Rare image. A younger Cecil Poole before he retired from public life as inmate at H.M Prison Won Wron. Shown here, improvising a rope ladder prior to another unsuccessful escape.

Dear reader, this week we devote a week, an entire week, (equivalent to the sentence meted out for unpaid parking fines) upon the vexed issue of Crime. And as our Russian Correspondent, Thyodor Dostoyevsky has left the building, we shall also be dealing with the vexed issue of Punishment. Who better to kick the incarceration can down that dead-end alley than Cecil Poole. Poole recently returned from a study trip to the U.S, illuminates us upon the issues with a clarity of perception and scintillating acuity.  We promise to ‘lift the lid, throw away the keys and go chokey’ in this exciting expose. And we remind any of our readers who have recently, “done time” to send us their anecdotes to lighten the gravity attendant upon this serious conundrum.

Crime

by Cecil Poole

You would think that the crime problem had been solved in the United States. You really would. They lock up criminals at six times the rate we do in Australia, and surely it is just common sense to think that if we locked up 6 times as many people in Australia we would have solved the crime problem. There really cannot be that many criminals. Can there?

I want to go over this again to make sure my logic holds. In America they imprison around 780 people in every 100,000. In Australia they imprison about 130 per 100,000. Now prison tackles the crime rate in two ways – it takes those criminals off the street, ipso facto the streets have less crims and are thus safer, and secondly prisons reform criminal, that is criminals come out of prison as reformed characters, now able to play their full and nobly lawful role in society. Thus the US has six times the number of crims off the streets and at the same time is releasing six times the number of reformed crims into society. Thus America must surely be far safer than Australia, where we let 5 of six crims run free, without giving us any chance of reformation.

Prison reform. Dresden Prison c. 1930. So much has changed since these archaic and frightening images were taken. For a start prisons are largely privatised. A positive boon for shareholders!!!

I do need to add a rider to this argument – at least in terms of black people we are doing the right thing, following and now in fact leading the US. We lock black people up at a rate far in excess of the rate the Americans do. And this has the added benefit, already noted by Ta-Nehisi Coates, that this takes lay-about, criminally minded blacks off the street and out of our consciousness, and also provides jobs for unskilled whites, together with profits for major corporations. Truly a win win situation.

Getting back to the US, you may imagine my surprise at recently reading the following headline in the Savannah Morning News: Police make arrests following ‘alarming spike’ in heroin overdoses. The report goes on itself alarmingly: Early Monday afternoon Diego ‘Slab’ Robbins, 22, of Savannah was arrested by the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team. Following his arrest, agents and the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office K-9 unit searched three houses that were connected to Robbins.

Agents seized a large amount of heroin, items commonly utilized with the ditribution of controlled substances, multiple firearms, a vehicle and about $1,000 in US currency . . Robbins is facing multiple felony drug charges ….

In May, CNT and the Savannah-Chatham police began noticing a spike in heroin related overdoses. CNT then began investigating Robbins and 37-year-old Michael ‘Big Mike’ Eden of Savannah. CNT determined most of the overdoses were happening at Eden’s house in Savannah . . .

‘Slab’ and “Big Mike”. Not pleased with the installation of the new “Adventure Playground” Carolina Savannah Chatham State Penitentiary.

Obviously we have to keep an eye open here to, and we at Passive Complicity as part of our ongoing quest for law and order and a safe place for our wives and kiddies are asking you to play your part. Should you know anyone with the moniker “Slab” or “Big Mike” please do not approach them but call crime stoppers – NOW.