The British government wastes another £80million on the War on Drugs: Cleaning up the prisons will take more than a few cheap New Labour gimmicks
Another interesting story in the British papers today, ticking all the right tabloid boxes:
MORE than £80million will be spent on new technology and other measures to crackdown on drugs in prisons, Justice Secretary Jack Straw said today. The Prison Service is to introduce mobile phone blockers in high-risk areas to stop inmates using smuggled handsets. Hi-tech chairs which scan inside the body for smuggled contraband will also be introduced at every jail in England and Wales by next March.
First, I’m dying to know: What are hi-tech chairs and how will they be used exactly to ’scan inside the body’. The ‘hi-tech’ bit seems to suggest that it will involve more than this chair’s leg being rammed into the arse of a prisoner by a strong & sadistic guard. Okay, so maybe it’s a chair that has been taught to do the arse-invasion by itself, while those (strong & sadistic) guards look on approvingly. Anyway, more details please.
I’m a bit baffled by the proud announcement that phone blockers will be installed. We all know that phones are almost as popular a contraband in prisons as drugs – and these phone blockers have been around for years and years. So, what kept our prison authorities from installing these things, let’s say, ten years ago? Did their staff protest against their installment, since it might complicate the drug smuggling deals they did on their phones with the inmates? Or is this yet another one of those baffling ‘human rights’ issues, where it may be against the law to own a mobile when you are a prisoner but whereby it is illegal for the government to interfere with people making calls on them?
Anyway, back to the major issue, which is that the government, by way of its Justice Secretary, have announced that they will waste yet another (comparatively smallish) amount of cash on the War on Drugs. I’m not sure why they even want to bother. All these people are already (more or less) safely in locked up prison, so it’s not very likely that they will be able to be a menace to the citizenry at large, taking out their car for a spin of driving-while-drugged-to-the-gills, or committing further (outside) crimes to feed their habit.
Me, if I were working in a prison I would prefer all the inmates to be drugged-up and too happy & uncoordinated to create any problems, apart from the occasional overdose.
Anyway, as with all other campaign in this stupid and wasteful War on Drugs, I think it is safe to predict that this one will be an abject failure as well. There are always these cute stories in the paper, about pigeons being trained to fly in drugs, or family members trying to smuggle in stuff inside their babies’ nappies.
While all of these things are, no doubt, also happening, it is worth recalling that a lot of the smuggling and dealing is done by the prison staff itself. In other words, it’s one thing to try to save a sinking ship, out on the high seas, but quite another to think you can ever succeed at it, while half of the crew are busy drilling ever more holes in the walls at the same time.
To put it bluntly, if the government and the Justice Secretary would really be serious about climbing down on drugs use in England’s prisons, they would have to go after all those corrupt prison officers as well. That’s possible, in principle, but you know what? I’m pretty sure that the building of all the extra prisons you’d need to lock up all those prison officials who are involved in the smuggling and selling of drugs, would cost a Hell of a lot more than the measly £80million which Her Majesty’s government is prepared to spend on this latest, ill-fated campaign.
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