Norman Mailer on why prisons don't work

An interesting paragraph from The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, in which he seeks to explain why prison doesn't work.

"...the prison system was a complete socialist way of life... For twelve years, a prison [told prisoners] when to go to bed and when to eat, what to wear and when to get up. It was absolutely diametrically oppsed to the capitalist environment. Then one day they put the convinct out the front door, told him today is magic, at two o'clock you are a capitalist. Now, do it on your own. Go out, fiand a job, get up by yourself, report to work on time, manage your money, do all the things you were taught not to do in prison. Guaranteed to fail. Eighty percent went back to jail"

That sounds pretty plausible. Fortunately, the Liberal Democrats are proposing that training and work should be a compulsory part of prision life, so that at least when convicts leave prison they have the skills and experience necessary to find a job, and so begin a constructive life, rather than fall back in to the only life many of them have know - a life of crime.

David Cameron blue-rinse update

For the truly wonkish among you, MP3 downloads of the entire Economist/Stockholm Network debate David Cameron is just a blue-rinse Tony Blair? are now available here.

A synopsis of the event (their's, not mine) reads:

What is David Cameron for? He downplays tax cuts, is socially liberal and believes in a muscular foreign policy (and voted for the Iraq war). He would like to reform public services to give consumers more choice, and to involve private companies and charities in providing them. Sound familiar? And if so, is that a bad thing? After all, policies like these have just won three elections in a row. Will the new Cameron era be a break with the past or a return to true-blue values? Is Mr Cameron just a softer, pre-Thatcher Tory with a dollop of belief in the possibility of progress added? Can he create a vision for the future which his entire party can support, or will he only serve to divide the party further? And would Britain governed by a Cameron-led Conservative Party feel very different to Britain today?

Speakers: Prof. Dennis Kavanagh
Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday
Dr Ian Kearns, Deputy Director, ippr
Jesse Norman, Senior Fellow, Policy Exchange
Chaired by Johnny Grimond, Writer-at-large,The Economist
Polling from Andrew Cooper, Populus

Is David Cameron just a blue-rinsed Tony Blair?

Last night I attended a public debate hosted by the Economist and the Stockholm Network on the subject of whether David Cameron is just a blue-rinsed Tony Blair. Speakers included Professor Dennis Kavanagh (University of Liverpool), Dr Ian Kearns (IPPR), Peter Hitchens (Mail on Sunday) and Jesse Norman. It was excellently chaired by the Economist's Johnny Grimond.

Strangely, Peter Hitchens was most brutal not about Cameron (whom he predicted would not win the next election) or Blair but about the Conservatives in general. He described the Conservative Party as both a ‘ghost brand’, like loose razorblades and Capstan full-strength cigarettes that only continue to exist because a few old people continue to buy them out of habit, and a ‘poisoned brand’, too damaged to survive. “No re-branding can rescue this hopeless party”, he said, adding that “Cameron is a blue-rinsed Blair, it is a bad thing and it will fail”.

Ian Kearns agreed that it would fail, but mainly because Cameron was linked to the 2005 manifesto. Kavanagh disagreed, arguing that Cameron was only really the editor that drew together the policy ideas of the 2005 Shadow Cabinet. Kearns did note that there were genuine differences between the two, however: Cameron is no egalitarian, does not believe in redistribution, and (perhaps cynically) has repositioned himself on foreign policy. Kearns also called for compulsory voting as a means of filling the democratic deficit.

Jesse Norman argued that the difference was that whereas Blair was “a zealot” who had “Convictions on everything; ideas on nothing” (Hitchens objected to the description of Blair as having conviction) Cameron “had at least read a book”. He claimed – between plugs of several of his books, which are at least available to download for free from his website – that Cameron was aiming to redefine conservatism as neither paternalistic nor libertarian but based more upon the thinking of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, which he (not originally) has defined as Compassionate Conservatism. He alone predicted that Cameron would win the next election.

Kavanagh lamented the rise of a permanent, professional political class, and noted an unhealthy closeness between journalists and politicians: that it is possible to talk about journalists being in the Blair camp or the Brown camp is damaging for both journalism and democracy. He also lamented the focus on the five to eight per cent of the population in less than a hundred constituencies upon which elections turn.

Among the audience, just over half agreed that David Cameron is just a blue-rinsed Tony Blair.