Nick Davies ...

Has one of his series of "Special Reports" over at the Grauniad - on the criminal justice system.

Mr Davies is a brilliant, observant journalist who sees and documents everything - then gets the analysis hopelessly wrong. His 'Dark Heart' looked at aspects of the British cultural collapse and blamed them on Thatcher and capitalism.

His Special Report on education a few years ago looked at two Sheffield schools (one failing - a grammar school turned comprehensive, one successful) and blamed 'a uniquely English combination of snobbery and racism' for the failure. Nothing to do with the abolition of grammar schools.

I haven't had time to look at all the articles, but the one on Exeter prison tells us two things.

a) the prison governors have taken on the ideology and culture of the social worker.

"The prison service is in the process of huge change - from punishment towards rehabilitation ... the leadership of the prison service at the centre started to insist on decency ... a new governor came in and forced change ... influx of civilians and women officers has changed the tone of staff ...provision of televisions in the cells"

b) it doesn't seem to be working very well. Guess what the problems are ?

Obviously a shortage of funding - well, this is the Guardian.

The other ? The evil Great British Public, salivating over punishment and dancing to the tabloid tunes while cowardly politicos won't tell them the truth ... "so they carry on talking tough and cranking up the prison numbers in the cause of punishment, while within the walls something very different is going on ... listen to the governor grades and none of them tells the politicians' tale of punishment .. you listen to the prison officers, and they're reading from the same script ... political populism and sheer cack-handed mismanagement from parts of Whitehall"

Sheer cack-handed mismanagement from Whitehall, eh ? Aren't these people the 'public servants' who we're all supposed to be grateful for ? The people who spend 42% of British GDP ? Who know how to spend our money better then we do ?

Just a thought. I think that prisons, and the CJS generally, should be run by the State rather than by private enterprise. When you give a capitalist entity power over the liberty of citizens, or power to use force against them, you get a little nearer to breaking one of P.J. O'Rourke's rules for good governance - a rule which is broken on every sink estate in Britain.

"Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people"