The Sunday Telegraph is one of the first to comment on the apparent contradictions in Lib Dem / Conservative policies on prisons; interesting to note how quickly the debate is being framed in terms of economic restraint. See:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7728930/Why-the-coalition-is-set-to-bring-us-a-rise-in-crime.html
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Also interesting is the appointment of two social policy advisers more usually associated with the centre left:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/16/coalition-expertise-centre-left-hutton-field
Seems to me that the one thing the coalition is allowing both parties to do is to implement policies that they know will make their supporters uncomfortable, because they can just throw their hands in the air and say 'it's not me guv!' The Tories can do this quite effectively in this regard, blame the Lib Dems if they don't build more prisons, and then do what they secretary want anyway, which is not spend that extra money. Apart from 'the big society' debacle, crime didn't feature in this election at all, and I suspect they'll want to keep it on the back-burner in the forthcoming years. And saying their hands are tied because of coalition politics gives them the means to do so.
ReplyDeletePS - I read the telegraph so rarely that its bias seems so comedy (referring to the lib dem's 'evidence' that community penalties are more effective, and cherry picking the re conviction stats from ONE non-custodial sentence, probably the one with the worst figures. (Maybe the guardian is equally as biased, but I'm already indoctrinated what can I say?)