Below are some stats on the UK prison population. I've said before that the British justice system needs to introduce some form of punitive punishments to deter people from committing crimes.
To take just one stat "£40,000: THE average annual cost of keeping a prisoner in jail" - thats nearly one and a half times the average UK salary, and who picks up the bill? People like you and me.
90%: HOW much the prison population has risen since the start of 1993, when there were just 41,600 prisoners in England and Wales.
700: THE number of prisoners who escaped from open jails in the year to last April.
400 convicts who have escaped from our open prisons remain at large today.
20 murderers have absconded from Leyhill Open Prison, near Bristol, in the past five years.
17,700: THE number of children separated from their mothers every year by imprisonment.
100: THE amount of children up to 18 months old living in mother-and-baby units in UK prisons.
271: THE number of criminals sent to jail last Monday alone.
87 of our prisons were overcrowded at the end of October 2006.
£1.85: AVERAGE daily food budget per prisoner - split 20:40:40 between breakfast, lunch and dinner.
£40,000: THE average annual cost of keeping a prisoner in jail.
£365: THE daily cost of keeping a prisoner in a police cell.
£8: THE current weekly average rate of pay for employed prisoners. The minimum rate is £4 a week.
80,045: THE present prison population in England and Wales. 6,447
6,447: THE number of prisoners in Scottish jails.
139: THE number of jails in England and Wales - 15 of which are open prisons.
482: THE number of prisoners in emergency police cells because of prison overcrowding.
13,000: NUMBER of prisoners currently on remand in prison - one in seven of the jail population.
1,025: THE number of foreign prisoners released without being considered for deportation.
11: THE number of privatelyrun prisons in England and Wales. Nine have been built and are run by the private sector under PFI schemes.
6,400: THE number of people serving life sentences - the highest number in Europe.
1 in 3 women prisoners lose their homes, and often their possessions while in prison.
10,000: THE number of inmates employed in nearly 300 workshops including clothing and textile, woodwork, engineering, print and laundries.
11: THE average reading age of more than half of all prisoners.
61% of black and ethnic prison staff have experienced racial discrimination while employed in the service.
152%: THE increase in foreign national prisoners in the last 10 years, compared with a 55 per cent of British nationals.
1 in 4 of the prison population are from a minority ethnic group.
5.7%: THE percentage of ethnic minority prison staff.
35% of young men gain a qualification in prison.
45% of people lose contact with their families or separate from their partner during their sentence.
27: THE average age of prisoners.
17,000: THE number of extra spaces built since 1997, meaning capacity will soon reach 80,400.
12 people are jailed for every 1,000 crimes committed in Britain.
£99,839: THE average cost of each prison place built since 2000.
23.5% of the prison population is being held in a cell designed for fewer people, for example two people in a single cell.
61% of crime victims do not think that prison stops re-offending.
1 in 5 of all crimes are committed by ex-prisoners.
£11billion: THE yearly cost to society of exprisoners reoffending.
1 in 4 women in prison has spent time in local authority care as a child.
50% of Scottish inmates reported they had used drugs in prison.
7,119 prisoners entered Prison Service drug treatment programmes in 2004-05, and 4,600 completed them.
1 in 3 prisoners will not have somewhere to live upon release.
16: THE number of suicides during June 2005 - the highest number of any calendar month on record.
33% of all prison suicides occur within the first week in custody.
3,273: THE number of accused rapists, robbers and violent offenders who remain at large after absconding before their court appearance.
168: THE number of countries where foreign prisoners come from. More than half are from Jamaica, Ireland, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and India.
1994: The last year when no prison in Britain was overcrowded.
143 people per 100,000 are in prison in England and Wales - the highest in Western Europe.
106,550: THE projected prison population for 2013.
5.8% of prisoners in England and Wales are women.
72% of male prisoners suffer from two or more mental disorders, compared with just five per cent of the population.
78 prisoners committed suicide in jails in England and Wales in 2005 - down from 95 in 2004.
20,000: THE number of self-harm incidents by inmates in 2004-05.
67% of offenders are reconvicted within two years of release.
[Link]
Friday, January 26, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Techie delusions and weirdness from MCB spokesman
I had a bit of difficulty getting to sleep last night, so i switched on the the TV and came across this audition on American Pop Idol. I've seen the UK version before and remember that guys from IT backgrounds suffer from delusions about how great their singing ability is, but this guy was in a league of his own.
I've come across a weird article by Inayat Bunglawala, the MCB spokesman, and Abdur-Rahman Jafar, who ran as a mayoral candidate in my borough for the Respect party. In the article they're arguing that Muslims should support gays in their fight against discrimination because it is the twin half of making discrimination against Muslims and other faith groups unlawful.
Yep, like i said, a bit weird.
Inayat has a habit of saying things from time to time which make me - as a Muslim - feel very uncomfortable, for instance his encouragement for Muslims to join the British army and his call for us to respect the sacrifice of Lieutenant Corporal Hashmi, the 'Muslim' soldier who died fighting in Afghanistan. What?! The guy was a traitor to the Muslims. Does Inayat believe that the British would respect the choice of a white British convert to Islam to join the Iraqi insurgency and fight the British army?
No wonder so many Muslims deny that the MCB represent their voice and the voice of the Muslims in this country.
I've come across a weird article by Inayat Bunglawala, the MCB spokesman, and Abdur-Rahman Jafar, who ran as a mayoral candidate in my borough for the Respect party. In the article they're arguing that Muslims should support gays in their fight against discrimination because it is the twin half of making discrimination against Muslims and other faith groups unlawful.
Yep, like i said, a bit weird.
Inayat has a habit of saying things from time to time which make me - as a Muslim - feel very uncomfortable, for instance his encouragement for Muslims to join the British army and his call for us to respect the sacrifice of Lieutenant Corporal Hashmi, the 'Muslim' soldier who died fighting in Afghanistan. What?! The guy was a traitor to the Muslims. Does Inayat believe that the British would respect the choice of a white British convert to Islam to join the Iraqi insurgency and fight the British army?
No wonder so many Muslims deny that the MCB represent their voice and the voice of the Muslims in this country.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Dispatches programme
A few thoughts came to mind whilst watching the latest Dispatches programme:
1) What were Abu Usama And Faiz thinking when making the statements they did? What they said was devoid of any understanding of the context of the time and place we are living in. And the more i think about it, the more i'm sure that brothers such as these have little or no interaction with non-Muslims because its impossible to hold such views and express them so boldly in the UK in 2007 if you're meeting non-Muslims regularly. They need to move on from describing the UK/Western populace as gays, controlled by Jews, etc.
2) What is the obsession with this term kaafir (sing.)/kufaar(pl.)? All it translates to is non-Muslim/disbeliever. If my manager is not a Muslim (which he isn't) then he's a kaafir - its as simple as that - different terminology to describe two different things. What the media is doing, with considerable help from people like Dr. Taj Hargey (and the comments of Faiz) is to give the impression that this word is in and of itself derogatory and implies inferiority. The term 'kaafir' conveys no more inferiority than its english equivalent, disbeliever. To give a simple example, the Pope is a kaafir with respect to Islam, and I am a kaafir with respect to Christianity.
btw. i'm sorry that i can't provide a link for Taj Hargey, because he's basically some unknown whose credentials are that he used to be a Professor of African History, and as regards his study of Islam... errr.. there isn't anything.
3) It seems as though even UKIM, a large-ish Muslim organisation headed up by indo-pak brothers has been lumped with the "extremist" Saudi-Wahhabis. So if they're also preaching hatred and intolerance, who are the Muslims who are practising the correct Islam? Ah, its Haras Rafiq of Sufi Muslim Council fame and his apparent team mate Abdul-Hakim Murad who frequently seems to be on hand to fuel the wahhabi-bashing.
Update: Link to a short interview with a B'ham newspaper in which Abu Usama talks about being taken out of context.
1) What were Abu Usama And Faiz thinking when making the statements they did? What they said was devoid of any understanding of the context of the time and place we are living in. And the more i think about it, the more i'm sure that brothers such as these have little or no interaction with non-Muslims because its impossible to hold such views and express them so boldly in the UK in 2007 if you're meeting non-Muslims regularly. They need to move on from describing the UK/Western populace as gays, controlled by Jews, etc.
2) What is the obsession with this term kaafir (sing.)/kufaar(pl.)? All it translates to is non-Muslim/disbeliever. If my manager is not a Muslim (which he isn't) then he's a kaafir - its as simple as that - different terminology to describe two different things. What the media is doing, with considerable help from people like Dr. Taj Hargey (and the comments of Faiz) is to give the impression that this word is in and of itself derogatory and implies inferiority. The term 'kaafir' conveys no more inferiority than its english equivalent, disbeliever. To give a simple example, the Pope is a kaafir with respect to Islam, and I am a kaafir with respect to Christianity.
btw. i'm sorry that i can't provide a link for Taj Hargey, because he's basically some unknown whose credentials are that he used to be a Professor of African History, and as regards his study of Islam... errr.. there isn't anything.
3) It seems as though even UKIM, a large-ish Muslim organisation headed up by indo-pak brothers has been lumped with the "extremist" Saudi-Wahhabis. So if they're also preaching hatred and intolerance, who are the Muslims who are practising the correct Islam? Ah, its Haras Rafiq of Sufi Muslim Council fame and his apparent team mate Abdul-Hakim Murad who frequently seems to be on hand to fuel the wahhabi-bashing.
Update: Link to a short interview with a B'ham newspaper in which Abu Usama talks about being taken out of context.
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