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The private police state

For those who missed it, this morning, there was a fascinating article in the Daily Telegraph about the increasing failure of the British state to perform its most basic activity, that of providing personal security to its tax-paying citizens. It seems more and more people are simply withdrawing any hope they may have once held in the British police and are taking their own personal security matters directly into their own hands, with impressive crime reduction results to boot, through the creation and adoption of private police forces.

It seems the Individualist Revolution really is creeping up on us, unawares, as street by street, in Britain, the enfeebled state withers away and people take an ever-increasing amount of private control over their own private lives.

This is not what the state intended. But it is what is happening. Long may this withering process continue.

37 comments to The private police state

  • Ral

    Maybe an ID card can help after it’s cured a few famines and sent all those fake immigrants back to Romania.

  • Ben

    And what will stop these armed brigades setting upon each other, just like little tribes or mini-states? I fail to see how this is a Good Thing.

  • Andy Duncan

    Ben writes:

    And what will stop these armed brigades setting upon each other, just like little tribes or mini-states? I fail to see how this is a Good Thing.

    The short answer is read the Daily Telegraph article and tell me how many residents quoted within it are complaining about these ‘armed brigades’ and the security service they are receiving from them, as opposed to the ‘service’ they are receiving from the state’s own police?

    Now at the moment these ‘armed brigades’ are currently armed with notebooks, microphones, and cameras, but let’s assume that sometime in the future they are more heavily loaded with firearms. What then?

    Well, for a medium-sized answer try reading the Introductory Chapter and Chapter 10 of the PDF-linked book, The Myth of National Defense.

    For a fuller answer, work your way through all those non-fiction Ayn Rand books, realise their implicit support of the right of the state to impose arbitrary taxation, and then read the whole of The Myth of National Defense, especially chapters 2, 6, 7, and 11. Especially Chapter 2.

    Certainly saves me writing 15,000 words, anyway, in attempting to answer your question. Good luck! 🙂

    And thank you to Mises.org for providing this recently-published book online.

  • Richard Garner

    And what will stop these armed brigades setting upon each other, just like little tribes or mini-states? I fail to see how this is a Good Thing.

    The fact that they are profit making companies? Warfare between companies would be costly, making cheaper alternatives more attractive. Also, warfare would involve the risk of dragging in third parties, who would also be able to call up their own agencies, so leading to increased costly conflict. Again, peaceful resolution would be a more attractive solution.

  • So if anyone asks why I want a CCW, I tell them I’m a professional bodyguard. When they ask for my employer, I tell them I’m self-employed.

  • Sasquach

    A change in policing methods could definately help. Here in the States many comunities from large cities to small towns have officers patrolling on bicycles. The get to know the people in their areas, both the law abiding and the trouble causers. This relationship is the key to reducing the petty crime (though I don’t consider assault or muggings to be petty). Many eyes are watching and if they know that the officers who patrol thier neighborhoods will take a problem seriously they will speak up.

    The courts must also do their part. Arresting a young punk for slashing tires should lead to a court date and some form of punishment (anything from picking up trash for a few weekends to boot camps for a little unpleasent disciplne). This early exposure to the concept of punishment for committing a crime can change some young people for the better.

    Private security will not solve the problem in my opinion. It will just move the problem over a few streets or miles.

  • Verity

    Sasquach – Thanks. We are well aware that a change in policing methods is required. You are not handing down any great truths. In Britain, we essentially do not have any police service. (Except for those involved in traffic violations and in policing citizens’ thoughts.)

    Since mankind stood upright, humans have been aware of the benefits of punishment in training people, especially young men, to abide by laws. British people – or any other people – do not need you to tell them that early exposure to the concept of punishment can change young people. The only people who do not understand this concept are those employed in the British justice system. Socialist judges of the chatterati class regard perpetrators as “victims of society” and hand down ridiculous sentences – including for people who have 30 or 40 previous convictions. The British government claims our prisons are overcrowded and therefore custodial sentences should not be handed down. (To save your typing fingers, yes, British citizens do respond, in their tens of thousands, “Well build more bleedin’ prisons, you incompetent morons!” But prison is not the socialist way.)

    There is, effectively, no law in Britain and no punishment, either. Sentencing offenders to picking up trash or boot camp is against their human rights. The taxpaying, law abiding citizen has no such rights. Private security is a step in the right direction.

    You must be new around here.

  • Here’s what private police/armies can do.

    Libertarians should applaud – Private guards repel attack on headquarters

    No offence to the Dutch soldiers, all offence to the UN, but do you think these Blackwater guys would have let the massacre at Srebrenica occur?

  • erwan begoc

    I tend to think of being given a one year assignment in the army ,or any other institution that requires discipline, as the best way to tame young offenders.

    Right now punitions can either be too harsh or not enough (example: the young hashish dealer might end up in a cell, while the backstreet burglar is released with gentle warning).

    Some kids are sure just end up behaving the way they do by assimilation, to integrate with their environment by doing what their brothers, parents,family, neighbours do.

    A change of environment with new rules, someone to answer to, and regular tasks to accomplish can be all it takes for some to get out of the gloom.

  • Harvey

    Jesus christ, Verity, I’ve seen a lot of shit posted in my time but that really takes the piss.

    We have one of the highest incarceration rates in europe, and one of the highest recidivism rates too.

    Our penal system is modelled on America’s HIP (Human Incarceration Project – i.e. EVERYONE goes to jail) and is equally ineffective. Even in the US, they build more jails, immediately fill them up and just are left with the same problem because sending people to jail only keeps them off the streets for a while, and the moment you put them back onto the streets they go straight back to crime because no employer wants to hire anyone with a criminal record, and even if they didn’t care about that, an employee who’s been in the joint for the past year is hardly likely to be a productive worker who’s used to the daily grind.

    An awful lot of people in this country go to jail, as they do in America. An awful lot of them proceed along a ‘life of crime’ because if you force people to associate with criminals every day for 6 months, a year, whatever, that’s the sort of lifestyle they pick up.

    I am no pansy liberal, trust me on that, but throwing people in prison DOES NOT WORK. It is however still beloved of those who wish to be seen as ‘tough on crime’ simply because it placates the victims. Remember, it’s meant to be a ‘justice’ system not a ‘vengance’ system. The objective is to reduce the number of crimes, not to make the victims feel better. Any other goal is simply foolish politics. Supporting victims by giving in to their spiteful desires to ‘lock ‘im up and throw away the key’ may win you votes, but it doesn’t solve the problem.

    An unpopular opinion, but I care not. Do what works.

  • Front4uk

    I have lost ALL faith in the fairness of British
    (in)justice system and the ability of our politically correct, sensitivity trained police force to protect the public from criminal element. The problems are widely reported in media, acknowledged by the majority of population and buried under pile of adjusted statistics released by the Government to deny their policy failures.

    According to the Home Secretary and Chief of Metropolitan Police we have never had it so good and there’s no problem with crime, only with the “perception of crime”.

    Reminds me of old Stalinist quotes from the 1930’s… “there is NO famine in the Soviet Union…”. Cue to the Ukranian peasants getting down for a bit of cannibalism…

    Unfortunately things here in the UK will get far worse before they get better… so one should take advice from the Roman’s who put it so well : “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”.

  • Front4uk

    Harvey,

    I’m sure your objections toward Human Incarceration Project called prison and sympathetic, compassionate views will SHIELD you from a burst of 9mm bullets travelling at 1050FPS…. one of these days you might out, if you manage to get down from your Ivory Tower and see how it is in here in the REAL world.

  • Harvey

    If you’d read what I posted, you’d have seen that I have no objections towards prison per-se – I object to prison onlhy when it doesn’t solve the problem of reducing crime – which is actually most of the time.

    If criminals who go to prison are no less likely to re-offend than criminals who are given non-custodial (house arrest, etc) sentences, I’d rather they didn’t go to prison – the short term gain of them not being on the street is more than offset by the criminal education, drug habits and all sorts of other crap they pick up in prisons.

    What would you rather have? Mandatory 50 year minimum sentences for all crimes?

    Please suggest a workable alternative.

  • Verity

    Harvey – We have one of the highest incarceration rates in europe, and one of the highest recidivism rates too. References, please. And no quoting The Guardian, the BBC or whatever fanciful figures the goverment made up 25 minutes ago.

    Were you aware that Fearon fellow who assaulted Tony Martin now has 39 convictions and until he hit No 37, he had never been sent to prison?

    Prison works and they should be building more of them. It should be a punishment. No TV, for example. There are some prisons in Britain that have £3,000 plasma giant screen TVs. This comes under the category of Type of Prison That Does Not work.

    You write: “… more than offset by the criminal education, drug habits and all sorts of other crap they pick up in prisons.”

    Harvey, I am going to share a little secret with you. The people who are in prison are already criminals!! Wow! Co-incidence, or what? They have already embarked on a life of crime!!

    They are also heavy drug users. That is why so many of them don’t mind being sent up. It is easier to come by drugs when banged up than out on the street, where you risk getting punched out for being caught stealing DVD players.

    I don’t know what “all sorts of other crap they pick up in prison” refers to. They can just as easily pick STDs on the outside as they can in prison. OK, if they’re cute, they may get ho’-smacked around a bit, but this is the chance they take. And hell, smoking’s still legal in prisons!

    Britain does have the highest population level (not rates) of incarceration in the EU. This is because we have a higher number of criminals than other countries. This is because in Britain, incarceration is regarded as an infringement of their human (I use the term loosely) rights.

    Harvey (“I’ve seen a lot of shit posted in my time, but this really takes the piss”) – Shit and piss alert: I have said for some time that third time offenders should have a mandatory sentence passed of incarceration without parole until their 30th birthday. First offence: short prison sentence to signal: Warning. Second offence: Slightly longer prison term to signal we really mean it. Third offence: banged up until their 30th birthday, whether that is in a couple of years or 12 years. By the time they’re 30, most of them will no longer have that urge to violence they had when young and wild. Meantime, society is free of them.

  • Ral

    Harvey:

    We have one of the highest incarceration rates in europe, and one of the highest recidivism rates too.

    Our penal system is modelled on America’s HIP (Human Incarceration Project – i.e. EVERYONE goes to jail) and is equally ineffective.

    Bush in Texas came up with a system where a criminal got a long prison term but most of it was suspended. If the criminal behaved then they stayed out of jail if not they ended up doing the suspended time as well as the time for their new crimes.

    It sounds good and actually works…paging David Blunkett.

  • Verity

    Ral – David Blunkett is not currently available to take calls as he is clinging onto the rails of the Titantic as Blair pries his white knuckles off and prepares to push him overboard at the “Immigration Summit”.

    BTW – What is an immigration summit? Is that like a cabinet meeting, but intended to sound more important now that the cabinet is as chaotic and anarchic as a Marx Brothers movie?

  • Harvey

    To address Verity’s points, if we lock persistent criminals away until their 30th birthday, what do we do with them afterwards?

    No matter how many training schemes, enterprise schemes etcetera you put them through, to an employer they’re still ex-cons and no-one’s gonna touch them with a barge pole. You further suggest that prisons should be extremely tough – while I see where you’re coming from, tough environments either break people (so they’re gonna be on mental disability allowance) or harden them (so they’re going to be hardcases who’ve been cooped up for about the past 5~10 years with similar hardcases, of which some are gonna be released at similar times.)

    So when we let these packs of human pitbulls (because that’s how they make pitbulls violent, you know – no mercy, make them have to fight to feed, etcetera) back out into a peaceful and calm society, they’re just gonna fit right in immediately.

    Now:

    Britain does have the highest population level (not rates) of incarceration in the EU. This is because we have a higher number of criminals than other countries. This is because in Britain, incarceration is regarded as an infringement of their human (I use the term loosely) rights.

    We put the greatest percentage of the population in prison because we have more criminals because we don’t put enough of them in prison. I see.

    ‘Level’ not ‘rates’ is crap because it doesn’t take into account the differences in population. We do have the highest incarceration percentage of the ‘civilised’ countries of europe, and higher than all of the EU countries.

    link here although this is dated (1997). More sources as they come – a recent Economist article highlighted that things had not significantly changed in the UK.

    I furthermore find it pointless to overly attack the governent for failing to provide adequate levels of security – attack it instead for creating more and more ‘crimes’ every week and flagging them up as ‘the item of the week’ for police priority. Scrap the ‘victimless crimes’ and I think you’ll find the police have plenty of resources to go around.

  • The other thing – far more important than imprisoning people who are caught – is making people believe they WILL be caught. At the moment, this simply isn’t the case in the UK.

    Increasing clearup rates for the crimes that people actually care about (mugging and burglary, plus the obvious murder/GBH and rape) would do far more to cut crime than longer sentences for those few crims unlucky enough to be caught.

  • toolkien

    Prisons are boxes that we put people in who cannot abide by the social contract. I’m not interested in gaining a pound of flesh for revenge or rehabilitating/reconditioning anyone. A person who deserves to go to prison has already manifested an anti-social behavior. Trying to condition that behavior out is a quixotic endeavor and no Public resources should be used in the attempt. Prison removes individuals from free association with others so that they are limited in the damage they can do. Prisons should be cheap and efficient and not cost the taxpayer anymore than is necessary.

    While a person is imprisoned, access may be granted to private associations (churches, self financed non-profits) to do what they feel they can in modifying a criminal’s behavior. At best all we can hope is that, while the criminal is out of circulation, they take it upon themselves to reflect on the type of life they want to lead. We have to bear the risk that once let out, they will revert to criminal behavior. On the other hand they may want to stay out of prison. It is just as beyond our control to condition as it was to prevent them from being a criminal in the first place. Our concern is to remove them from circulation.

  • Julian Morrison

    A problem with police: their siege attitude.

    Example: I live in Banbury. It’s a middle-class well-off rural small town, and we have a surprisingly huge number of police. We don’t have any sort of “wild west culture”. Yet, these police go around in groups of 2 minimum, bristling with gadgets and batons, encased within kevlar and dayglo yellow jackets, muttering into walkietalkies. And that’s when they aren’t just patrolling by driving slowly through the pedestrianized streets in their cars.

    They seem less like the article’s calm, approachable security guard and more like some kind of occupying army.

  • Verity

    toolkien – Could agree more. It’s not the state’s business to involve itself in behaviour modification. Adults should be able to think this through for themselves, especially after having endured having had their freedom removed by force.

    I want them off the streets and unable to harm law abiding people. In prison, they should have to work to pay for their cell and board. They should be kept warm and dry, have enough food and some opportunity to exercise, so when they’re released, they are fit to apply for jobs. That is the extent of our responsibility to people who have broken their contract with society.

    Frankly, I think it’s fanciful to expect an adult who knowingly entered a career of crime to suddenly see the light. The only thing we can do is, manage his ability to harm society and hope that he won’t care to come back.

  • Brock

    Anyone who wants to find a prison system that does its job (i.e. reduces the over-all crime rate of society) should check out Finland. After WWII it was modeled on the Russian system, which as you might imagine, was not a good place to be incarcerated. They have since reformed.

    Nowadays they imprison people – but the prisoners are turned into normal citizens. Contrary to toolkien’s baseless assumption that you cannot change people, yes, you can. Maybe not 100% of them, but most people are normal people with bad habits – and habits can be changed (forcefully, if necessary). The total number of actual sociapaths is quite low as a % of the population.

    However, having a good prison system is premised upon having a good policing system which rounds up criminals, and having a judiciary that is willing to send those criminals to jail. As the topic of the story is about the police system, that should be the topic of the discussion.

    From the tenor of the article, and others I have read on the topic, the whole policing culture in London needs drastic reform. This doesn’t seem too likely though as it appears to be part of a greater cultural tide which produces the effects of incarcerating home owners who defend their property from burglars. That’s insane. However, it’s all tied together in a big knot, so I suspect that until the whole thing sorts itself out, Britons are on their own w/ repect to policing.

    And to answer libertarians arguments such as Verity’s

    It’s not the state’s business to involve itself in behaviour modification. Adults should be able to think this through for themselves, especially after having endured having had their freedom removed by force.

    Well, perhaps they should be able to think for themselves, but “should” is the operative word. Clearly they cannot. We will teach them. Any person who cannot respect the rights to life, libery and property does not deserve them in turn. It’s a two-way street bub, and if you expect us to respect your rights, you must repect ours. If you cannot, in the slammer you go until you learn better.

    However, it is in our (the folks who foot the bill for prisons) best interest to rehabilitate them and speed up their learning process. Costs us money to keep them in there, so unless you’re willing to just take them out back and shoot them there is a cost-benefit to teaching them to be civilized human beings as quickly as possible. Once that’s done, and they’ve paid enough time to make it a real deterrance, they go back to working and paying taxes. Maybe one day they’ll even pay back the cost of their prison time.

  • Tuscan Tony

    The Tuscan answer is a remarkably neat and self-funding solution – alongside the private security guards, maintain rapid response ambulances. Captured malfeasors can thus be swiftly delivered to (private) hospitals and broken up, their organs harvested and the profits form the sales going towards maintaining peace and quiet in the neighbourhood. Organ shortage problem solved. Prison space problem solved. If only all of life’s problems were this easily fixed.

  • Brock

    Tuscan – that’s sick.

  • S. Weasel

    Brock, what exactly is Finland supposed to be doing to turn criminals into citizens? A bit of a Google didn’t enlighten me.

    Mostly, it seems they have a lower per capita prison population because they try really, really hard not to put people in prison. They don’t seem to have much crime in the first place, which makes that easier. They are geographically out of the path of both narcotics traffic and immigration, which helps explain the low crime. That, and the population of the entire country is about the same as Baghdad.

    What specific techniques are they employing, other than being inherently bland and Finnish?

  • But prison is not the socialist way.

    Oh yeah? Tell that to Stalin! Oh, wait, you meant putting criminals in prison isn’t the socialist way. That I can agree with.

  • John Harrison

    On the one hand we have some Iraqis rioting because they want jobs, on the other a lack of prison places in Britain and America. How about a little outsourcing?
    We could have a prison building programme at a fraction of the price and plenty of eager guards.

  • Verity

    Brock- “Well, perhaps they should be able to think for themselves, but ‘should’ is the operative word. Clearly they cannot. We will teach them.”

    How? Having failed to learn for the 20 years or so they’ve been under the impression they were supra-important, they’re suddenly going to cleave to life lessons? They have to learn the lesson that wild young men all over the world learn: there is someone stronger than you. You’re not in control. We (a coherent society, which the socialists have done so much to destroy) are.

    This learning experience, if not inculcated when very young by – preferably – dads, will require it be learned by force later on.

  • Tuscan Tony

    Well said, Verity, though can’t help thinking the capitalist solution of bounties on heads coupled with absolute indemnities for whatever follows in defence of one’s neighbourhood might employ the misspent youth more productively

  • Verity

    Tuscan T – Mmm … bounties….

    The socialists/Gramscians in Britain have basically dismantled fatherhood, as they have dismantled the family. Fatherhood is now a night at the Oprah, in front of the TV wiv a few bevvies an’ ven a quickkie before he remembers ‘is appointment da’an the pub wiv a few mates. He may come back, or he may not.

    By the time the child is born nine months later, the mother may have little recollection of the father. Certainly, there will be no permanent man in the council flat (free, except to ratepayers).

    The children will have absolutely no concept of what a father is – not a temporary “dad” passing through, but a real husband and wife, shared debts, ambitions and experiences, “you get your homework done, or you won’t be going out after school for a week” real life daddy. Just a little teenage girl who calls herself mum and whose own daddy is “the social”. The state.

    They’re in their third generation now and their folk memories have been airbrushed out by the schools, “the social”, and television. Women without permanent men and hundreds of thousands of children without fathers.

  • Nate

    I read an article not long ago at TechCentralStation about using reform bonds. In such case, offenders are incarcerated. An offender may only receive parole if his bond is purchased. The term on the bond would be set for say 3 or 5 years (or some such), in that if the offender was not re-incarcerated within the bond period, the holder of the bond would be compensated when it matures. The idea was novel to me, and I have since been thinking quite a lot about its potential. I’m willing to give it a try, at least.

  • Dan McWiggins

    Verity, Toolkien,

    Well said. Still, the most effective way to sort all this out is to get the private sector involved. Let the people of Britain keep and bear arms and reestablish in law the castle doctrine. Make concealed carry widely available to people with clean records. Allow the use of deadly force in cases where life or grievous bodily harm is threatened. In the US, being threatened by a much larger attacker, or multiple attackers, generally permits the use of a firearm. In short, arm the people and let them take care of themselves.

    That would seriously diminish the problem and, IMHO, is the only thing that will. With the best-trained and most highly motivated officers on earth (which Britain certainly does not have), there would still be far too few to prevent most crime. The only way for the people to be, and feel, safe, is to allow them to take their own safety into their own hands.

    Guns aren’t called “equalizers” for nothing. A gun makes even a small, old, or female citizen perfectly capable of lethal self-defense against the biggest lout. If the yobbos on British streets knew they were quite possibly looking at getting two or three hollowpoints to center of mass the next time they decided to assault a citizen, I suspect they would give the matter much more consideration. The thugs on this side certainly do, at least in the concealed carry states. That’s why, over here, most robberies happen when homes are unoccupied. In your country, most robberies happen when the occupants are there.

    Get your gun rights back from the Government, or be prepared not only to be “subjects” of the Crown, but subjected to the whims of every criminal who manages to catch you unawares. Or come to the US. Your choice.

  • Brock

    I’ll second everything Dan just said and answer S. Weasel’s question from there.

    To understand how to ‘fix’ a criminal you first have to understand what’s ‘broken.’ Some people are just sociopaths and there’s nothing you can do about it. Lock ’em up & toss the key.

    Most people aren’t though. Most people who are in jail have made rational economic decisions to break the law. They don’t have the skills and habits it takes to succeed in the legal private sector so they attempt to make their fortune in the illegal private sector. They are anti-social, but they aren’t biologically pre-disposed towards that – you can train it out of them.

    The Finns seek to do two things. They seek to punish people do deter crime. They also seek to instill in their inmates the skills they need to tip the rational ‘balance of factors’ towards legal activities. Punishment comes from isolation mostly – they don’t have any contact with the outside world. They don’t see any of their friends or family for years. This has proven to be sufficient punishment to deter crime.

    The second half of their system is to instill in people to the skills it takes to be rationally law abiding. Skills like taking responsibility, self discipline, following instructions from a manager and showing up places on time. For a simple example I will demonstrate a difference.

    In US prisons is a prisoner works in the wood shop he is escorted from cell to work place by prison personell. In the Finnish prison no one comes to get you. After a certain time your cell is just unlocked. If you don’t show up to work on time you are punished in some way. Wardens have the authority to extend your sentence in one day increments, as an example. In this way the Finnish prisoner learns how to get up our of bed in the morning and go to work without any armed guards forcing him to. This is a highly valuable skill which all of us law-abiders take for granted, but our lives would be non-functional without it. That’s just one example.

    US prisoners never learn these skills. For them the only rational decision is to return to a life of crime – its the only thing they know how to do, and they have the same desire to make money and provide for themselves the rest of us have.

    That said, the prison system is the last resort. Arming the populace is one of many ways of insuring it never reaches that point.

  • Verity

    Brock – That’s most interesting. Teaching them skills we all learned as children – and if you don’t have them, most assuredly you can’t be in the mainstream.

    Dan McWiggins – Get your gun rights back from the Government, or be prepared not only to be “subjects” of the Crown …

    First, it’s an American misunderstanding that we are “subjects”. Our passports say we are “citizens”.

    … but subjected to the whims of every criminal who manages to catch you unawares.

    You mean there might be another Tony Blair lurking round the corner?

  • The Wobbly Guy

    As a former warden in a military prison, I find this discussion of rehabilitation techniques interesting. Of course, prisons should be tough places where nobody wants to go to; that is the deterrance factor.

    During my time at detention barracks, the place was already much milder than in the past, when wardens would sometimes throw offenders into solitary and then set loose two growling guard dogs onto the hapless prisoner. After that? Emergency ride to the hospital.

    Then we changed tactics. Simply, deprivation. Deprivation of sunlight, deprivation of good food(it didn’t help that we as wardens had to eat the same lousy slop!!!), deprivation of space except for the space enclosed by the three walls and the cell bars. We even prevented them from doing pushups in the cells.

    Good behaviour is rewarded by strenuous training in the parade square, and they actually seem to prefer it. But foul up, and that privilege is taken away.

    Friends elsewhere in the army told me our tactics were very effective, serving to discipline the insubordinate and straighten out the lazy. Only a few of the die hards, or those who have other reasons(family financial difficulties) to go AWOL, would choose to do so again.

  • ed

    Hmmm.

    Criminals and prisons … what to do, what to do ….

    I’ve GOT IT! Let’s outsource it! 🙂

    Why not hire some third world country to build prisons? We could get things done much cheaper there and those third world countries would gain a valuable amount of foreign currency. Additionally these criminals would realise that their “rights” are considerably different and the availability of plasma TV’s would be greatly lessened.

    Hmmm. Even liberals would like that as it would increase trade to poor countries ….

    LOL.

  • Front4uk

    HA HA HA! Oh Brock… you “brocked” my brain!! HA HA HA! Finnish prisons “work”, eh???!?

    Well, let’s just start with the fact that I hold a Finnish passport (alongside my UK one) and I actually LIVED there for whopping 18 years.

    Here’s some “insider information” for you : Finnish prisons are like a “daycare school” ie. very very SOFT where nobody is isolated etc. and DO NOT turn offenders into good citizenry any more than UK or US prisons. In the fact, the criminal element just gets released back into the society where they go committing crimes until they get “taken out” by someone who’s not willing to become a victim.

    By “taking out” I mean the fact gun ownership is near 40% in Finland and for willingness to to use them check Winter War from 1939-1940. Finland is a HUGE country by land mass comapared to european counterparts and is basically snowed under for good half of the year, with very thinly distributed population. This all means you do not have to feed that corpse of a burglar to the pigs, just dump it into the forest and by summer… it’s GONE! Vanished! Like an intelligent thought in a socialsts head!

    Still despite that, Finland enjoys one of the highest murder rates per capita in the EU… maybe due to the heavy drinking culture, long dark winters and oppressive taxation and regulation causing high unemployment all the problems that come with that.