The Captive Market

Scotland’s only private prison is once again being derided by the socialists after a seventeen year-old committed suicide there whilst on remand. This is the second suicide at the prison since it opened in March 1999.

This comes on the back of a report on the prison by the chief inspector of Scottish prisons, Clive Fairweather. In this report, he declares the prison an "expensive failure" and repeats the leftist mantra of "profits before people" when he judges the staffing levels to be below acceptable safety levels. The calls to close the prison continue to mount by those who say that prisons simply cannot be run like businesses.

The privatised Kilmarnock Prison is but the first step in what is seen as the road to penal privatisation by Tony Cameron, the chief executive of the Scottish Prisons Services (SPS), who has spoken of taking one-third of Scotland’s prisons out of the public sector. The reason for this move in principle would seem to be as much financial as free market since £13 million has been axed from the prisons budget to fund the new Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency.

This man is not popular with prison staff who, no doubt, would wish to see him locked up instead. This is especially true in the wake of a one-day strike recently by Scottish prison officers. This was in protest of the imposition of 13-hour shifts without a meal break in all of Scotland’s 22 prisons. Even though the strike was illegal, the SPS backed down and the union had a rare victory.

Though I welcome as much privatisation as possible out of the State sector, I have long held an ambivalence towards the concept of the prison system. These are the facts:

This all adds up to something of a monopolistic, niche market. But consider the participants in this sordid and fringe business.

With the government being the sole wielder of civil sanctions in society, this cannot help but be a monopoly of a unique kind. A distinct lack of customers to put new ideas and innovations to the test in this market place guarantees slow progress towards optimal results.

The choice of service offered is all but hamstrung by the latest conventions on human rights from the United Nations downwards. Serious crimes only have one consequence and that is a prison sentence which can be a fate worse than death.

For example, consider the man who is sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for a serious assault. He leaves behind a wife and three kids who cannot make ends meet and the mother has to fall on the tender mercies of the Welfare State. Immediately, the State (i.e. the taxpayer) incurs the cost of incarcerating this felon at one of Her Majesty’s zero star hotels whilst the wife draws income support for one year.

Meanwhile, her errant husband enters a world of hurt which is almost guaranteed to send him back out into the world worse than he came out. In this world, he mixes with those who can school him better in the art of criminality and anti-social behaviour.

This is a world where drugs and pornography are easily obtained to break the boredom of a caged life; where felons congregate into cliques and extort and rape those who come under their dark grip.

Against this backdrop, we can understand the decreasing morale of prison officers. They increasingly face violent attacks from prisoners whom they cannot touch for fear of litigation and whom management attempt to appease by overlooking drugs smuggling and so on.

In this I have said nothing new. But it is time that the sympathy of leftist do-gooders began to swing away from the criminal. It is time that the customer base was extended beyond the State in this area of penal enterprise, the choice of services increased and the quality of the goods enhanced. I am talking about the victims, sanctions and the effects they have on the criminal.

The current situation more or less defines the victim as society in general with its self-appointed incarnation, the State, being the arm which wields the sword (albeit a rather blunt one). But the victim is undoubtedly the old man who has been robbed or the woman who has been raped and not an aggregate of individuals spread across innumerable square miles. The victim of our imaginary assailant is left potentially out of work for weeks and months as the State escorts the felon to the nearest penal colony.

Which brings us to the topic of restorative justice, but not as current liberal thinkers conceive it. Their concept of restorative justice envisages the criminal being involved in "personal change projects", electronic tagging and community service. These things do not consider nor compensate the victim in any way except a pious satisfaction that the husband will continue to see his family.

Noble words. Noble intentions.

Meanwhile, the bills do not get paid due to that broken arm or the permanent blindness in one eye. Who should pay for the costs of medical treatment, convalescence and subsistence? The victim, his family, the taxpayer or his employer? Dare I say none of the above and suggest the criminal?

In one fell swoop, the customer base in the penal free market expands into the tens of thousands as victims and criminals enter into compensation negotiations which sets into motions a manifold number of possible solutions to be provided.

As we can guess in such negotiations, the victim will tend towards the higher levels of compensation whilst the criminal will tend in the opposite direction. Likewise, we do not wish to see the wild gyrations we have seen in 100 years of State punishments, which have ranged from 10 years hard labour for being the first to stop applauding a State speech to 7 years for torturing and killing a toddler. Limits have to be set to avoid the victim’s emotions and indignation extracting compensation which is far in excess of his own loss and, conversely, a derisory value being placed on human injury and dignity.

I have always liked the rule followed by the ancient Hebrews. If a thief was caught stealing, he was to restore double what he had taken. In effect, we have an almost negative application of the Golden Rule – what the thief wanted for himself, he must now give to his victim. In other words, the thief’s intended net gain of one sheep becomes a net gain of one sheep for the victim - the stolen sheep restored plus another sheep given.

Of course, after a normal free market transaction, both sides of the agreement should feel they still have assets of the same worth, but in different forms. But, in this transaction, the intention is to introduce an inequality which will turn it into a desirable monopoly – the victim always wins. To put it more familiarly, crime does not pay.

The compensation need not be equivalent, but may be in kind or tempered with mercy if the fruits of reform are perceived. In an arena where there is a diversity of types of compensation we may also see the option of corporal punishment brought back as the victim and criminal negotiate the terms of remuneration under the supervision of a third party arbitrator.

Do I hear the liberal cry of humiliation and degradation? If I had the choice of one year in prison, a large percentage of my annual income or 10 strokes of a birch at the hands of a karate expert, I think I would pick the third option. That is preferable to a year away from my family or living in debt for too long - and the liberal has no right to tell me that I should not subject myself to such an ordeal if I choose it! Even criminals have a choice in the dynamic of such a fluid economy.

But who is the third party in such a conference? Ask yourself who sets the limits of retribution, defines what is right and wrong in society and has the right to delegate it to others.

When you have that answer, you are closer to knowing who your god is. When Josef Stalin consigned our premature applauder to the Gulag, the god of the Soviets was made painfully apparent. Let us be careful that the State is not allowed to be such a god unto itself in these grave matters lest a worse thing come upon us.