Did We Miss Something?

Watching the speech from our Prime Minister, I suppose you could be forgiven for thinking he was trying to occupy more of the 'centre ground'. I mean he did mention that he wants "Everyone, no matter what background they come from, to have the same chances at a good life". Sounds promising. That is as long as you don't mind being saddled with a £50k+ debt when you come out of university. Or if you don't mind being a child growing up in poverty, thanks to his new tax credit cuts. Take a child growing up in an overcrowded house to working parents living in poverty, perhaps deciding whether the family can eat one or two meals that day. Then compare them to a child who lives in an upper middle class family, with their own space to do school work and a well balanced nutritious diet. Has taking the tax credits from the first child's family helped improve their chances in life to that of the second child or made the gap much larger?

Now lets look at another key part of his speech. Prisons. "We have the criminals attention so lets teach them, rehabilitate them and put them back to work". A very left of field sounding announcement if taken on its own. But it was followed by "We need to replace the antiquated Victorian prisons we have with modern facilities fit for purpose". Now this is the point the press seemed to brush over. Replacing old prisons with new. How are we going to do this and stick to the chancellors 'long term economic plan' of never ending austerity? I suggest the real message here is that we are seeking to privatize prisons. Yep thats right private prisons. Was this the real announcement covered in a cloak of lefty rhetoric?

The USA have a private prison system, A system where the government in many cases guarantees inmate quotas of 90% or more. How can they do this? How can you guarantee there will be enough criminals in the system at that particular time? The justice system in the states has come under fire from many accusations of corruption in recent times. Often pointed out is the terrible relationship between police officers and the Black and Hispanic population in the states. These two groups make up around 30% of the population yet 59% of the prison population. They also make up some of the most impoverished communities. It is often suggested that these two communities are unfairly targeted by police officers and harsher prison sentences are handed out.

What will our government offer private companies in the way of quotas? How will our prison population be made up? What if we cant match those quotas? Will we see an announcement of the government getting "tough on crime" in order to make up the numbers? There has always been a correlation between poverty and crime, are those new families pushed into poverty by the tax credit cuts more likely to end up in prison? Is this the new centre ground?


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