Looking at this issue objectively the problems seem to be caused by an antiquated manual paper system with insufficient staff that, with the best will in the world is bound to cause error.Because of the failure over, what seems to be decades, the need to release prisoners early has had to be accelerated during the past 12-24 month to avoid the prison system failing completely. It's surely basic mathematics that the number of error will increase roughly in proportion to the increase in numbers released.
Given the number of prison staff isn’t increasing (and is possibly decreasing because foreign prison staff are losing work visas because of the raised salary qualification), coupled with bad prison working conditions, poor salaries and increased work pressures demoralising staff, it's likely the errors will accelerate!I suppose an interim solution might be possible - perhaps a nationwide system could verify identity of a prisoner by their fingerprints against the Police National Computer System records using a mobile communications system already exists to allow police patrolling in cars to do this, but that wouldn't stop errors caused by the poor paper communication between prisons and with courts - like sending papers to the wrong prison! (Perhaps a national rollout: design, budget approval, procurement, testing training, rollout might be feasible in 12 months - but there'd be a problem taking busy prison staff off the wings to participate... perhaps that could be alleviated by what apparently assist happens at the moment: getting trusted, middle class, degree educated prisoners to assist with administration tasks)I suspect the requirements/scope, sign off and budget agreement, design, procurement, infrastructure build, development, testing, implementation, training, etc of a proper national prison management system for accommodation records, transfer controls, wing and workshop daily registers, electronic communication, etc is, realistically, 3-6 years away?
Michael Ixer ● 2d