Contains masses of useful papers, documents and other information. Girton College Review David started the evening by commenting that the statistics he had unearthed on the prison population of America spoke very eloquently for themselves. Between 1980 and the present the number of those incarcerated has more than trebled, from 500,000 to over one and a half million. The increase in the prison population can't be explained with certainty, but public opinion clearly plays a large role in a country in which voters tend more than in Britain to vote for the personal opinions rather than the party of contestants. A tough line on crime remains a vote winner, the fear of crime being stoked by the sensationalist style of live news reporting, whilst crime itself has fallen steadily since 1980.
Private companies benefit from the use of prison labour.
And although the tax revenues of a state as a whole are drained by the expansion of prisons, individual towns benefit greatly from the employment provided, and compete for new prison projects. The American trend is a difficult one to reverse. In Britain the prison population has been rising at an even greater rate than America over the same period- particularly since Michael Howard became Home Secretary. But an attempt by a Labour government to repeal recent American-style policy is likely to be seen as reprehensible slackness on crime. The discussion after the talk raised points such as this, and was helpfully informed by David Godfrey, a prison governer who attended.