www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12917...d-help-friend-H.html

Excellent piece about Prisons and why they should bear the brunt of cuts by having Prisoners on Community Sentences.

£41,000 a year to send someone to prison is a waste of money if they are not receiving any help and are basically thrown back onto the streets on release with no future ( except crime ).

Prison costs the taxpayer - £3.5 Billion a year. Just by reducing numbers back to where they were in 1990 at around 40,000 it would save nearly £2 billion. Over 5 years that is a saving of £10 billion - and the associated costs of rehousing etc saved would probably add another half a billion. If the re-offending rate goes down as well it would save a further half a billion. Meaning that over 5 years £15 billion could be saved just by not jailing anyone except criminals who are hardened criminals on their 3rd or 4th offence.

Apart from Rape and Violent Assault ( GBH ) or murder - no one should be in prison. It is a waste of time as the TV programme showed. The prisoners were mainly uneducated or mentally ill or foreign : these people need help not to be chucked into a system that provides expensive Hotel quality accomodation.

Liz Jones is spot on in asking the question.