Criminal Tolerance

For some reason or other, doubtless connected with the obscure and inconsiderate workings of the law-breaker mind, the merchandise in the malefactor warehousing system appears intent on causing damage, both to itself and to its hard-working handlers. The Minister for Profitable Incarceration was moved to blather about urgent action: "Assaults on our hard-working staff will never be tolerated," he said, although neither he nor his predecessors have shown much intolerance for them up to now. The tolerability of assaults on inmates, of course, depends on whether the offender is a grandson of Windrush faking a mental health problem, or merely a hard-working Conservative donor who fell victim to an accounting error. Indeed, the Ministry for Profitable Incarceration claimed that the sharp rise in the statistics may have been partly due to a change in the auditing methods; so the solution to the whole problem may lie in a simple bit of figure-fiddling. It remains to be seen whether the scumbag-press-propitiating solution of cuts to luxuries like rehabilitation and prison officer pay and training will once more prove simpler still.