Criminal Reform

The Government's attempts to blow away the cobwebs afflicting the justice industry with a cleansing megaton of Bullingdon flatulence, and get big government out of the way of big crime once and for all, are proceeding apace. The chief executive of the national service for offender management excluding war criminals and tax dodgers has warned chief probation officers of the Government's intention to "examine a range of possible options for service improvements and different models of delivering offender services within the community". In Standard English, this decodes as plotting to sell bits of the probation service to private security firms. Doubtless any profitable remnants will follow if the process works well, or whether it works or not; hence, presumably, the same private security firms will one day be contracted to run our prisons, so that decisions as to how offenders should be incarcerated, and for how much, can be taken on an appropriately market-friendly basis. It is not clear what will happen in the event of a chosen firm of hired thugs going bankrupt, perhaps thanks to some lightly-regulated hijinks by one of Daveybloke's chums in the City; but I am sure the Government is prepared to fight the taxpayers' corner with all the intelligence and honesty that the party of Michael Gove, Twizzler Lansley, Andy Coulson and Lord Ashcroft can muster.