Is It Really Too Much to Ask? (5 page)

For reasons that are not entirely clear, the question of prison reform seems to have cropped up again. Good. It's very important we reform the system so that prisons become disgusting and unhinged. No electricity. No light. No heat. And full to overflowing with inmates who are allowed to eat only what they can catch, or grow in window boxes. Window boxes that they must make from their own fingernail clippings.

Unfortunately, other people think that prisons should be about rehabilitation rather than punishment. That they should be places for quiet reflection, whale song and afternoon poetry by interesting lesbians. Dostoevsky thought this. And so, to a certain extent, did Winston Churchill.

There is even a charity that exists to campaign for the rights of inmates and their families. And I'm sorry, but isn't that a bit weird? Because when you decide to help those less fortunate than yourself, there are so many worthy candidates. People with no homes, no arms and no chance. People with hideous diseases. People with their heads on back to front. And that's before we get to the heart-melting question of children and animals. So why, I wonder, did someone wake up one day and think, ‘I know who I'll help. The man who stole my bicycle'?

It actually happened, though, and as a result we now have the Prison Reform Trust, which apparently believes that a prison sentence should be used only for the likes of Peter Sutcliffe. And, even then, that he should be treated with tenderness and a lot of crisp Egyptian cotton.

Well, let me make something quite plain to the lily-livered eco-hippie vicars who think this way. If you come round to my house this evening, asking if I'd like to buy the man who stole my television a gift, I shall say, ‘Yes. But only if I can shove it up his bottom.'

It gets worse. Only last week one of the peace 'n' love brigade tried to claim that Britain's judiciary was in love with custodial sentences. Really? Because recently a furore erupted over a case in which Cherie Booth QC told a man found guilty of breaking another man's jaw that he would not go to prison because he was a religious person.

On that basis, the devout Osama bin Laden can hand himself in, knowing Cherie will simply fine him fifty quid. And the Archbishop of Canterbury now has carte blanche to kill as many badgers, and children, as he likes.

Strangely, however, the Haight-Ashbury views of the trust are shared by the outgoing head of the prison service. Yup. Mr Mackay wants fewer people sent to jail as well. And so, too, do the Prison Governors Association and Napo, the probation officers' union.

Such is the weight of opinion behind the call for more community-based punishments, I decided to do a spot of research. And I uncovered some interesting statistics. Last year 55,333 people were jailed for six months or less, at a cost of £350 million. And, apparently, as much as £300 million could be saved if they were given community jobs to do instead. That's a powerful argument, now that an ice cream costs £700.

And consider this. It seems that only 34 per cent of criminals given community punishments reoffend, compared with 74 per cent of those sent to a nice warm prison.

It's easy to see why this might be so. At present, criminals tend to mix with other criminals. I, for instance, do not know
any smugglers or murderers, and in all probability you don't either. That's because these people live in a society where their crimes are considered the norm. At my old school, the worse the misdemeanour, the greater the so-called ‘lad values' that encouraged us all to be more and more badly behaved. And I dare say it's much the same story in Wandsworth nick.

Before you think I've gone all soft, consider this. If we take them out of their cells, dress them in orange jumpsuits, shackle their legs together and get them to hoe the municipal roundabouts in our local towns and villages, then they will no longer be among their own. They will be among us.

As a result, we will be able to tell them things. And after they've spent six months on a roundabout, being told things, quite loudly, they may start to understand that their life is not normal and there is nothing particularly brilliant about shoving a pint pot into another man's face.

How brilliant is that? The hippie vicars are happy because the crims are out in the open air, getting fit and doing something useful. And we're happy, too – especially if we are allowed to throw things at them as we drive by. Tomatoes. Eggs. Bricks. And so on.

I'm starting to like this community punishment idea very much. And already I'm thinking of jobs around my house that need doing. Painting. Decorating. Licking the cesspit clean. Think. The offender would be able to see how a normal family lives and I would be allowed to call him names and hit him over the head with a stick.

Criminals could be made to retrieve shopping trolleys from Britain's most disgusting canals. They could be made to perform dangerous stunts at theme parks with killer whales and lions. And put the cones out on motorways. Imagine Boy George being made to put his head up a cow's bottom
to see if its calf is the right way round while you call him names and pelt his backside with veg.

It gets better. Because if lags are made to pick up litter and weed central reservations, we'll need fewer expensive prisons, it will save local authorities a fortune and, what's more, the decent people currently employed by councils to do menial jobs would become free to earn a proper living in the private sector – inventing wireless routers that work, for example.

I can see now that my views on prison have always been naive. And I can see why prison officers are so in favour of community punishment instead. Because, to put it simply, everyone wins.

27 June 2010

The last government was so enthusiastically bossy that in thirteen years it introduced 4,300 exciting ways for us to break the law. It even made it illegal to detonate a nuclear device. But there's nothing new in this, really. All governments like to think up new rules. It's natural.

That's why I smelt a rat the moment Nick Clegg emerged from behind his urn and asked ‘the people' to say which laws they wanted repealing. The deputy prime minister? Of Britain? Asking us if we want fewer laws? Nah. Plainly there was dirty work afoot.

And so it turned out, because on the very same day, a senior police officer was explaining that proposed government cuts meant there would be an inevitable drop in the number of officers. ‘Aha. So that's it,' I thought. ‘They have to cut the number of rules because they simply don't have the money to police them.'

This all sounds very brilliant, and you may be thinking that soon it will be all right to smoke in the pub and drive in the outside lane of the M4 and even, perhaps, use your dogs to scare off the fox that's eating your children. But don't get your hopes up because I'm willing to bet that in the next five years the number of laws that do actually get repealed is roughly none.

So therefore we must turn our attention to the police force and wonder what might be done to save money there. Many may suggest that, instead of cutting officers, those in charge might like instead to cut the number of courses constables
are obliged to attend before being allowed to climb a ladder, or ride a bicycle, or dive into a lake to save a drowning child.

This, however, is probably fatuous, so I propose that we turn for inspiration to the Dutch. I realize, of course, that the Dutch police do not have the best reputation. Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse once did a marvellous sketch – ‘I'm sitting here with my partner and, I'm alsho happy to shay, my lover, Ronald' – that reinforced a commonly held view that Dutch policing is one part crime-fighting to ninety-nine parts homosexuality.

More recently, we were told that in an effort to combat anti-Semitic crime in Amsterdam, Dutch policemanists were using ‘decoy Jews'. The whole idea was ludicrous, even before we get to the question of: why not use real ones? Because, let's be honest, Rutger Hauer in a skullcap isn't going to fool anyone.

I first experienced the Dutch police back in 1975 when a group of Indonesian Christians from the South Moluccas hijacked a train outside the Hollish town of Assen to complain about … actually, I can't quite remember.

Anyway, this was on the news a lot at the time and what I do remember is being staggered by the Netherlandic forces of law and order that turned up at the scene. In Britain at this time policemen were all Dixon of Dock Green, but over there they all looked like a cross between Jesus and Jerry Garcia. The main spokesman was wearing loon pants and a bandanna and had hair so long, I felt sure he would trip over it should an attack on the train be deemed necessary.

But here's the thing. I bet you can't remember what the Moluccans wanted, either. Nor, I'm sure, can you remember how the stand-off ended. All we know is that a terrorist organization was formed, it struck … and then it simply vanished.

In Britain, it took our smart, clean-cut, well-turned-out officers thirty years to deal with the IRA. And the way things are going, it'll be even longer before they get to grips with Johnny Taliban.

So you have to wonder. What do the Dutch have that we don't? And if they do have something, could it work over here, now our police force is made up of two constables, one stapling machine and an elderly dog called Sam?

I posed this question to a Dutch friend recently, and while I may have been drunk – or he may have been stoned – he said, ‘Yes. We are different from you. We can play football, for a kick-off.' He went on to explain about how law enforcement works. Here, if you put one wheel into a bus lane, you can expect to go to prison for several thousand years. But there, if there is a sensible reason and no bus was present at the time, the police will get back to their tender lovemaking and leave you alone.

Fancy some sex in the park? Try it here and you'll still be struggling out of your underpants when Plod turns up. In a main park in Amsterdam, officers are advised to turn a blind eye, provided the coupling is fairly discreet. Want a joint while walking through Amsterdam? Well, you can't. It's illegal. But provided you don't bother anyone else, the police won't bother you.

We have a word for that here, too. Well, two, if we're honest. Common sense. And I wonder what would happen if it were applied; if you could make a phone call in a car if you were in a traffic jam at the time, or you could smoke indoors if everyone else wanted to smoke as well, or if you could read poetry at a summer festival without having to buy a licence.

Imagine it. The police could worry about crime that does matter and ignore crime that doesn't. The savings would be huge and the increase in efficiency dramatic.

Of course, this would require some discretion from the policeman at the scene. And that could be a problem. I know plenty of Plod I'd trust with the job but, equally, my life in Fulham in the 1980s was ruined by an overzealous constable who really would have done me for ‘walking on the cracks in the pavement' if he'd thought he could get away with it.

So here's what I propose. We adopt the Dutch system – if such a system exists outside the football-addled mind of my friend – only we give it a little tweak. If the case is brought to court and the magistrate deems it to be a waste of his or her time, then the arresting officer is made to pay – out of his children's piggy bank if necessary – the cost of getting it there.

4 July 2010

As we know, death is a great leveller; communism in its purest form.

Your family may choose to remember you with a giant pyramid on the outskirts of Cairo, or they may choose to mark your passing with a bunch of petrol-station chrysanthemums, crudely tied to the railings on a suburban dual carriageway. But you're still dead.

It's much the same story with the bodies of those brave First World War soldiers that were recently exhumed from their mass grave in France and buried with more dignity elsewhere.

Now, their families can pay their respects in quiet reverence, which is very nice. But the soldiers themselves? Still dead, I'm afraid. I write about death a lot. It bothers me. I don't like the uncertainty of not knowing how or when it will come. Will it be tomorrow and spectacular or will it be many years from now with a tube up my nose? And what happens afterwards? That bothers me, too.

In my heart of hearts, I know that nothing happens. But of course I could be wrong. We may come back as mosquitoes – in which case I will find Piers Morgan's house and bite him on the nose just before he becomes Larry King. Or we may come back as lions. In which case … I'll do pretty much the same sort of thing.

Or there may be a heaven. If there is, I shall remind St Peter that Christianity is based on forgiveness, say sorry for not going to church, ever, and demand that I'm allowed in. And that – that is really what bothers me most of all about dying.

They say that we leave our body behind when we're dead, but what if we don't? What if there is a next life and we go into it in the same carcass that's transported us through this one? It's why I don't carry a donor card. Because I shall be awfully hacked off if I am gifted an eternity of milk and honey but I keep bumping into things because some bastard back on earth has my eyes.

It is for this reason that I have made it plain that, when I go, I wish to be buried and not cremated. Because you're not going to have any fun at all with the angels if you arrive at the Pearly Gates looking like the contents of a Hoover bag.

I'm bringing all this up because last week some Belgian undertakers announced that they will soon be offering the dead a ‘third way'. A burial? A cremation? Or would sir like to be dissolved in caustic potash and then flushed away down the sewers? No, sir bloody wouldn't.

The process is called resomation and it works like this: you are placed in a silk bag with some water and some potassium hydroxide and then you are boiled until you become a greeny-brown paste.

Hmmm. Even if we leave aside the question of how you might manage in the afterlife as a paste, we must also address the question of reverence for the deceased. Many people may wish to urinate on John Prescott's grave, but chances are, when there is such a thing, no one actually will.

Think about it. Churchyards are rarely vandalized and no one plays ball games in them. Ships that go down with hands still on board are designated as graves and may not be investigated by diving teams. The ashes of those who've been cremated are scattered in places of great beauty. Not chucked in a dustbin lorry. This is because we have a respect for the dead.

And I'm sorry, but where's the respect in turning grandad into a paste and flushing him down the lavatory?

Yes. You are given some powdered bones after the resomation is complete, but every day you know that the paste is out there, too. It'll haunt you. Wondering if you've just caught a fish that ate it. Or whether you stepped in it on the way to work.

Needless to say, the engine behind the concept comes from the murky and dirty world of environmentalism. The Scottish company responsible says that cremating a body creates 573lb of carbon dioxide and that with its new system this is cut to virtually zero. What's more, the company says that if we dissolve the dead, there will be less pressure on space in graveyards.

This is like arguing that Prozac upsets the ecosystem and, once in the water, causes all fish to turn right. It may well be true but it's better than having the streets full of middle-aged women sobbing because they've got a parking ticket. And shampoo. Washing your hair in ‘peace soap' made from mung beans may well ensure Johnny Polar Bear has a home for many years to come but you will have a dirty beard.

It's the same story with this caustic potash business. Melting the dead may be practical but it is also absolutely horrific. Because let's be honest here; let's cut to the chase. We are talking here about boil-in-the-bag, aren't we? And that's just not on.

Boil-in-the-bag works – just about – for parsley sauce. But not for your mum. She breastfed you. She raised you. She was only ever as happy as you were. And you are going to boil her in a bag and make her into paste. To save a polar bear. It's the worst thing I've ever heard of.

If all we're bothered about is the environment and to hell with the dignity, why do we not throw our dead into the sea or into landfill? Or why do we not simply feed them to our dogs? This makes perfect sense, if you think about it. There
are no eco-implications at all. No grave is required. The dog gets a tasty midday snack. Everybody's happy.

Except, of course, we're not happy, are we? Because you cannot feed your nearest and dearest to Fido. It's bad enough clearing up the dog eggs on a normal day. But clearing them up when you know they are Uncle Ernie? It's just a no, isn't it?

So's resomation, and I can't believe the Belgians will actually go for it. Because if they do, and my fears about death are correct, all they'll have to look forward to after a life in Belgium is being used by God for all of eternity to stick his wallpaper to the wall.

11 July 2010