h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Morning all

I know we are all battered senseless by the press on the following aspects of the foreign prisoner balls ups,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4940828.stm

, but I simply cannot grasp what has been going on , ( or not going on! ) over the recent years. How on earth can this complete cock up of not sending back a man, suspected of being subsequently involved in a WPC's murder , to his Somalian homeland "because it as too dangerous" Where is any degree of sanity in that decision? Was he already in trouble there, or is the logic that we should take in anyone from a 'dangerous'' part of the world?

I suspect that like many other UK citizens I just get hacked off by the influx of people who arrive here illegally, claim asylum, and disappear whilst their cases are individually 'considered'.

Further, I cannot grasp why a foreign national , convicted of a crime ,is not immediately shipped back from whence he /she came. Why should we pay to take care of them whilst their sentance is served.

This is not an anti immigration rant per se - but it seems that somewhere we have developed a policy or a philosophy of being 'afraid' to deal with certain subjects in the way that we need to. How have we become so lax that we let in ( or allow to arrive ) people who later become 12% of our prison population?

There is something distinctly wrong in government or civil service policies - especially now that Mr Clarke is asking for powers for immediate deportation - which ought to have been the case already, but which might have been uneccessary if his various departments had been supervised.

Why are we afraid to stand up and say "You are not wanted here - go home" Is it fear of the Human Rights lawyers - who must be raking in the dosh - or is it a deeper 'pass the buck'principle?

Rant over
Novo

Well, of course, that they *only* comprise 12% of our prison population means we still home-grow 88% of our criminals, which is something we can be proud of. Better than the percentage of home grown produce in your local Tesco's, I'll bet.

Somalia is a dangerous place for people of certain religious/political persuasions, and I assume that was why this particular individual was not deported when he could be. With tragic consequences, but tribunals (and that's how these things are decided as I understand it) can only act on the information they are given.

But I must confess that I too have been wondering about why this sudden problem. 'Foreign nationals', when tried in a court in this country are habitually served what is called an IM3, a document from the Home Office which says that if convicted you may be considered for deportation. It is then a matter for the Judge to recommend deportation or not at the sentencing stage of the procedure.

What I cannot get my head round is why a transition in Government has led to a problem. Standard MO in the Civil Service is to carry on doing something until told to stop. This administration issued no indication of a review of policy or anything that shoulod have 'stopped' previous procedure, so why *now* do we find that a wheel has fallen off?

Interesting, Blues. It leads to the question whether the wheel was off all along, it just happened to be noticed on Clarke's watch.

B

My guess is that the axle snapped and fell off on his watch, but it's been pretty thin for a while now.

I've been chatting about this this morning with my boss and colleagues (between us just over 60 years of civil service experience in various departments) and we all agreed that this was a catastrophic systems failure probably brought about by successive governments attitudes towards the civil service.

Taking the CPS as an example. When I joined, it was Thatchers new baby. The department that would be part of her legacy (and in fairness to the old boot, the idea is a sound one. Sucessive administartions bungling of the idea is not her fault). We were over funded, over staffed (albeit that in common with many civil service departments, the over staffing included a fair number of the 'bums and stiffs' quotient, it being cheaper to turn idiots into net producers in government employ rather than a drain on the welfare system) and everything ticked along pretty nicely.

The important thing was that training was *immaculate*. New inductees were given residential course where they were taught 'almost' everything that they needed to know to do the job. People had the time to explain the actuality of the job as opposed to the theory and everybody knew what was supposed to be done.

Over the years, we've become slightly under-funded, slightly under-staffed (though we still have the bums and stiffs quotient) and the amount of work we do has risen drastically, not just in terms of 'case load', but in terms of additional work that must be done on a case-by-case basis. (Not to mention the meetings, endless recordnig of statistics. For example my boss is now at a meeting ALL DAY with the 'business development director', whatever the one of those does in the Civil Service.)

Training has become utterly inadequate, and nobody any longer has the time to actually 'train' anybody. Jobs are taught on an ad-hoc basis, and crucially are taught around our whizzy, all mod cons computer system. The net result over a period of years is two things;

1) despite the best effortsd of the individuals concerned, training is degraded with each 'generation' of employees, a bit like a photocopy of the original being copied 100 times.

2) You lose all flexibility. Any job now that isn't part of the computer process, ie requires someone to show initiative or undertsnading tends to be...bodged at best and over looked at worst.

Then you end up in a situation where vital bits of the process get missed of the 'process map' altogether. Let's suppose that process A (in this instance overseeing the deportation of overseas prisoners on release) was dealt with by Fred, Charlie and Madge. Fred retires, Charlie gets promoted and Madge goes on maternity leave. The people who come (Tom, Perry and Nikki) in and take over those posts don't really know what they're doing and have to be taught by their manager, who doesn't really know either. Then Tom gets moved again, Nikki leaves to get a better job and Perry, who was never the sharpest of the three is left to train the next two incumbents, one of whom is part time and one of whom is actually only doing half the job because they are also needed by another section to do their photocopying.

And before you know it, the whole processw has dropped of the map because nobody remembers that you're supposed to be doing it in the first place.

>>Further, I cannot grasp why a foreign national , convicted of a crime ,is not immediately shipped back from whence he /she came<<

If the country concerned still has the death penalty (which Somalia does), that can be a factor.

A decisive factor, and one in this instance which I had overlooked.

The societal issue now coming to the fore is who's Human Rights are more important. The victim, who's rights are abused by the immigrant or the immigrant's who may suffer at the hands of a nasty regeme if deported.

The liberal would claim an advanced society like ours should protect the immigrant but the politician will always go for the vote. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

The HRA states categorically we can't deport prisoners to countries with the death penalty.

I don't see anyone in the present parliamentary set-up repealing that.

>>"The HRA states categorically we can't deport prisoners to countries with the death penalty."

Presumably that's in the case where someone is liable to be tried for a capital offence on being returned, rather than an illegal economic migrant being sent home?

Apart from the systemic failure approach for the current crises an alternative view was being put forwards on today's World at One:

In order to reduce the number of asylum seekers the Government declined to apply for deportation orders because if the deportation was granted the applicant would then apply for asylum.

>>"The HRA states categorically we can't deport prisoners to countries with the death penalty.">>

I am assuming that this does not refer to general deportations but, like the rule that Canada is SUPPOSED to follow, one cannot deport a person for whom the death penalty may be invoked.... As in the case of someone whose extradition is requested so they can face trial in the other nation for a crime where the penalty is death.

Since many countries with which Britain has extradition treaties also have the death penalty (as in the case of the US) presumably they still deport to these nations. They just don't deport someone who will or stands a reasonable chance of being given the death penalty.

Frankly the HRA is a bit of a red herring as is the issue of 1 individual instantce where deportation wasn't carried out because it was deemed unnaccaptable to send an individual back to Somalia.

The problem is an endemic one, and much as I hate to say it, WA may have a valid point - the simple fact is that every deportee is likely to become an asylum seeker which costs the country a huge amount of money.

Hi Blues shark

Grateful for your detailed input --- so it isn't a philosophy then, just straight forward incompetence. I feel sorry for the struggling civil servants that you describe (no, I do, really), but whom should I be blaming for the situation?

Someone, or some party has to carry the blame, for the underfunding and poor training that you describe. Is it the Home Office Ministers,(collectively) Mr Brown's parsimony, TB's desire to throw £££'s at everything? Or just a malaise in general,- the same one that means that any politician, however junior or senior can make a colossal cock-up but not resign?

This forum over the months has carried a number of discussions which excite much passion and heated debate, but whilst we all bleat away like contented sheep, the general decline goes on. Can it be stopped, or are Grumpy Old Men like me destined to grump on for ever - because nothing gets better.

Novo

The British Public are to blame, I'm afraid.

Once upon a time, the Civil Service was made up of the best and brightest. Then somewhere after WWII (probably that fat git Wilson's fault, this), it became popular to treat the Civil Service as a political football, accelarated by Thatcher and culminating in Brown's announcement that he was going to sack 80,000 of us without so much a reach around.

You end up in a situation where *only* the bums and stiffs apply to work in the Civil Service. I'd get out if I could, but we are so poorly regarded that any application with someone of 16 years experience in the Civil Service is automatically binned because 'he's a civil servant, there must be something wrong with him.'

After all, why work in a sector that has all the public sympathy of a cross between a peadophile and a pet killer? The people of this country allowed politicians to turn the framework of government into the enemy. They want to cut our pay, they want to take away our pensions and given the opportunity they'd pass a law legalising spitting at us on the street and forbidding us to strike.

So what you need to do is ask your choice of government for a comprehensive review of the civil service and what it does and how it does it. Oh wait. It'll cost money. Doesn't sound so attractive? You preferred the 'cut costs kill a civil servant' stance? Funny that.

I don't mrean to sound bitter, and it's not aimed directly at you Novo, but to be honest the country has the Civil Service it deserves. If you think you deserve better, well, that's nice, but unless you are prepared to pay more for it then it won't happen.

(Oh, and a little whisper tells me that my colleagues at Education are bailing out as fast as possible because student loans are about to become a complete fiasco as well. You heard it here first.)

Sounds like the Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. show we have here in the US. FEMA was filled under cronies under Bush Sr., and was an utter failure when Hurricane Andrew destroyed Florida. Sound familiar?

Well, FEMA was rebuilt by Clinton into a really solid agency, but guess what Bush Jr. did? Filled it with political appointees (Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown).

So couldn't in theory a British PM come to power, and clean house in one branch of the civil service (and not a large one)? There'd be costs, but not on the order of cleaning up the whole system. And then it might serve as an example/model for how and why it could and should be done.

Political cronyism isn't so much of a problem in the Civil Service over here as it is over there, Arnie. (Or at least not as I've read about it.)

The difficulty with an encumbant governmet admitting they need root and branch review and reform of even one branch of the civil service is that if they say it today then somebody is bound to say 'So you admit you've let this slide for the last 9 years?'

Not something ANY government is likely to do and my guess is any incoming government would have a different set of priorities.

>Is it the Home Office Ministers,(collectively) Mr Brown's parsimony, TB's desire to throw £££'s at everything? Or just a malaise in general,- the same one that means that any politician, however junior or senior can make a colossal cock-up but not resign?<

Strangely, I'd say it was a collective difficulty of all of the above, and let's not prtetend that Brown is the only chancellor ever to have squeezed the civil service. This country has an obsession with getting things 'on the cheap', and Blair has an obsession with throwing money at the wrong things and then spending it the wrong way. And the idea that this was a 'systems failure' will get Clarke off the hook, because no one will think to ask, 'Hang on, WHY did the systems fail so drastically?' It's easier to drag out a civil servant and flog him before the public than it is to ask those sorts of questions.

I expect there will be a new initiative, which will require statistics to be kept, so they'll make more money available to pay people to keep the stats, but not to actually do the job. hat appears to be SOP for this (and indeed most other) governments.

But the simple fact of the matter is that if you want first class government administration, you need to be prapared to pay for it.

Shock Horror I'm in total agreement with Blues.

The craze for privitisation of public services is another area which causes this sort of problem. The first thing an outsourcer wants to do is relocate - staff and property in London is expensive. Then they want to reduce headcount - economies of scale you know - ten they want to computerize.

I'm a bit tied in what I can say here - but on a certain contract - which is related to the subject of this convo - the contract was passed to one outsourcer, and at the re-bid was passed to another. It soon became clear that inappropriae equipment and programmes had been applied, presumably because of holding preferred supplier status. This is now being sorted, but cost-cuting in other areas is taking place - the latest beng a re-location of a certain department from Croyden to a cheaper part of the country.

As in Blues scenario, the job now depends on the ethics of certain unhappy people. They are doing the best they can, but there's less of them, and they feel either under-valued, or outsiders.

As Blues is an end user of the system I'm talking about (I think) he will probably undestand more of this than the rest of you.

(Apologies for crummy keyboard on this heap of junk.)

One rather important point that has not been mentioned:

"I cannot grasp why a foreign national , convicted of a crime ,is not immediately shipped back from whence he /she came. Why should we pay to take care of them whilst their sentance is served."

I'm all for my taxes paying to keep dangerous Somalian thugs locked up in this country. Why? Because the alternative is worse. Right now, if you're a nasty African thug who's been convicted of something, your reward is a prison term, possibly (or possibly not) followed by a plane ticket back to whatever Bodforsaken hole spawned you.

Your suggestion is that the reward should *just* be the plane ticket.

Prison in this country has several purposes:

1. Public safety.
2. Rehabilitation.
3. Retribution.
4. Deterrence.

If you take convicted criminals and simply wave them off at Heathrow, well, yes, you've pretty much satisfied (1), but you've given up on (2), you've not achieved (3) at all, and you've done the very opposite of (4), by offering something people pay to do in return for a conviction.

SoRB

And if you are a foreigner in the UK and want to go home, (some do), then all you have to do is kill someone, and lo and behold, you get a free air-ticket south.

Or north, if you come from Iceland or the Faroes. Or east if...

You get the picture.

My question is - that would make us safer how?

B

Oh, one further point, though - when the prison term is over, I can't understand why someone should be "considered for" deportation. The way I see it, even if you're a LEGAL immigrant, if you get imprisoned for something - *anything*, doesn't have to be murder, rape etc. - then as far as I'm concerned you're on the next plane back where you came from. And if that place happens not to be very nice, well, tough shit and maybe you should have thought of that.

The interesting thing about this particular worthless piece of scum and his non-removal to Somalia is the suggestion I heard yesterday that the problem was primarily logistical - there simply is no "next plane" back where he came from. No airline flies to Somalia, scary war-torn lawless dump that it is, and who can blame them? In which case, I'd be very happy for my taxes to finance a small group of trained repatriators who could accompany our former resident crims on whatever flights, trains and high security trucks we need to get them to the border of their homeland and kick them out. E.g. fly to the nearest friendly country and simply drive them to the border of Somalia, get 'em across, open the door and push.

The concept that we should care about their safety is a simply baffling one to me. There's a common phrase - "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime". Well, if you're from a foreign country that would be dangerous for you to go back to, doesn't that just go double? Honestly baffled why anyone gives a shit what happens to these people...

SoRB