Prison will cost us £12 billion over the term of this Parliament.

The Prison population in our fine country has hit the record-breaking figure of 85,000.
The average cost of keeping a person in prison for a year is £28,486. 
I make that an annual cost of £2,421,310,000 for the whole lot.
A cool £2.4 billion of our hard earned earned taxpayers' money every year. It wouldn't matter so much if prison worked, but it doesn't.

"2.4 billion in not a lot for a banker, but is a significant sum for us ordinary people.1.6% of our budget deficit.

Now we cannot empty the prisons overnight and save that 1.6%, but we can do things more efficiently and more humanely.
First and foremost, prison should be for people who are a real danger to society, or who will not comply with community payback orders.
Second, and also foremost, we need to start moving towards making Britain a place with better income equality, since Wilkinson and Pickett show that more income equality = less criminal behaviour (e.g. drug abuse) and a lower rate of imprisonment.

In the coming years of austerity, we need to make all the savings we can. Prison policy is a good place to start. But it is going to be difficult, because of the vengeful, emotional outpourings of the Mordoch/Daily Mail axis. So the question is, not can we afford to send people to prison, but can we afford the Daily Mail?

"Chemical Castration" should be tried for some sex offenders

The BMJ 27 February has an article titled "Chemical Castration for sex offenders: Doctors should avoid becoming agents of social control".  It refers to an article on the National Probation Service site, which sets up a service for some forensic psychiatrists to advise on medical treatments for some sex offenders. The treatments are first Prozac-type antidepressants, and second, anti-testosterone drugs such as cyproterone acetate and gosrelin.

The BMA article (which is not yet on-line, and may not be for non-BMA members) is nothing if not cautious. It uses the "Chemical Castration" label, which is an emotively charged term. It says, "although ostensibly for public protection, it also carries with it a sense of symbolic retribution...straddle(s) the border between treatment and punishment".

One of the authors of the article is Don Grubin, who is named in the Probation Service article as setting up "a national advisory service for prisons and probation aimed at increasing the availability of medical treatments for sex offenders".

I personally welcome this development as a highly sensible approach, so long as it is fully audited to test its effectiveness and safety.

Anti-androgen therapy reduces the re-offending rate from 50% to 5%, which is a pretty impressive effect.

Given the huge media profile given to sex offences against children, and the understandable emotional public reaction against paedophiles, this development is many years overdue. I wrote to the Home Office about this in 2001, and they responded with the usual pathetic Government fob off. Now they have finally come round to trying it out.

I stress that this is not an official Green Party position. There is a debate to be had, because it is vital that the medical profession does not become an arm of the State, using its knowledge to control people that the State judges to be dissenters. But I really do not think that fear applies in this case.

We already routinely practice preventive social medicine in the case of psychotic patients who are sectioned and treated on grounds of "being a danger to themselves or others". A patient with hypomania may be blissfully happy with the way things are as far as they are concerned, and may not be asking for any help, but we may judge that they are a danger to others, and restrict their liberty and treat them with antipsychotics.

This is a pretty close parallel with the situation of some sex offenders. There is a spectrum of self assessment among this group, some feeling profoundly guilty about their thoughts, proclivities and actions, while others are in denial about the damage they cause to others.

It seems not unreasonable at least to offer treatment to those who ask for medical relief from their hypersexuality, which many do. There are some cases in the literature where hormonal therapy has abolished a paedophilic drive, and the patient has experienced a reversion to happy heterosexual sex with his partner.   Given that there is no evidence of the effectiveness of  the current treatment, CBT, offered to a sample of sex offenders, and given the enormous damage that sexual assaults can inflict on victims' lives, it is unreasonable to withhold hormonal therapy from sex offenders.


The forensic psychiatrists should design a plan for rolling out this treatment in a way that is carefully audited, to establish what does and does not work with what kind of offender.

I should stress that this is my personal opinion as a psychiatrist. The Green Party has not yet considered this matter.

BNP candidate for Europe elections arrested on suspicion of selling illegal firearms

BNP candidate for Europe elections arrested on suspicion of selling illegal firearms - Mail Online:
"A BNP candidate for the European elections has been arrested on suspicion of selling illegal firearms.

David Lucas, 48, who supports capital punishment and makes gallows for sale abroad, was arrested at his mother’s home in Suffolk on Thursday.

He has been released on bail. BNP officials said Lucas would still stand in the election on June 4."

And here's another one.

Whole lot more here.

Why vote for expense fiddlers when you can vote for real criminals?

Sex offenders' register and human rights

Thousands of convicted sex attackers may now be able to challenge their positions on the sex offenders register, after a landmark High Court case ruled that forcing them to remain on the list for life was a breach of their human rights. Independent, Saturday, 20 December 2008

Three presiding judges at the High Court in London agreed that keeping the two offenders on the register for life, without giving them the chance to prove that they were no longer a danger to the public, would be “incompatible” with human rights legislation.


This could be a big issue. I zip off to see what the Daily Mail has to say, but they have no rant on offer, just a load of celebrity froth. They've missed one there. Normally the Mail is big on attacking the "Human Rights (HR) for Offenders" PC stuff. This worries me, as stupid court decisions on HR devalues the currency, and encourages the Mail to attack HR in general.

There is a case to be made. How does a sex offender "prove" that he is no longer a threat to the public?

Well, there is an answer. The male offender puts on a penile plethysmograph, and is shown sexual imagery. The PP records tiny reactions to the images.

Yes, it is not infallible (nothing is, not even your judgments, M'Lud) but in the context of other, more conventional assessments of the person, it can help to come to an accurate judgment of whether a pedophile* is still a danger to society.

While we are at it, some paedophiles can be cured pharmacologically. Just thought I'd mention it.

This is not official Green Party Policy.
*using american spelling to pick up the search engines. Americans don't do diphthongs (but they do do thongs).