Just a Few More Steps to Meltdown

This report in The Times sums up much of what I have been blogging about for a while. The bottom line is that the policies that have filled up the prisons were all introduced by this Government, but that the same government has not just failed to provide the required resources, but refuses to take any action at all, for fear of the tabloids.
The suspended sentence that has proved so useful that magistrates have imposed thousands of them looks doomed, as I wrote last year, so one of the few really useful bits of the 2003 Act will be dropped. I suppose we should be grateful that we even got to try it - Custody Plus was dropped before implementation (but after thousands of people had been trained on it).
I can only quote Sir Richard Mottram, the senior civil servant who said:-

"We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department's fucked. It's been the biggest cock-up ever and we're all completely fucked."

Spot on, Sir Richard, spot on.

Here is the Times leader.