[jambutty]

Interesting debate. Here’s my view on the issue, although I have put this forward before some time ago.

Although sailors in the RN do not stay at sea as long as they used to nonetheless a warship can spend a few weeks at sea without touching land. I spent 2 spells of 3 months each at sea on Cyprus patrol in site of land all the time but never on it except for one occasion to play the Welch Regiment at football and once for an afternoon’s R & R on a beach at Limasol that was guarded by armed soldiers, so it wasn’t too much fun.

So those sailors onboard a warship are to all intents and purposes ‘locked up’, can’t go out to the pub when they want to (unless they happen to be a very good long distance swimmer), can’t have relatives visiting them, have to sleep, eat and work in cramped conditions (and not just nine to five but all hours of the day and night) and for some suffer rough weather and being sea sick and then to cap it all have someone chucking live shells and missiles at them with the odd torpedo snook in.

Compare that to life in a prison!

When a prisoner walks through the prison gates going in s/he should lose all human rights except the HUMANE rights – full stop.

The prisoner should be punished for the crime by spending a portion of the sentence (say one third) being denied all but the basics and being made to work. Whether the pay is derisory or the minimum wage is not the issue with me providing that 90% of it goes to compensate the victims of crime. On reflection a prisoner should receive the minimum wage so that there is more to compensate victims with.

If that period of time is served without any problems and the criminal starts to show genuine remorse for what was done, the next phase (again one third) would bring some ‘extras’, more work (50% to the victim, 30% to be saved as a starting ‘purse’ upon release, 20% for the prisoner to spend in the prison ‘shop’) and rehabilitation. Should the prisoner negotiate that phase without any problems, the final third would be on parole.

For the hard cases who refuse to conform then the FULL SENTENCE would be as the first third.

Under such a regime it is unlikely that anyone but the hard cases will every want to go back, especially if the rehabilitation included some sort of work training and a job to go to when the prisoner is released.

Most places of work are obliged to take on a certain number of disabled people so why not a couple of ex-cons as well.