Positively Spoiling - Police Commissioner Ballot Today

So the most low key election in British history apparently takes place today as 41 Police & Crime Commissioners are elected for the first time across England and Wales. In an election that has cost £100 millions of taxpayers' money to hold in the dark of early winter, with little or no publicity, a combination of near-total voter lack of awareness combined with disillusion with the whole idea is likely to drive turnout down - one survey suggesting a turnout of just 15% may yet be over-optimistic.

No one asked for these posts, and only the Lib Dem wing of the Coalition wanted them at this time - apparently banking on the idea they could mobilise proportionately more supporters at this time of year than Tory or Labour. This is a strategy that has manifestly backfired as they now lack any significant support - recent polls have them hovering at 8%, often in fourth place and sometimes with the Greens withing spitting distance of driving them into fifth.

So we have elections no one wants for posts no one wants and candidates no one knows anything about. But 41 of them will be the lucky winners of annual salaries of £100,000 - nearly 50% more than MPs get and 9 times what local authority councillors receive for working 30 hours per week. As blogged before, they represent an unwelcome centralisation of scrutiny of the police in the hands of one person rather than the cross section of councillors, experts and community representatives in the current Police Authorities. This could lead at one extreme to an overly cosy relationship with the local Chief Constable through to populist grandstanding on complex issues that could compromise the police and divide communities.

What to do then? One group is advocating that rather than voting for any of the would-be Commissioners, voters opposed to the idea should not stay at home but rather should turn up at polling stations and spoil their ballot papers. They are recommending writing a statement along the lines of "No to Police Commissioners, Yes to Democracy" or something similar that makes clear it is a deliberate spoiling of the paper to make a point rather than a simple mistake. The group was established on Facebook by Greens and others following a debate in Leeds. It has a Facebook Page, Spoil Your Ballot Papers for the Police Elections, and a Twitter hashtag of #spoilpoliceballot. It's not too late to join up or comment.

Spoilt papers are separated and counted - often, they are shared with the election candidates and their agents and typically include mistakes like people voting for all the candidates or signing their names on the paper. Some put comments like "None of the above" or often more, shall we say, colourful statements of their views on the process. Spoiled ballots are not counted towards turnout however, so taking part will not increase the figures for the elections' turnout.

Some countries, like Australia, allow this option as a right, while other countries, such as Russia, require minimum turnouts of 50% before a candidate can be elected. Sadly Britain does neither, but it is perfectly legal to go and spoil your ballot paper and make a point. It shows you care enough to turnout and show your opposition - and its better than daytime TV.

Go on, take a walk, and spoil your ballot paper - you know it makes sense!

Support Your Local Sheriff?

15th November sees an innovation in British law enforcement of a dubious nature. Thanks to some odd and expensive scheduling courtesy of the Liberal Democrat arm of the Coalition Government, electors across England and Wales will have the opportunity to vote for the newly created role of Police and Crime Commissioner.

This role  is charged with ensuring effective policing in its area and replaces the committees of Police Authorities. These consisted usually of 9 local councillors nominated by the councils in the Authority area, plus 8 members who were a mix of magistrates and independent appointees. These were a valuable means of oversight and governance but one where no one person was powerful enough to interfere overly with the operational activities of the police, which remained the provenance of the professional Chief Constable. Equally, having a range of views and interests represented meant that any cosy one-to-one relationship between a Chief Constable and a Police Commissioner was not possible.

The thinking behind Police Commissioners is supposedly to combine democratic control with a more directive approach to policing, just as elected mayors were once touted as the miraculous cure-all for local authorities - with decidedly mixed results (viz, Hartlepool and Doncaster). Given the choice in May this year of having more elected mayors, voters in all but two of the eleven areas voting decided against. Sadly, no such vote was ever taken on Police Commissioners and as the idea featured in the manifestos of both Coalition parties, this dreadful example of gesture politics has gone ahead.

So what do we have now that nominations have closed? Given the complete absence of any public funding for the election campaign - such as the free mailshot distribution in other elections - the only people capable of mounting a credible campaign across the large geographical areas involved will either be machine politicians or rich people with their own agenda. So we are left with a rag bag of local politicians eyeing up the significant pay packet attached to the post, along with a collection of ex-police officers possibly looking to get their own back on their former bosses and a smattering of former military people, which seems mildly worrying. Few inspire any confidence of offering any fresh start to policing. And how could they?

Effective local policing needs local input from a range of sources - community policing at its best encompasses a wide range of views and needs and while it varies in different parts of the country, there are a number of examples of good policing working well with local people and attendant reduction in crime.

None of that has involved some local would-be caped crusader offering instant salvation. Rather it has involved a lot of long-term, painstaking work by officers and communities getting to understand each other and working together in ways that defy the hot headed ranting of the likes of the Daily Mail about soft cops and ineffective courts. The result has been a steady decline in crime to its lowest level in over 30 years, but the fear of crime, thanks to the media, has grown so that the public perception is that it is worse than ever.

And this is the worry about these new posts and the election that goes with them: the candidates are just feeling their way into new campaigns for a new type of post. Most voters are unaware and quite disinterested - turnout is likely to be appallingly low (which begs the question why the Lib Dems were so keen to have them now rather than alongside other local polls in May next year). But longer term, forced to justify their tenure in office - or seeking to challenge an incumbent who will be blamed for all manner of ills - there is every likelihood of Police Commissioner votes turning into populist referenda driven by revenge-seeking stories in the press. Incumbent Commissioners will be more and more tempted to make headline-grabbing gestures, pressurizing the police into politicised agendas that can easily lead into extremely difficult territory in terms of social cohesion.

It is perhaps only because of their current organisational stasis that so few far right candidates are standing in these elections - the BNP is collapsing because of in-fighting, but the far right will not go away. There is every chance that future PC elections will become a gift-horse for their scapegoating agendas, and a Trojan Horse for those who think that this sort of vote somehow enhances democratic control of policing.

Time to stop aping America. We're not Gotham City just yet...

Porridge for Profit - Privatizing Prisons

The announcement yesterday that a Birmingham prison is to be moved into the private sector is yet another huge and disgraceful step towards the total dismantling of the public sector by the Con Dem Government. Ethically, it is a terrible social decision to allow companies to profit from the incarceration of prisoners and raises many deeply troubling questions about the future of the prison system and rehabilitation of offenders.

It is not the first case of privately run prisons in the UK - 11 have been contracted out since the 1990s, and about 12% of prisoners are already held in the private sector, not that you would know from the condemnation by Labour MPs in response to yesterday's news. But this is first case of an existing public sector prison being privatized, and Group 4 Security, who have won the contract, operate as a profit-seeking company. They do not have social objectives in what they do - an outgrowth of private security guard operators, they are known for low wages and operational mismanagement. They do make nice profits for their shareholders, and in this context, what genuine interests might they have in running a prison?

Far from wanting to rehabilitate offenders, a private prison operator will inevitably see much merit in repeat offenders - guaranteeing a continued supply of business. Likewise, facilities for prisoners during their stay in jail would be kept to a bare minimum to drive costs down and again increase returns - the track record of existing private jails pretty much confirms this. And of course, doubtless arguing that this might save the public purse costs, the operator would logically look to maximise the financial returns to be had from cheap/free prison labour.

Unlikely? Well, take a look at the USA, where so many of this government's ideologically-motivated initiatives have their origin.

The USA has privatised scores of its prisons, precisely as, under the barbarically inhumane "three-strikes-and-you-are-out" rule implemented by many states, the prison population has trebled in recent years, with even minor shoplifters (like Gary Ewing) now imprisoned for life. Deploying the cost argument, these prisoners have been conscripted into all sorts of labour - the bulk of US armed services uniforms and ordinance is now manufactured, free of charge, by (disproportionately black) prisoners. The private company Unicor "employs" 20,000 prisoners in 70 US jails to carry out work which even includes making components for Patriot missiles.  Wages can be as low as 23 cents (or 15 pence in UK terms) per hour. Prisoners are also used for a huge range of contracted-out services, including corporate payrolls and call centre work, sometimes placing customers data privacy at some risk, but keeping plenty of income flowing into owners' pockets. The twisted "three strikes" policy ensures a continuing supply of such handy, exceedingly low-cost labour.

If this was happening anywhere else, such as Iran or Zimbabwe, it would be condemned as slave labour. But instead, the US example is being used as a model for Britain. With foaming rightwing papers like the Daily Mail and the Sun backing the move precisely as a means of saving the taxpayer money and vindictively dehumanising prisoners, the Lib Dem Minister, Sarah Teather, blandly states that it doesn't matter who runs prisons, as long as prisoners are rehabilitated effectively.

Prison: no such thing as a free bowl of porridge...

This more than anything betrays her lack of understanding of what is going on in the minds of the corporations bidding for contracts like this, and others in services like health and elder care. This is a company that exploits the staff who apply to work for it voluntarily, minimising wages and maximising working hours - is it suddenly going to be infected with some sort of social concern virus when it takes on prison work? Or is it going to drool at the prospect of virtually free labour and an endless supply of new business?

How we treat prisoners is a mark of how civilised we are, or not. Not only should many of those in prison not be there to begin with, but anyone in a prison is still a human being. They deserve dignity, even if in some cases they are there for removing dignity from others, because the prison system should not be about vengeance or humiliation, but about correction and support to find a better life when they come out again. There are many examples of former prisoners going on to make good and contribute very effectively to society, not least in helping younger people avoid getting into the sort of trouble they have experienced themselves.

But if we give prisons and their inmates over to the likes of Group 4, the emphasis on rehabilitation will no longer be at the heart of the system; rather it would be viewed by corporate executives as being like turkeys voting for Christmas - leaving us with the real prospect that, in future, prison may well work, but only for the purpose of filling the pockets of Group 4 shareholders.