GOING STRAIGHT ISN'T AS EASY AS IT SOUNDS

The rehabilitation that happens in prison is more crucial than a handout at
the end of the sentence

This idea that all prisoners should sign a "Going Straight Pledge" simply
cannot be what it appears to be. Part of a leaked report from the Social
Exclusion Unit, the proposal is that all prisoners starting their sentences
should sign a document promising to be good from now on, and in return
receive extra help in achieving that foisted-upon-them goal.

But this laughable suggestion cannot seriously be a considered response to
the substantial problem of convict recidivism. It must surely be some kind
of decoy a " a ludicrous pretend-plan engineered to direct the eye away
from some genuinely controversial proposal that this government-appointed
think-tank is hoping against hope to slide quietly past us.

I will admit that the plot would appear to be fiendishly clever. After all,
the directive is, in the particular sort of unbelievability it stinks of,
all too believable. Isn't everybody used, after all, to trendy-vicar-style
initiatives from New Labour, which treat the whole world as if it was some
sort of recalcitrant nursery class?

Isn't everybody familiar with hopelessly naive, making-a-new-contract-type
non-solutions, which don't cost much, don't do much, but offer only the
doubtful solace that the problem has been acknowledged and Something a "
virtually nothing but still Something a " is being done?

Yes, everybody is used now to such tomfoolery. But even so, this latest
gimmick seems too much of an out-of-touch-liberal-ite cliche to be true.
Let's leave aside the fact that almost by definition criminals aren't above
breaking the occasional promise. Let's assume that at the core of this idea
lies the belief a " true for most of us a " that the written word has a
special power and authority.

But even at that level, it's ridiculous. Since 90 per cent of ex-offenders
are so badly educated that they're unemployable, it's fairly safe to assume
that for many potential pledge-takers, the written word has no magical
resonance whatsoever. On the contrary, the written word is a basic symbol
of all that the neer-do-well has been socially excluded from. The enforced
signing of treaties with normality is more likely to entrench an outlaw
mentality than dislodge it.

Beyond that non-starter, there seem to be no possible grounds for even
imagining why such an initiative could be mistaken for a useful tool at all.

The "Going Straight Pledge" is beyond satire. The Government, therefore,
must be deliberately satirising itself. And essentially, though
unintentionally, it is.

Central to the New Labour philosophy is the idea that nobody can expect to
get "something for nothing". Since other proposals from the Social
Exclusion think tank involve giving exactly that, the "Going Straight
Pledge" is a way of kidding on that prisoners are giving something a " not
just their word and their bond, but also token reparation to their victims
from their prison wages and charges for individual help from prison staff
from the same source a " in return for exciting new gifts.

These gifts include raising the time prisoners can expect to have their
rent or mortgage paid from 13 weeks to six months, and increasing the grant
they receive on release from AUKP40 to AUKP100.

How typical it is of the current political mindset that instead of arguing
a prima facie case for such interventions, reformers instead want some sort
of quid pro quo, even if it is a meaningless and risible one that they've
had to manufacture, and that makes them look stupid and gullibly trusting.

Except that it is even worse than that. The naivete of the "Going Straight
Pledge" is such that it calls the other liberal ideas included in the
package into question too. What is being suggested, surely, is that since
the convict has promised to go straight, then it's worthwhile to raise his
release grant by 150 per cent and ensure that he's got a home to go to. But
actually, since it's clear to everybody that the "promise" is nothing but a
new piece of red tape joining the sign-on-the-line bureaucracy of
incarceration, dressed up by dreamy fools as some sort of contract of
trust, the logical conclusion is that all the rest is pointless do-gooding
by credulous hand-wringers with more misplaced compassion than sense as well.

And yet, that is going much too far. It is asking quite a lot of the
determined-to-go-straight ex-offender, expecting them to step out of jail
into homelessness a " as 40 per cent of them do a " with AUKP40 in their
pocket to last them the two weeks until they can obtain some money via
benefits a " as 90 per cent of them do. While retributionists will declare
that they brought all this on themselves, such attitudes do not help to
solve the problem whereby more than six out of every 10 people are caught
again, up to their old tricks, within two years of leaving jail.

The Social Exclusion Unit estimates that ex-prisoners are responsible for
almost a fifth of crime at a cost of AUKP10.8bn a year to victims and to
the taxpayer.

The idea that there is a simple way of turning such a statistic round is
seductive; but it surely can't be the case that an extra AUKP60 at the
prison gate is going to make a great difference.

The rehabilitation that occurs in prison is far more crucial than the size
of the handout at the end of the sentence, and while this country has long
been inculcated with the fantasy that prisoners have an easy time, the fact
is that the budget for prison education a " even though poor education and
skills are key characteristics of recidivist criminals a " was last year a
supremely modest AUKP57.6m.

And as further illustration of strange prison priorities, bear in mind that
prisoners are paid more wages for undertaking unskilled work in prison than
they are for taking part in education. And even though the education budget
will be increased next year to AUKP69.7m, this still looks tiny when
compared with the AUKP10.8bn that unrehabilitated recidivists are costing
each year