Peter Blexley

Well, consecutive governments in the UK have failed to invest in the criminal justice system across all fronts, from the front line of policing through to the CPS, the Crown Prosecution Service, then to the courts, then to prison, and then finally probation.

Massively underfunded, crippled often by a liberal kind of woke mindset, which doesn't help anybody in terms of rehabilitating people.

And that chronic underfunding is coming back to bite the nation firmly in the rear end.

with crime at utterly unacceptable levels.

So many people committing crime with impunity.

We have a shoplifting epidemic.

We have a knife crime epidemic and much, much more.

Crime, unfortunately, in the UK does pay.

Yeah, and they were called approved schools back in the day, built on a sort of military discipline type arrangement where young people would be sent there, often as a last resort when their criminal offending had got to the stage where everything else had been tried and failed, or if their offending was particularly serious, and there was discipline.

Now I speak to people who work within young offenders institutions, so a modern version of how we lock young people up, and I hear horrendous stories of quite simply monsters, teenage monsters, out of control, ruling the roost, exacting horrendous levels of violence upon one another.

And an ill-disciplined situation where staff are often terrified to go onto the wings because they themselves live in fear of violence.

Yes, largely based on that.

Yes, there would be considerable discipline.

There would also be physical fitness would be part of it.

But many years ago, they would get the opportunity to learn a trade.

Woodwork, metalwork, painting, decorating, plastering, electricians, carpentry, all that kind of stuff.

which of course are extremely helpful.

But what we have now in the UK is a chronic problem with so many people who are locked up are illiterate.

They can't read and write.

They've shunned education or they've been debarred from education because of their offending.