Shabana Mahmood, Labor Guardasigilli, wants to empty prisons with enormous discounts of punishment and no imprisonment for minor crimes. Then, however, it winks at the right: chemical castration for rapists.
Outside everyone, or almost. And for the worst sexual predators, chemical castration. The new justice reform plan, presented by Minister Shabana Mahmood, is raising an uproar in the United Kingdom, a recipe that mixes the most unscrupulous solutions dear both to the left and right doctrines, in an attempt to solve the deep crisis of the overcrowded prisons that grips the country. According to the official data released by Parliament, between 1900 and 2018, the prison population has quadrupled, with an increase of 60 percent starting from the sixties. In March 2024 the prisoners locked up in the prisons of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland touched 98 thousand units, but could reach 114 thousand by 2027. Labor Premier Keir Starmer, Although he has noticed, he had already had to face the newly elected emergency, freeing 5,500 prisoners last September which had served only 40 percent of the sentence envisaged, instead of half, as established by the current law.
To request it, the explosive situation in many institutes of the Kingdom and London, Already theaters of sensational addressed in past years, where the most fragile prisoners are often driven to suicide, while the mafia of the more organized ones controls an interrupted drug and weapons, without underpaid agents, incompetent and sometimes colluded, succeeding or wanting to restore the order. The daring escape from the prison of Wandsworth (considered the worst London prison) which took place at 7 and 32 of an unusual red -hot summer morning, by Daniel Khalife, a former British soldier, aspiring duplication agent and ended up in the cell for having sold secrets to Iran, is just one of the most striking cases. The man, who had been waiting for the trial for eight months, had managed to escape from the kitchens of the prison dressed as a chef, hidden in a van of the food. And already in 2017, the revolt that had left two wings of the Bedford prison destroyed, had highlighted unsustainable living conditions for both the prisoners and for the agents in charge of their control.
Mahmood’s reform project, presented as “the most impressive by the Victorian era”, However, it is not easy to digest. Drawn up with the help of the independent commission led by its predecessor David Gauke (former minister under the government of Boris Johnson, halved because in a strong disagreement on Brexit and on which Starmer he had placed his eyes for some time) proposes to add 14 thousand places to those existing in the country’s prisons, confirming an allocation of 4.7 billion for the construction of new structures, but above all to reduce the prison population through one system that entrusts two third parties of the sentence to be served for the sentences of less than a year, to a semi -freedom regime, “not automatic, but only for those who deserve it and super vigilated” and an increasingly extensive use of services to the community.
The plan proposes the elimination of prison penalties for minor crimes, Excluding those for domestic abuses, to be replaced with a series of alternative measures, ranging from electronic bracelets, the ban on driving and assisting and participating in sporting events up to external unpaid work. “It has been found that in these cases the community service obtains better prison results” explained Mahmood “since currently 60 percent of prisoners with minor penalties of one year are recurrence”. The works carried out for private companies whose payments will also be favored for the victims of the crimes. Many of them, however, do not feel comforted by similar solutions, feeling scipulated for the umpteenth time of the certainty of the penalty towards their attackers. And according to Mark Fairhurst, of the Prison Officers Association, half of the prisoners issued with license have violated their conditions. Shabana Mahmood – born in Birmingham to Pakistani parents, among the first Muslim deputies to be elected – is accustomed to going against the current: when the sentence council, an independent body of the Department of Justice, a month ago had suggested to the judges to use a two -speed justice, modulating the judgments based on ethnicity and social conditions of the accused, he threatened to intervene. The guidelines have not been definitively abandoned. He listens to the criticisms, but goes on his way. Which is not exactly what you would expect from a Labor government.
The pilot project that provides chemical castration for serial rapists, Started in 20 British prisons on a voluntary basis, he would have met strong resistance even in the most extremist wing of the conservative party and is arousing criticism even in a part of the scientific world. The same skepticism welcomed the proposal to reduce 50 percent of foreign prisoners who have served at least one third of the sentence, through deportation. Human rights associations speak of “unacceptable approach”, but since July 2024 the Starmer government has already transferred 4,436, 14 percent more than the year before. “Everything I am announcing today is done thinking about justice at the service of the victims” said Mahmood when he illustrated the plan “if our prisons collapse are they to pay the price and if we reduce the recidals we will reduce the victims”. Too early to know if it will work, but since it does not like neither on the right nor on the left, who knows that it is not the right way.
