Neither the feeder march nor the main march were heavily policed – despite me seeing a much heavier police presence than usual on my way in to town, there were very few police accompanying us on the actual march. Interestingly, the heaviest police lines were situated at the entrances to the Lion Yard and the Grand Arcade – the main shopping centres in Cambridge town centre. The fact that the police seemed to be mainly interested in maintaining the separation between the public and private spaces and protecting the private organisations which occupy those shopping centers in Cambridge is pretty nice symbolism for the problem underpinning and stimulating the action taking place today. Moreover, does it suggest a misunderstanding of what is happening today – are the police conflating these marches and picket lines with the riots of August 2011? Very worrying if so.

One further thought: I think that the unions need to make sure they don’t stray into the realms of ageism with their opposition to raising the retirement age to 68. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a retirement age of 68 – it’s no more arbitrary than 65 already is and there are many jobs that can be carried out perfectly well at age 68 – indeed there are people who want to carry on working beyond 65 but aren’t allowed to do so. However, many speakers on the stage as well as the placards being held up were suggesting that anyone aged over 65 is, to put it bluntly,  past it. One of the megaphone wielding Union stewards taught the crowd a chant and then said ‘if you can’t remember that now then you’ve got no chance when you’re 68′ – I think my 85 year old grandma would have something to say about that! The cuts to pensions are being driven by an ideology which predicates the private over the public; market forces over the equal distribution of capital – this is the issue; not an arbitrary 3 year difference in the pension age and the Unions would do well to remember it.

When the show was launched in May, presenter Ant McPartlin said there would be checks in place to ensure winners were “not going to be criminals”.

At the same event, Cowell said the show was likely to feature “all types”.

Asked how show bosses would make sure there was a worthy winner, McPartlin said: “All the checks will be in place so they’re not going to be criminals.

What exactly is a ‘worthy winner?’

Moreover, as Stephen Farrall has pointed out on the new, recommended, Discovering Desistance blog,

Interestingly, the chap in question goes on to report that he is helping his family, now working and wants to use the money to start a new life. As someone who has interviewed numerous people who have stopped offending, this all sounds very familiar – albeit that few have the fortune (no pun intended) to win £1m. But again, we can’t see past a person’s past …

Why can’t we give the guy a break? He’s clearly trying to make amends and giving him the chance to legitimately win some cash to ‘start a new life’ is surely no bad thing.

What this suggests to me is that the government think that those who are in benefits need punishing more than those who are in employment – how does having a job not make one less culpable when found guilty of a crime (in fact, it could increase culpability if the offence is related to an abuse of power in the workplace)? Surely, in the interests of proportionality the fine is a fairer way of financially punishing people than removal of their benefits. In any case, if the offender gets sent to prison (as many rioters are being), they will lose their benefits anyway.

Crime, Criminal, Offender:

We might not be living in such a crime obsessed world as we might think. Interesting to note that offender is less popular than it was.

Prison, Probation:

Interest in the prison appears to have waned with probation staying stable after the formalisation of the Service in the early 20th Century. Interest in the prison population has shot up:

And, my favourite, Risk:

The Risk Society!

Create a system introducing greater involvement of the private and voluntary sectors in the rehabilitation of offenders, including use of payment by results, to cut reoffending

The Department will no longer…

…provide rehabilitation services directly without testing where voluntary or private sectors can provide it more effectively and efficiently

I was right.

Amused to note that the first action is already underway, but overdue:

Very interested to see what the Green Paper has in store.

Particularly this line: “The offenders – about 300 in the state, most of them sex offenders – were never aware they were not being tracked, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Linda Eggert said.”

The important thing is persuading the public of the fact that so many offenders are so disadvantaged and that some (‘some’ being the operative word here) programmes appear to work- when the media focusses on the fact that 74% of offenders reoffend in 9 years, the difficulties of clearly representing and disseminating information about how we deal with offenders and reoffending statistics become clear.

It’s positive to note that the word reconviction is preferred over reoffending and that the frequency of offending is being taken into account but a shame that the statistics still fail to take into account any increase/decrease in seriousness of offending. I think I am mentally classifying it as ‘a step in the right direction’.

I enjoy looking for inaccurate representations of the Probation Service on TV. One memorable incident occurred on EastEnders when Ian Beale was doing his Unpaid Work. There he was, working away in his orange vest (they got that bit right) when along came his daughter who was having a crisis – she walked up to Ian, they had a chat and they then both walked off- complete with orange vest- without a word to or from his UPW supervisor about talking to members of the public and, basically, absconding from UPW without permission!