Lock 'em up!

Is prison a cost-effective way of dealing with criminals? Is it a civilised way of dealing with criminals? First question first - official figures put the cost of keeping a person in prison at approaching £30,000 a year. Clearly this is an average figure - it will be significantly more for Category A prisoners, and significantly less for those in open prisons, but even at the lower end, it's about £12,500. That's a lot of money, and it doesn't include any knock-on costs, such as prisoners' families having to apply for social security as a result of losing their bread-winner. As many people are in prison for economic offences - ranging from simple non-payment of fines, through casual shoplifting to white-collar fraud, we can make a simple calculation. What, for example, is the point of sending a person to prison for 6 weeks, at a cost of something like £750 (allowing for remission) for failure to pay a £250 fine? Would it not be more sensible to require the person concerned to do, say, £500 worth of unpaid work (the extra to cover the cost of supervision)? But what about those whose crime is not economic? That raises the second question, which I'll deal with tomorrow.