Policing affect

From the archive, first published Thursday 16th Mar 2006.

HAVE you ever noticed that when you are relaxed, thinking of nothing in particular, a thought comes `drifting by'. This happened to me last Sunday, there I was, laid in bed, minding my own business and suddenly I was thinking about the merger of West Mercia Police with West Midlands etc. I wondered, has the Home Secretary got a hidden agenda here of using an `excellent' body to lift the not so good forces.

In the prison system there are all different categories of criminals. There are those who are murderers, rapists and bankrobbers for instance, and then there are those who are locked up for some petty misdemeanour, and by and large are separated into different category prisons at an early stage. Some years ago, around 1960, in the prison service there was an experiment in the Borstal system (Borstal was for young offenders, and was a sentence detested by the inmates and staff alike) to mix the two categories at one of the `better class' establishments.

It was a resounding failure, yes they mixed, but the `goodies' soon sank to the level of the `not so good' rather than the reverse happening. Thus the fears that our policing will suffer are well founded, and what is worse West Midlands, Staffordshire and Warwickshire won't be improving. Kenneth Clarke of course is too young to know anything about the 1960's experiment, or too stubborn to listen to common sense.

ERIC MARSH, Offenham.

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