Charlie’s missing prisoners
Tough day for Charles Clarke with the media in uproar and the opposition accusing him of incompetence over the issue of missing foreign prisoners. Outside of quite what the Home Office were playing at this has raised two questions for me.
Firstly, uh, double standards anyone? If David Blunkett had to go for what was, at the end of the day, a personal misjudgement why in the hell does no one seem to be eying Clarkes scalp. After all Mr Clarke has failed to do his job, if that’s not a resignation issue then I don’t know what is. As for officials at the Home Office, Prison Service and Immigration and Nationality Directorate, if you can’t keep track of people who are locked up in one building then I don’t have much hope for the rest of their assigned tasks. I think I’ve made my views on the Home Office’s competence in looking after our identities perfectly clear already.
Having said that I somewhat fail to see what the problem is in the first place. After all the criminals concerned have served their time as set out by our laws and, in theory at least, should be reformed. By that standard they’re no more of a risk than British born criminals who are released every day without much outcry.