██ ████████████

[pseudomonas]

███ █████ █ █████ ██████ ██████████ ████ ███ ██████ █████████ █████ █████████ ██████ ███ ████ ██████ █ ████ ██ ███████ ██ ████ ████ ██ ████

██ ███████ ███ ██████████ ████ ███████ ███ ██ ██████ ██ █████ ███████ ██ ██ █ █████ ████ ███ ████ ███████ ████ █████████ ████ ████ ████████ ████ ███ ██████ ██ ███ █████ █████ █████████ ████ █████ █ ████████

Comments

[knirirr]

Presumably (b), as it is known that criminals get short sentences and tend to re-offend, so better to do it elsewhere so that it keeps the crime figures down.

[pseudomonas]

Well, it keeps the crime figures down here, at the expense of raising them somewhere else. It all feels like one of those systems where enormous effort is taken on moving a problem around rather than solving it, perhaps by longer sentences or better regimes within prisons, or more active follow-up for released prisoners, or whatever you think might help.

[knirirr]

at the expense of raising them somewhere else.

But somewhere else they're not voting for politicians here, so those politicians are unlikely to care.

[pseudomonas]

Quite. That's why politicians care (or don't), but what about everyone else?

[knirirr]

I got the impression that everyone else understood that prison did not cure criminals - they'll get out after a short time and commit more crimes. Therefore, better to get rid of these dirty foriengers and have them commit their murders elsewhere.

[pseudomonas]

This tallies with my guess, but it seems quite blatant xenophobia.

[knirirr]

Unfortunately, such is life.

[pseudomonas]

Or NIMBYism, I suppose, if it's a case of "I don't want to be at risk, but I don't care if other people are".

[cartesiandaemon]

I don't approve, but it isn't *necessarily* xenophobia -- I might legitimately approve people immigrating if they're law abiding but not if they're not (which has a good if unfair correlation with being arrested) while recognising that a similar percentage of our citizens are criminals, but knowing that we can't deport them[1].

[1] Well, ok, we used to, and it'd solve the housing problem a bit, but we're running out of places to deport them to, and it's not very human rightsarrific, is it? :)

[beingjdc]

It's not xenophobic at all. It's the limits of the possible. I'd happily deport indigenous criminals if there was anywhere that could be obliged to take them.

[pseudomonas]

I didn't mean xenophobic behaviour towards the criminals, I meant displaying a preference that foreigners rather than Britons suffer at the hands of criminals.

[beingjdc]

Yes, as I said that is the job of the British Government. It's no more xenophobic to deport foreign criminals than it is to refuse NHS treatment to anyone with the cash to fly over, or to charge Russians more than UK students for attending British universities.

[shreena]

I assume that the foreign government in question knows what the people in questino have been convicted of. They could imprison them again or do whatever they wanted to protect their own citizens. I think I agree that it's no more passing the buck than it is to refuse NHS treatment to non-British citizens or to charge non-British citizens more for British universities.

[beingjdc]

Well, it keeps the crime figures down here, at the expense of raising them somewhere else.

That's the job of our government. Stopping them reoffending in the country they came from is the job of the government there.

I'd be delighted if we could just keep them in prison, but they've been given a sentence for a crime they've committed, and they've served it - but what is the moral difference between that and imprisoning people who are likely to commit a crime but have so far not done so? The powerful civil liberties lobby in this country is unlikely to be converted to administrative detention anytime soon.