Guernsey States asked for money to fund prison learning

The States of Guernsey has been asked to put £250,000 towards a new programme to equip prisoners with life skills and cut down on the number of reoffenders.
Home Minister Geoff Mahy said a learning and skills facility at Les Nicolles Prison would equip inmates to live crime free and useful lives.
He said: "The vision... is a working prison that enables prisoners to gain learning skills and work skills.
"Ensuring value for money whilst treating people decently and fairly."
Deputy Mahy said: "[It will] help reduce reoffending and provide a secure environment to protect the public."
The proposal is due to be debated by the States in January (from BBC)

Seems a waste of money to me..

GD wrote:The States of Guernsey has been asked to put £250,000 towards a new programme to equip prisoners with life skills and cut down on the number of reoffenders.
Home Minister Geoff Mahy said a learning and skills facility at Les Nicolles Prison would equip inmates to live crime free and useful lives.
He said: "The vision... is a working prison that enables prisoners to gain learning skills and work skills.
"Ensuring value for money whilst treating people decently and fairly."
Deputy Mahy said: "[It will] help reduce reoffending and provide a secure environment to protect the public."
The proposal is due to be debated by the States in January (from BBC)

Seems a waste of money to me..

Please explain why it is a waste.

A scheme of this kind will only work with the co-operation of the prisoners wanting to help better themselves.

As in the old saying, " You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"

With cutbacks in the states and workers losing money, conditions and moral, how can Mr Mahy justify this money being found for this use. Maybe the Island leaders should harden up and start deporting non local offenders and making life harder for our local law breaking contingent whilst in prison.

kingcolemk wrote:A scheme of this kind will only work with the co-operation of the prisoners wanting to help better themselves.

As in the old saying, " You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"

Totally agree, but they should be given the chance. Maybe 250k is a bit much but as I have said before the punishment is the taking away of the freedom mnot how we treat them inside.

Good scheme, bad timing

So Geoff Mahy says to"Treat prisoners prisoners fairly and decently" Just like some of them treated their victims then?

bug1 wrote:So Geoff Mahy says to"Treat prisoners prisoners fairly and decently" Just like some of them treated their victims then?

Members of the public have a perception on how prisoners should be treated and I am of the thought that they should be locked up and the key conveniantly lost. However what would that achieve. How a criminal treats his/her victim is reflected (or should be reflected) in the sentence they receive. To my knowledge the sentences handed down refer to a term of imprisonment . They never include the terms "you are sentenced to 6 years, in a shit hole where you can reflect on what you have done and become even more bitter and twisted so when you are released you are a bigger bastard than when you went in". Even when treated to a minimum standard of decency and that is all that is suggested, prison is not a nice place to be. To use Kingcolemk's analagy, if we can get the horse to drink at the trough then perhaps they will not offend when released. It has been mentioned before that all they learn inside is how to be a better criminal so how about teaching them how to be better people.