Conforming to the EU Human Rights legislation?

From Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185675/UK-taxpayers-foot-revamp-jails-Nigeria-Jamaica.html

British taxpayers are paying to make jails in Jamaica and Nigeria more comfortable in a desperate bid to persuade foreign criminals to serve their sentences at home.

Ministers have resorted to the tactic – designed to satisfy the human rights of inmates – after it emerged that the UK’s own prison system has turned into a ‘United Nations of crime’.

Research by the House of Commons library, seen by the Mail, reveals how our jails contain inmates from a staggering 156 countries – more than three out of every four member states of the UN.

Jos prison in Nigeria: The government wants to deport some of the 594 Nigerians currently in British prisons

Worryingly, the total number of foreign prisoners is rising – despite pledges by David Cameron to fix the mess.

By March this year, there were 11,127 behind bars, at an estimated cost to the UK public purse of more than £420million. This is up from 10,778 in 2011. 

The group, which includes rapists, murderers and burglars, now makes up more than one in every eight convicts.

Meanwhile, it emerged that the dire need to create space in our packed jails has prompted ministers to take the extraordinary step of establishing a £3million annual pot to make it easier for convicts to serve their sentences back home.

Splashing money on prisons abroad is certain to prove controversial. But officials insist it will be cheaper in the long run than the annual £38,000 bill for keeping a single prisoner locked up here.

Currently, money is being spent in Jamaica to ‘assist Jamaican authorities in modernising their prison service and rehabilitation and reintegration activities’.

In Nigeria, one project supports the provision of ‘human rights training for prison officers’. A second project will construct new facilities at a women’s prison in its biggest city, Lagos, to reduce overcrowding.

Jamaica tops the list of the nations with most prisoners in British jails, with 900 inmates. There are 594 Nigerians.

Last night Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: ‘To some extent, this is the inevitable legacy of mass immigration of 3.5million people under Labour. ‘The resources necessary to tackle the rising number of foreign prisoners have not been made available.’ 

Tory MP Priti Patel said: ‘Prison is always the best place for dangerous criminals, but our jails should not be used as hotels for foreigners. Ministers need to take action to deport them to serve their sentences in the countries they come from and then stop them from coming back to Britain.

St Catherine's Prison in Kingston, Jamaica: Money is being spent modernising the Jamaican prison service as well as rehabilitation and reintegration activities

‘Living in Britain is a privilege and foreigners who come here and flout our laws should be sent packing without delay.’ 

In November 2010, the Mail revealed how the Prime Minister had decided to spearhead a campaign for foreign criminals to serve their sentences back home.

To do this, ministers must be able  to convince the courts that the offenders will not suffer breaches of their human rights by being made to stay in squalid conditions.

Did our legislators know that by agreeing to conform to the EU human rights legislation we would be funding improvements of foreign prisons?  And that we cannot deport convicted terrorists because their home country uses capital punishment? Or that we need to provide immigrants with multiple wives and large families with mansions?  All because of their 'human rights'? Such are the results of the Law of Unintended Conseqeuneces!

Child trafficking in China - unintended consequence of one-child policy

NY Times: "The police have arrested 802 people on suspicion of child trafficking and have rescued 181 children in a major operation spanning 15 provinces, the Ministry of Public Security said Friday. The recent operation broke up two trafficking rings and led to the arrests of the ringleaders, the ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site. China’s strict one-child policy has driven a thriving market in babies, especially boys because of a traditional preference for male heirs."

via China - Police Crack Down on Child Trafficking Rings - NYTimes.com.

One of the unintended but direct consequences of the Chinese one-child policy.

See also: 

• http://chindia-alert.org/2012/05/26/city-girls-go-manhunting-while-the-bachelors-in-rest-of-country-despair/
• http://chindia-alert.org/2012/03/01/use-of-dna-to-rescue-abducted-kids-in-china/

War on drugs - a failure after 40 years

From The Observer - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/23/mexico-elections-drugs-war:


"On 1 July, Mexicans will vote in vital presidential elections. But the issue no candidate dares to address is the cartel violence tearing the nation apart. Diplomats say the time has come to challenge drug policy – but can they get the US to agree? 

Two policemen pass an anti-violence sculpture based on one made by Yoko Ono in memory of John Lennon, in Mexico City. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

One after another, Mexico's presidential candidates sat in silence amid the grand setting of Chapúltepec Castle while, across the room, the leader of the country's movement of victims of drug war violence – a poet – chastised them.

"The 60,000 dead, the more than 20,000 who've disappeared, the hundreds of thousands of people displaced, wounded and hunted, the tens of thousands of widows and orphans that this stupid war against drugs is costing us, do not exist for you and your parties," Javier Sicilia accused. "For you, the national emergency does not exist." One after the other, the candidates promised action and showed concern, then they left. It was time to get back to the real business of running for president.

The meeting with Sicilia last month was unavoidable, given the moral weight of the movement he represents, but it was also the only time in the entire three-month campaign when the undisputed issue of the day was the drug war ravaging Mexico.

Polls show that most Mexicans consider security, along with the economy, to be the two biggest issues facing their country, but neither has featured particularly heavily. "Everybody asks me where the security issue is. Why the candidates don't talk about the economy. The elephant in the room is President Felipe Calderón's record, and that is hardly talked about," says pollster Jorge Buendía. In Ciudad Juárez, which has just lost its title as the world's most dangerous city, now ranked second, the chronicler of the violence, journalist Julián Cardona, says: "To look at the candidates speak, you would think they were talking about another country."

But whatever the politicians' speeches, Mexicans know that the country must take urgent measures now to try to put an end to the appalling violence if it is to claim the place in the world its economy justifies. And although Mexico is umbilically tied to the US war on drugs, and fights on the frontline of that war, senior Mexican diplomatic officials suggest to theObserver in private that, whoever wins the election, this must change; that there must be a major rethink and a shift towards initiatives in Latin America that challenge the "war on drugs" to which the US remains committed."

Since President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971, Mexico and other Latin American countries have pitched in together with the US Drugs Enforcement Agency.  But drug consumption in the West is higher than ever and drug-related crime in these countries is one of the highest categories of crime.

This is another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Children's care homes

The Guardian: "The heartbreaking case of Niamh Lafferty and Georgia Rowe, who died in a double suicide in 2009, was avoidable, according to an inquiry. If the care home in which the girls both lived had more staff on duty at the time they absconded perhaps someone would have noticed them leaving through the unalarmed fire exit door.

But the additional tragedy of this story is that it is not uncommon for "looked-after children" to end up dead prematurely. Care leavers are significantly over-represented among some of society's most disadvantaged groups. A third of rough sleepers have been in care as children; one fifth are homeless within two years of leaving care; half of prisoners under the age of 25 are care leavers; and 22% are unemployed shortly after leaving school – three times the national average. Many end up in street prostitution, and a mere 6% attend university compared with more than a third of the general population.

Most children in care have suffered appalling abuse, neglect and loss in early life, which is why we should be doing everything we can to place them in loving homes rather than institutions where many of the staff are not experts in dealing with the range of complex problems these youngsters inevitably face. ...

My research and campaigning on prostitution and the sex industry has also brought me into contact with many young women who had previously been in care. One told me that the effects of rape by her father that led to her being removed from the family home were compounded by sexual abuse by a care worker. She said that by the time she was 18 and living alone she had been through a "boot camp" for prostitution. ...

Of course not all care home staff have this attitude, and abuse, while still prevalent, has been flagged up as a serious concern since the major inquiries into the problem back in the 1970s and 80s. Many of those who work with looked-after children do a brilliant job in extremely difficult circumstances. But for the 89,000 looked-after children, the care system is simply not good enough."

Sadly, this is not the only case.  There have been cases in Jersey, Ireland, the US and Canada and, I daresay, elsewhere.  Some involved Catholic priests and nuns.


So, once again, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes. By bringing together lots of vulnerable children, care homes become a magnet to the perverse who see it as an easy collection of their targets.

War on drugs

Forty years ago President Nixon declared 'war on drugs' - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490 . 


Unfortunately, not only does the war not being won, but whole areas of some nations such as Colombia and Mexico are despoilt due to drugs. And young Americans, together with many in other countries are drug abusers and whole gangs of drug pushers inhabit the sleazy areas of many large Western cities.

UK passport control

BBC:

"Heathrow passport control waits of more than an hour

Passengers have faced waits of more than an hour at Continue reading the main story

Related Stories

• Olympics 'may overwhelm Heathrow'
• Border Agency 'failing on basics'
• Heathrow unveils Olympic terminal

passport control at London's Heathrow Airport 

two days after it was revealed MPs warned it 

may struggle to cope during the Olympics."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17701212

Some months ago, Theresa May, the Home Minister, fired the top two civil servants responsible for Border Control on the basis that they had moved to selective screening of incoming passengers without her explicit approval and that was too dangerous. 

Now we have these long queues. The consequence is that the border officers will not have time to do proper checks, but will be harassed to let through anyone with a passport that looks ok; thereby it is more likely that illegal  immigrants, criminals and terrorists will be let in.