Would ‘three strikes and out’ help solve our crime epidemic?

Britain is in the grip of a crime tsunami. Every year there are at least 9,305,000 criminal offences committed. That’s 178,940 every single week:

That means every week�178,940 innocent people have their lives blighted by a crime. And these are just the crimes the police admit happened. As we all know, for a long time our politically-correct useless police have been fiddling the figures to hide the real level of crime while they persecute innocent taxpayers and protect criminals.

Of course, most criminals are not stupid enough to be caught by our plodding police. But those that are caught are costing us a fortune. With 85,580 people in prison at an average cost per year of �38,000 each, our prison system costs us at least �3.25bn a year to keep Britain’s dimmest criminals in relative luxury with three good meals a day, TV, gymnasia and all the other comforts they expect.

So, how could we reduce this enormous bill? Well, here’s a suggestion – introduce a ‘three strikes and out’ rule. It could work like this:

When a prisoner is sentenced for the first and even second time, we give them the benefit of the doubt and try to rehabilitate them. But when anyone is convicted for a third offence, we assume they have decided to stick two fingers up at the rest of us and have no wish to go straight. So, we make the minimum sentence for any third offence five years. But, and here’s the catch, on a third offence, they lose the right to do their time in the UK. Instead we agree contracts with wonderful countries like say Kenya or Equatorial Guinea or the Sudan whereby we pay them say �10,000 per year for every British third time offender they look after for us.

This does several things. It creates jobs in Third World countries – surely something handwringing Guardianistas would welcome. It cuts the cost of each of these prisoners from �38,500 a year to just �10,000 a year. And it might make some hardened criminals think twice before committing their third offence – after all, I rather doubt prisons in most Third World countries are quite as comfortable as those in the UK. And the food probably isn’t so great either.

Plus, if we assume that just 10% of prisoners are third-time offenders, shunting these 8,550 scumbags off to a Third World jail would save us about �244m a year. That would be enough to hire around 5,000 of the 39,500 troops (who are being fired to save money) to help rehabilitate those prisoners who want to go straight. So we’d be investing those savings in helping those who want help. Surely the handwringing Guardianistas and professional worriers and do-gooders and bleaters about human rights would approve of that?

And here’s a wonderful comment from a reader “I can’t fault your reasoning.� I would only add 1 thing – if they complain about their “right to a family life” we could also send their families with them!”