Prisons and the public
Sir: Your leading article on the sorry state of our prisons (19 November) was very welcome. However, you refer to the ‘public demand’ for sending offenders to prison. I have to query this. I cannot think of any occasion when the public has been consulted on prisons or sentencing policy or on the exceptionally high cost of incarceration.
We currently have an unthinking and punitive culture, generated by tabloid newspapers and politicians competing to show how tough they are. It is hardly surprising that the coalition government’s search for savings targeted prison staff and community supervision, with results that can be seen today.
Peter Barker (former Senior Probation Officer in HMP Maidstone)
Snettisham, Norfolk
70 years of peace
Sir: Brian Thornton says (Letters, 19 November) that many of my generation who lived as children through the 1940s voted to leave the EU because they saw vital powers slipping away to unelected bureaucrats.
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