Quote from: cynthialee on December 03, 2011, 09:47:32 AMThis thread is off topic and as such it can not be derailed.
Discuss...
Quote from: Sarah B on March 04, 2025, 03:23:59 AMHi Everyone
Well I've got bad news for you.
Attention everyone! This is your conductor oh, wait! We don't actually have one. Uh-oh No!
🚂💨 The Derailment Express is officially hurtling toward its final stop: Thread Lock Terminus. The brakes? Yeah, those are long gone. The track? Totally unrecognizable. And the engineer? They probably jumped ship about 376 posts ago.
...
The thread has become worryingly on-topic so I shall try to get it back on track with another rant.
In Britain, one Michael O'Brien was released from prison more than a decade after being wrongfully convicted. As per the custom, a huge amount was deducted from his compensation for "bed and board". Mr O'Brien is campaigning to have his bed and board money paid back to him.
I think that deducting bed and board from wrongfully convicted prisoners is evil because
1) Even if prisoners did owe for bed and board, why should innocent ones have to pay it back when guilty ones do not?
2) Prisoners are given work to do while they are in prison. In the UK, this work might not cover the cost of keeping people in prison but it would earn the inmates much nicer food and accommodation if they were free. How could prisoners, especially innocent ones, owe for bed and board?
3) Convicts are often imprisoned in their prime and are separated from their families or, worse, prevented from having families. True, some prisoners are trained and rehabilitated to live honest lives when released. However, innocent prisoners do not need to be rehabilitated and already had honest, productive lives before they were imprisoned. Besides, having to mix with dangerous criminals is more likely to turn honest people dishonest than vice versa. Prison is not a holiday camp. The food and accommodation of prisoners is part of their punishment. Imprisonment is more like suspended animation than living except that unlike in the sci-fi movies, prisoners get older and weaker while waiting to resume their lives. Why should wrongly convicted prisoners have to pay bed and board?
My, ahem, agent in Whitehall informed me that Britain's Labour government is planning to quietly stop the practice of deducting bed and board from the compensation of wrongly convicted prisoners. However, money will not be paid back retrospectively, so Mr O'Brien and others like him will not benefit.
Are there any other countries that deduct bed and board from the compensation of wrongly convicted prisoners? To me, the practice seems to be very Britishly upper class and cynical.