“Modular Britain, now!” - the problems inherent in the justice system highlight a broader, far more damaging contagion of public sector neglect

When you discuss the Conservative Party's neglect of the United Kingdom, there's an inherent risk of becoming desensitised to the harm that has occurred and thus making it harder to notice - or in some cases, care - when it happens again.

And again. And again.

That said, we’re at the point now in our post-RAAC Britain - to paraphrase ‘Dawn of the Dead’  - where there is no more room in prisons, the criminals will walk the earth. 

The problem in this case is the neglect of the justice system and how, essentially, the judiciary has been urged to delay sentencing hearings in a bid to keep down the overall prison population as a result of lack of capacity, while also looking at the possibility of releasing prisoners earlier than expected - to name two policy announcemnts among a whole raft of other ‘emergency measures’ as though the problem has suddenly just jumped out at the government unexpectedly.

Except, it hasn’t.

Like many aspects of current government policy, the ‘emergency measures’ are in response to something that has been evolving for quite some time under this Conservative government.

Is the story itself shocking? To an extent, but it’s no more or less shocking than it was when I highlighted the problem of overcrowded prisons previously in September: 

The government has been warned many times over the years that this may become an issue, and very much like the RAAC scandal, it is the cost of austerity, of complacency, of neglect, of corner-cutting and unscrupulous private investment, and the general sense that maybe, at some point in the future, it may become an issue, but whenever it was first being highlighted as a problem, it wasn’t a ‘major’ concern at the time, so the attitude was that we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Anything up to that point was clairvoyance.

Essentially.

Except, in 2023, it seems we have come to it, and what the soothsayers, watchdogs, the National Audit Office and the relevant authorities all warned about was true after all. Naturally there are more than a few issues that need to be addressed when it comes to the government’s response in present day: