic of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen. This is Labour’s big idea for reducing prison overcrowding.
The softening-up process began yesterday, with a blood-curdling warning from government insiders.
By the end of next month, they say, our jails will be full. Newly arrested suspects could be temporarily housed in police cells, but in a few days they would also be full.
The predicted result: Criminals on the rampage, looting and thieving in the knowledge they couldn’t be detained.
DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Sir Keir Starmer says he was ‘pretty shocked’ by the scale of prison overcrowding but it’s hard to see why he should be, given that the figures are published every week
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to announce today the automatic release of prisoners after they have served 40 per cent of their sentence rather than the current 50 per cent
Today, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to announce ‘emergency measures’ to stop this terrifying crime spree, including the automatic release of prisoners after serving 40 per cent of their sentence rather than the current 50 (which many already think too is lenient).
There would be exceptions, such as sex offenders and terrorists but up to 20,000 prisoners will be back on the streets early.
Sir Keir Starmer says he was ‘pretty shocked’ by the scale of prison overcrowding but it’s hard to see why he should be. The figures are published every week. Releasing nearly 25 per cent of the prison population early would certainly ease the problem, but what would it say to victims?
That the crimes committed against them don’t really matter?And what of the perpetrators?
Prison is supposed to be a deterrent. Such soft sentencing is more likely to encourage crime than to reduce it.
Strangely, Labour made no mention of this mass release in its manifesto. They did make a bland pledge to ‘fix’ prisons and ‘make Britain’s streets safer’. But safer for whom – law-abiding citizens or criminals?
Burying good news
Just days after Chancellor Rachel Reeves declared Britain’s finances to be in their worst state since the Second World War, new GDP numbers show that assertion to be simply false.
The economy grew by 0.4 per cent in May, double the expected figure and the strongest for two years.
We are on an upward trajectory and outstripping the rest of the G7.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves declared Britain's finances to be in their worst state since the Second World War, even though the economy grew by 0.4 per cent in May - the strongest increase in two years
The pound and the stock markets have recovered from the twin shocks of the pandemic and energy crisis, inflation is back under control, employment remains high and real wages are increasing.
Compared with the chaos left by Labour in 1979 and 2010, the Chancellor inherits an economy which has turned a corner.
So, what is really behind her doom-laden assessment? Could it be part of a propaganda campaign presaging tax rises unheralded in Labour’s manifesto?
Previous Labour governments regularly deployed spin and disinformation. It sometimes works for a while, but the public won’t be taken for fools indefinitely.The economic legacy the Tories leave behind is perfectly sound. If Ms Reeves squanders it with a raft of tax rises, it will be her fault and no one else’s.
If water regulator Ofwat expects thanks from the public for limiting the increase in their bills to 21 per cent over five years, it is seriously deluded.
For far too long, this toothless watchdog has presided over a dysfunctional industry, where companies have racked up charges while trousering billions in dividends and neglecting infrastructure and discharging foul untreated sewage into our rivers and coastal seas. They should be paying us.
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