Just attempting to do, what I perceive to be, the best I can
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The Prison Crisis and what it means, and says, for us as a society.
We, as a nation, have noone to blame but ourselves for this mess. The U.K. prison estate can, at an absolute stretch, maintain order and safely contain prisoners if they are operating at 95% capacity. That is the absolute maximum level they can do this at anything close to an acceptable level. The U.K. Prison Estate has been operating beyond 95% capacity for nearly fifteen years.
Fifteen years. You cannot say you didn't know. You have been warned, endlessly. You cannot blame this on a particular Government or figurehead it has occured under all major parties of all political persuasion.
It's said so often it is in danger of becoming trite but a society can be judged on how it treats it's prisoners. It is, in many ways, the most basic pillar of civilisation. How do we treat and contain those who transgress against out societal values. What does our Prison Estate say about us?
Starved of funding for nearly twenty years. Pestilential conditions. A work environment so toxic and dangerous that many of the jobs have had to be farmed out to immigrants so desperate for jobs they will put up with the abysmal conditions. All but no hope of meaningful rehabilitation, violent, frightening, awash with drugs and contraband and large portions controlled by organised crime. We have failed, completely and utterly as a society.
As always I wish to make it utterly clear that i do not blame Prison Officers for this. Their conditions are squalid. Despite the endless, often extreme, violence they are subjected to they continue to try and ooerate in an environment most reading this would simply wilt and collapse in. Currently they still have not been given body armour and tasers. The Howard League believes it is doing a good job in preventing them having these tools. They even want them to have C.S. spray taken from them. The Howard League believe they are influencing Government. They are not. The Government, demonstrably, is simply looking to do things on the cheap leaving many prisoners at the mercy of the strongest and most violent.
We need more prisons and Prison spaces. There is, essentially, noone left to release that isn't a risk. When people talk about letting out those who have committed "pett" crimes it shows their woeful ignorance. Noone is going to prison, and hasn't for decades, for a simple petty crime. If yoy are in prison fir shoplifting it is because you will have dozens of convictions to your name, usually fuelled by Class A drug addiction, and your behaviour is a complete blight on society. Incarceration and rehab is an absolutely reasonable model to pursue. It doesn't work because the entire Criminal Justice System has been refunded off billions, in front of you all, and you have ignored it.
People then point to those, tiny numbers, of individuals imprisoned for "hurty words" or public order offences, criminal damage e.t.c. All comitted during major public disorder. If you commit any crime during or in furtherance of such disorder yoy are looking at a stiff sentence. The alternative is the encouragement of mob rule. I don't remember many naysayers bleating about how unfair it all is during the 2011-2012 riots when people were being jailed for looking bottles of water and chocolate bars from smashed up shops.
I don't want people let out early. I spend the majority of my professional life putting sex offenders into prison. It enrages me they are being let out after 30% of their sentence. It fills me with fury that a Judge can now suspend a three year custodial sentence. But if they don't let them out as Mr. Burnham is presently mulling over, then between one or two months afterwards the Prison Estate will collapse. All of this is somply ways to deal with the Crisis without paying for it. We need more prisons. That's it. Whilst everyone has been worried about trans rights and immigration and all manner of societal problems (none of which I am dismissing) the basic foundation of our society has been hollowed out. Nearly completely. Why has the Government pursued this course if action? Because of you. All this information is freely available to you. It has been for over a decade. Have you protested? No. Have you demanded your M.P.s do something? No. It would appear across local elections that one of our societies key concerns is Israel's war with Gaza. Well now the chickens are coming home to roost U.K. over to you. This is your job. We live in a Democracy. Yoy can make this your priority.
But I'm not holding my breath.
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The Peel Inspection into TVP has been published today. It took approximately nine months looking into every department across the force.
My own Department, Mosovo, merited one line. It states that we are "particularly under-resourced" and have a, "lack of capacity to meet demand". It's also alludes, though not explicitly so, to concerns around the moving around of personnel to better manage demand may have unintended negative consequences in other areas of the force. That's it. Curiously reticent and restrained given the forensic depth and coverage of other areas. I would like to add some context to this so people understand, unequivocally, how catastrophic the situation is.
I have written, extensively, about this before. Without wishing to sound brazen or boastful I am aware that some people dismiss my concerns as exaggerated or fabricated. I can only respond by saying that everything I have posted on this subject is openly verifiable. With publically accessible data. Where I have commented on the effects of early releases, the nature and scale of them and who is eligible all have come to fruition. When I have spoken about the conditions inside the prison estate and even named specific institutions, I.e. HMP Swaleside, subsequent reports have demonstrated my concerns, gross and acute though they are, were infact, if anything, restrained when compared to the total reality.
Here is the stark maths behind our current situation that HMIC, nor anyone else, has any answers for.
We currently have approximately 100,000 Registered Sex Offenders in the U.K. About 70-75,000 in the community and 20-25,000 held in the prison estate. On average, historically, the yearly growth of the nunber of RSO's hovers around three percent. This is growing however. Very, very quickly. Last year in Thames Valley we had an 8% increase in the number of RSOs. Conservatively by 2031, in 5 years time we are likely to have approximately 125-130,000 RSOs to deal with. This means we will need, over the next five years, to see as an absolute bare minimum an increase in the Mosovo Units responsible for managing them an increase of between around one quarter to one third more to maintain our levels at grossly underresourced. Just to make that point even clearer we will need a huge uplift over the next five years in Mosovo Officers to maintain the resourcing level at catastrophic. This is the bare minimum needed to maintain us at, "particularly under resourced".
Personally I think the idea that we will receive the numbers needed simply to maintain our current level of functionality seems fanciful. There is nowhere to get the Officers from. We cannot lose anymore Officers from Response and Neighbourhood as our levels are so low that if we lose more we will be fined as a force by the Government. Domestic Abuse, Child Abuse, Force CID are all on their knees with crushing workloads and a complete dearth of specialist investigators and detectives. Our retention and recruiting rates are nosediving.
All this coupled with the effects of the Prison and Probation crisis. Mass prison releases ( Iwarned that sex offenders were not exempt and my warnings have now been confirmed across the board), early releases have meant a massively increased workload. Of those released under the early release schemes over two thirds have been recalled. Can you imagine the extra work that alone has entailed? The maximum sentence that can now be suspended has gone from two years to three years. This means that any sentence three years or less in length can now be suspended and the Offender serve their time in the community. This is an absolute death knell for us. The average sentence for a RSO we catch breaching their conditions and further offending, primarily through indecent image offences, is between 12 months and 3 years.
Probation who are, literally, falling apart with nowhere near the requisite staff available and a vastly increased workload due to these changes are now able to stop Probation early and kick Offenders off Probation management. Guess who are particularly attractive Offenders to do this to as they are still monitored by the Police and so it can be justified that they are not simply being cut loose with no management? You guessed it Registered Sex Offenders. It's already happening. The process is accelerating and quickly. It isn't Probations fault. It isn't the Prisons fault. This is the end result of Government's utter dereliction of duty and the complete failure of the Public to hold them to account.
People are concerned about asylum seekers and potential risk there. There are reasonable arguments to be made. Governmental policy is that no ACRO checks are done on asylum seekers as to donso would alert their home country and expose their family to pressure/coercion. This means you can be a multiple convicted child rapist, claim asylum in the U.K. and we will have no idea unless they do something here and then the policy allows the checks to be made. It means people who have committed notifiable offences abroad and should be registered sex offenders in the UK if they are allowed to remain here and thus be managed by our teams are simply allowed to wander about until something happens. This is an issue. I am not some conspiratorial lunatic. Yoy can literally Google this information it isn't secret it just isn't reported.
All the above is openly verifiable. I am not a whistle-blower. I am not giving you secret hidden information. I am somply a professional who has spent years up to my eyeballs in the utter chaos and stagnation that has been allowed to happen and am trying, desperately, to protect yoy with a fraction of what I require to adequately do so. In the last 12 months of data in my force available we instigated 171 investigations which were charged (north of 95% of our charges resulting in convictions at Court). That is perilously close to 10% of the number of RSOs managed in the community in my force. In one year. That data is available from the college of Policing in an article demonstrating our effectiveness without wishing to sound boastful.
These are the raw numbers involved. They will not change. Burying your heads in the sand and screaming about two tier policing and hurty words and how i'm racist, woke, anti-semetic, pro Israeli, Islamophobic, pro-Sharia, Communist, Facist e.t.c. won't change the maths. Over to you. I cannot do any more. There is no way of rearranging the deckchairs that will right the ship. We are sinking. We are sinking fast. If you think I am your enemy then reflect on what that says about you. I am not your enemy. I never will be. I am doing the best I can with what I have and that is perilously inadequate to the appointed task.
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On dealing with dangerous people in our society...
A number of recent cases have highlighted this issue and whilst there have been failings and I do not say, carte blanche, that some of that criticism is not entirely reasonable. However the fundamental question remains and is completely unanswered. How do you deal with people who are obviously dangerous but have not yet committed a serious offence?
The honest answer is that, currently, we cannot. Most of the Public have no idea how our processes and mechanisms work and those that should be informing them are failing to do so utterly. It is why there is never any change. It is why when people ask and moan about lessons being learned and hearing the same things again and again nothing changes. You will have the same disasters and atrocities until something does.
To be explicitly clear I deal with individuals like the despicable Rudakabana. Short of serious criminality there is little I can do to contain their risk. People scream at Prevent "failing". There is no obligation for a subject to engage with Prevent and no sanction for failing to do so. It's in essence a voluntary scheme to try and show certain individuals they are on a direct path and why. Do people know this? Is this heavily publicised? Why not?
The vast majority of dangerous individuals have certain mental health issues, autism spectrum features quite heavily for example. Personality disorders. Traits of psychopathy. These do not remove people's ability to function, to differentiate between right and wrong (having psychopathic traits is not analogous to psychopathy) nor does it somehow make them automatically an immediate danger to themselves or others. The vast, vast majority are not sectionable. Rarely can they be compelled to take part in forms of me tal health care in the community if they do not wish to do so.
Of the individuals, whose risk I manage, there are currently half a dozen or so who display clear red flags and fit a profile consistent with someone who will go on to commit atrocity. Their criminality, so far, is relatively minor. When I arrest them and get them to Court they are never looking at anything more substantial than a few months custodial sentence. At most.
What are my options? What are my perceived failings? If one of them pushes the button and go on a rampage who is to blame? These are not rhetorical questions, I am all ears. The vast majority of people opining on this topic, on this platform and within the media appear to be doing so as little more than a business decision to shill their boks, or training programmes or profiles to be talking heads on what passes for public debate in our country. There's a word for that and it isn't a pleasant one. Grifting.
I elected to do this work for you, the Public. I have no book. No media presence or profile. No training package claiming answers. This, identifying risk and managing offenders is what I do. You will note voices such as mine are conspicuously absent. That's because most who are in a position to understand the problems and potentially do something about them i.e. our elected officials already know the problem. They also know the potential answer. But these problems and answers are not vote winners. They are controversial. They cost money. So you will not hear my voice.
The only mechanism to deal with individuals like this is something akin to an IPP sentence. People who are, clearly, evidently dangerous but have not yet committed very serious criminality. But people don't want that. The discourse around IPP sentences and anything like them is incredibly toxic and often woefully misinformed. IPP's are not without serious drawbacks. But they were brought in to help manage individuals and protect society from people who were the equivalent of runaway trains with everyone simply watching their progression to a packed station and being una le to stop them even though the ultimate destination was clear.
As a society we need a public informed discussion about where an individuals rights and societies intersect on this matter and act accordingly. You either introduce some form of sentence like an IPP or you continue to see preventable atrocities. I imagine as always most will simply read this and shoot the messenger but before doing so at least consider my motivation. I am trying to protect you. I have no financial motivation. I am telling you the situation as I see and experience it.
As I said I have been presented with no alternative options nor seen any presented. That alone should tell most of you the veracity of what I am saying. If anyone has any alternatives I would, genuinely, love to hear them. I'm not sorry egotistical that I am beyond accepting my knowledge base is not infallible nor my reasoning and deductive abilities beyond reproach.
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An update.
As is perhaps predictable, for any who have followed my posts over the years, events and conditions have not got better within the world of Public Protection.
HMIC will soon be publishing a report into TVP and MOSOVO. Look out for it. It is likely to be catastrophic.
Before it comes out for those, very few, who might desire and benefit from context allow me to provide some...
The world of Public Protection and the management of Registered Sex Offenders is measured by HMIC against a number of criteria. Not a single one of those criteria pertains to further offending, arrests, offences uncovered, successful investigations and prosecutions, breaches of Sexual Harm Prevention Orders uncovered and prosecuted, the number of at risk and vulnerable I dividends, primarily children, safeguarded and protected.
They, broadly, measure the following. Number of visits that are out of date. Each offender will have to be visited a set number of times per year contingent on their risk level, Very High, High, Medium or Low. There are statutory guidelines for often such offenders must be visited. If their visits are late that's a black mark. Likewise their risk assessments. Known as an ARMS. Takes about a workday to do a proper one. Every year, or need to be redone. Once a year might not sound like alot. Bear in mind though there are Officers within our force currently with 104 Offenders within the community to manage. That racks up very quickly when placed next to the legion of other tasks and duties a Pubic Protection Officer has. They're out of date? Black mark.
RMP's. Risk management plans. A guide for how you plan on managing each Offender. Redone every year or every time there is an arrest, change of circumstance or intelligence that requires it be reviewed. Every offender had to have one. Late in completing it? HMIC blackmark.
Those with expereince in this world and in pu lic service generally will already see the iceberg ahead for public safety. To the unannointed it is perhaps less obvious. So I shall explain.
These measurements directly promote corner-cutting and tick box exercises over protecting the public. Directly. I can bang out half a dozen visits in a day if I want to, I can wave and have a natter with some of the most dangerous men in our society and wrote up my vague, shallow, surface level impressions. Or I can complete one visit which results in an arrest, breaches, searches, interviews, case files and almost invariably remand and CPS. A shift which will usually be in the range of 16-20 hours. One of those outcomes leads to better grading and reviews from HMIC. One of them leads to scathing criticism. I wonder if the publics view would align with HMIC's in this regard?
We haven't got the numbers, resources or staff to cover all the bases HMIC demands. Nowhere near enough. There's nowhere to get new Officers from. Our response levels are so low they can't lose anymore or we'll be fined by the Government (a grotesque joke in of itself). Other specialist departments are equally denuded.
There is no fat left to cut. There is precious little muscle. What is being lost now and has been for an extended period of time are vital organs. To help our offender managers within Public Protection we crated a tiny digital team to give tech support and directly to target the highest risk offenders to uncover offences. We were very successful. Literally hundreds of prosecutions. Disbanded now. Gone. Reason? To alleviate pressure and get the number of out of date visits down. Our investigation Team created to help manage the vast numbers of investigations and corresponding paperwork generated? 140 investigations in the last three months? Gone. Disbanded. Reason? Alleviate pressure due to number of outstanding visits.
This isn't the fault of senior management, easy targets though they often are. They don't set the criteria against which we are managed. They don't set the budget allocated to us nor the resources we are given.
Two of my team walked out last week. They've had enough. I cannot blame them. Our conditions are intolerable and have been for years. There is no light whatsoever at the end of the tunnel. Quite the opposite it is abundantly clear that things are going to get worse difficult though that is to imagine.
The blame is yours dear reader. Bitter though that might be to hear and, from.expereince, extremely unlikely to be swallowed but instead spat out and ignored. You've been told for fifteen years of the effects of cuts and lack of investment in Policing. You've had it spelled out to you in great detail. You've done nothing. Now you're living in the funeral pyre of your own society and even if you did t light the torch you watched those who bore it and have done nothing. So you've nothing to complain about.
You will though. It's what you do in lieu of action.
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I cannot keep doing this. All my attempts to raise awareness and visibility and, just possibly, engender some useful public debate or, even more fanciful, meaningful change have proven worse than useless. The situation when I began using this platform and trying to engage the Public I serve on issues they should, could and need to know about was disastrous. It is now utterly catastrophic. It has been made emphatically and abundantly clear no change is coming. Things will instead continue to worsen. I think this is likely my last attempt to scream I to the void so to those who have seen and heard already I apologise, as always, for repetition.
In my team, since my last diatribe, conditions have continued to decay. For those who have not seen my rants previously we work within Public Protection managing Registered Sex Offenders. Each Officer has a cohort of offenders to manage, visit risk assess and try and ensure they are complying with the Sex Offender Notification Requirements and any ancillary Court Orders they are subject to Sexual Harm Prevention Orders being the most common.
When the Register was set up it was decreed, rightly, that no individual Officer would have more than thirty offenders to manage. This was before the existence of the Court Orders most likely to catch them out for further offending and the corresponding workload that generates. My team, on average, now has 69 offenders per Officer to manage. One of our neighbouring LPA's is currently running at an average of 98. So to be clear the workload compared to inception is between double and triple on management alone notwithstanding the myriad investigations which simply did not exist at the beginning.
In the same time frame described above Police funding, pay, expereince and conditions have been decimated. Here are some figures to ram home the reality to you. The Met alone has lost a billion pounds in real term funding. My own force, the largest non metropolitan force in the U.K. has lost hundreds of millions. Police pay is currently twenty one percent lower, in real terms, than it was twenty years ago. This is not an oversight it is a direct policy of Government brought in under austerity and then continued, implemented by Ministers who are all but inured from the effects it has caused.
Worse though, far worse, is that the Government could not have done this without you help. They have relied on the Public being stupid, myopic, ignorant and apathetic. They rely on that alot. They do so because it works.
Nearly everything I hear about Policing is completely distorted and based on a complete lack of understanding about the issues it faces which have been explained, in detail, to you for 16 years. That you have willfully not listened is your fault. Not the Government's, not the Police but yours. We cannot strike in the Police. We give up that fundamental right for the privilege of serving you. We do so alongside the Military. For the greater good. For your greater good. The balance is supposed to be that being shorn of these rights along with the other host of depredations serving the British Public entails that you will hold the Government to account. You have not. You will note that both the Police and Military have been ravaged by cuts and underfunding. To have allowed this is a moral, as well as an intellectual, failure on your part. You are now living in the consequences of these failures. It is your fault, no-one else's. All the data has been easily and readily verifiable for years.
We have, alongside Portugal, the lowest Officer to population rational in all of Europe. By a huge margin. France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Russia all have roughly double the number we have. Germany about a third more. All of these countries have a routinely armed Police Service. None of these countries have a Sex Offenders Register to Police and manage. Current numbers for the Register are approximately 100,000 offenders. What do you believe the situation in France would be if they were told they were losing half their Officers having the vast majority of their armed capacity taken away and theu had a 100,000 Sex Offenders to manage. Would you imagine them thriving as a society? Luckily for the unimaginative amongst you no mental dexterity is needed as you simply have to look around you. You are living in the reality of that situation. It is your fault.
So many of you complain and want more done, with what? Conditions are so atrocious in our Police Service that we cannot retain Officers. We are losing more than we recruit and that number is accelerating. Around a third of UK Officers have less than five years experience. This is disastrous. It takes years and years to become and effective well rounded Officer across a wide array of disciplines. You think Officers look like they're getting younger? They are. You've lost massive chunks of experience all of which was and is needed. Wjen Government spoke about healthu chirn its nonsense. Younger in service officers are cheaper in both pay and pensions. That's it. That's the motivation for all of it money. Investigations and processes are immeasurably more complicated than thirty years ago with a collosal, horrifying uptick in demand from the Public.
Since the nineties our responsibilities have exploded consulate with the disintegration of other services. Care in the community means that acute mental health is, is nearly always, the preserve of the Police. That is a huge demand in and of itself. Do you think the Police chose this? That this was their strategy? Missing persons investigations are astronomically higher driven bu and interpretation of "missong" which is so broad it boils down to someone, anyone, calling the Police and stating they don't know where someone else is. The advent of the Internet. Fraud, child abuse, sexual communications with children, indecent images, malicious comms demand that scarcely existed before is now overwhelming in numbers with no increase in resources. As is clear from above infact resources have vastly decreased.
And social media. Dear God. Police "trawling for hurty words" as if. It's you. Joe Public again calling in endlessly about Facebook and X harassment and horror as most of you are so terminally online that the the difference between your online and offline life is negligible. We didn't make these laws. The Government did. You approved them. Now you call them in in their legions.
All this is just scratching the surface of the Police. What about the Prison service. I have wrote of it before but it is in even worse shape. Manufactured and allowed horror. HMP Swaleside has just had the most damning report I have ever read published about it. Will anything change? No it will not. There's no money and no impetus to do so because you, the Public make it clear what you care about on Social Media on your protests and marches. In your votes..... and it just isn't us. The Prison Estate has largely lost control. It is not their fault. Like the Police theu have been completely starved of finding, resources and personnel. Organised (both professional criminal and religous) crime has seized control.of large portions of the estate. Violence, drugs, loss of control is swamping it. Prison Officers work in conditions where most members of the public would simply wilt and melt. As their conditions erode every further the Government can't even decide if they should have tasers and body armour. If anyone in the Howard League is reading this the Government are laughing at you and using you as a convenient hook and shield do not fund adequate measures. They don't want to it costs money. Groups like yourself are just a conve ient tactic to "listen" to.
The Public cries out at early prisoners releases, the ending of short sentences, the mooting of the eradication of most Jury Trials. It's your fault. The Government know you won't do anything. You say you care but theu look at your actions and see, as I do, that you do not. A million people might protest vaccine damage and civil lock downs but the idea that prisons shouldn't be nightmare hell holls where overcrowding, violence and drugs are everywhere and the idea of rehabilitation is all but a joke won't warrant a single placard. Government knows this. They know their audience.
I bet there's not a single one of you reading this that wouldn't swear blind they didn't care more than anything else about protecting children from paedophiles. But you don't. The Government see that. If you did why am I working in the conditions I am in. Why are I pulling fifty to sixty hours of overtime a month remanding recidivist sex offenders because we have nowhere near enough staff? Why am I having to grade eight hours of childcare abuse images and videos at a time (the recommended maximum for this is four hours) because there's too much to do. CEOP estimates 800,000 individuals are accessing child abuse material based on IP data. Anyone fancy marching for some more funding to help stop it? No? Of course not because you're a shower of wastrels that have become so infantilised by platitudes that you're only response to truths you don't want to hear now is to shoot the messenger.
There's nothing left in the tank. My own force is so low on numbers that if they lose anymore from Response Policng and Neighbourhood that they'll be fined by Government for breaching minimum requirements. Everything I've said every fact and figure can be verified. You can even use Grok to help you it'll take less than thirty seconds.
So when you're bleating about hurty words and seeing more bobbies on the beat and response times being too long and crimes not being dealt with realise that there is a reason for this lack.... and those reasons are not down to my colleagues and I.
So your lives will continue to become worse. Because you have allowed, and I have no doubt will continue to allow, it. You'll lose Your Police because you didn't pay them or givem them the bare minimum for what they needed to protect you. You'll lose the prisons for exactly the same reason. You're on the way now to losing your juries. All because it's cheaper to get rid and allow to decay and the people supposed to stop Government doing this have utterly failed to do so.
So it might be that I'm a racist, woke, Racist, Communist, Antime-Semite, Pro Israeli, anti Islamic, pro islamic caliphate, too soft, too hard, too lazy enemey of the people and you can simply disregard everything I'm saying die to whatever personal grievance or ideology you hold for the minute. Or I might be your servant. Now and always telling you what you need to hear, know and act on.
When the fuck are you going to wake up and see what they've got you shoveling for them?
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Imagine a Police force so big that is the largest non metropolitan force in the U.K.
Imagine that it's so stripped of funds, resources and personnel that if it loses any more Officers from it's Emergency Response and Neighbourhood Teams that it will be fined by the Government for breaching the critically low minimal staffing levels.
The basic functions of Policing in such an enormous force so disastrous. Imagine further than what effect this has on specialist teams. What resources and funding might be available for them.
Imagine my own tiny team, proactively targeting Registered Sex Offenders for further offending.
Across the force the average number of RSO's per PPU Officer is now 69 each. It was originally meant to be thirty.
Imagine the metrics the Home Office judges the management of RSO's on. You might need some help here because it's not intuitive. How many out of date visits by professionals. What percentage of High Risk Offenders there are. How many risk assessments and risk management plans are up to date. Not how many offences are uncovered. Not how many arrests and convictions and vulnerable people safeguarded.
Now Imagine how a tiny, grossly overworked and underfunded team specifically tailored to uncovering such offences fares in such times? 87 arrests, 52 charges and remands this year to date alone. We sadly don't fit into HMIC's priorities. If you don't uncover I you don't have to deal with it. I imagine the Public might feel differently. Certainly they pretend to. But the Public have done the square route of fuck all.
So now you don't have to imagine anymore. This is your reality.
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OK one last go..... for those who follow or interact with me the usual caveats around apologising for repetition.
For anyone remotely interested in protecting the vulnerable from sexual and physical harm, particularly children please read the below. All of the facts and statistics I will refer to are openly and relatively early verifiable. Yoy can even use Grok to check should you have difficult believing me.
I work in Public Protection. It comes under many names in different forces, MOSOVO, Jigsaw e.t.c but it all concerns the same thing. Managing the risk posed by Registered Sex Offenders and other Potentially Dangerous Persons to the Public. I have done this role for approximately six years as Police Officer and have a number of other skills and roles which are part time including being a level 2 Officer (riot Officer in common parlance) and a CBRN Officer alongside some additional skillsets. Prior to this I was on a mixture of Response and C.I.D. teams. In my current role I have arrested and taken to Court approximately 300 Registered Sex Offenders for further offending. I say this not to boast or for self aggrandisement but to try and establish my credentials and to demonstrate that what I am saying is backed by experience and profound knowledge of the subject matter.
We are fucked. It is the fault of successive Governments and public apathy. If you wish to know why and the reality of the situation then please read on. If you don't then do so in the knowledge you are making a choice to not understand what is happening to the people trying to protect you and your children from RSO's. That might make you feel angry and upset. It should do. We would not be in this situation without your apathy. If you wish to do something about that we need you to harness those emotions and utilise them accordingly.
The Sex Offenders Register began in 1997. It's genesis came from the realisation and acknowledgement that sex offenders need a degree of monitoring and controlling to protect the public. Thus was born VISOR. The Violent and Sexual Offender Register. This is a database maintained and updated by the Police which monitor and tracks Sex Offenders and tries to ensure they are tracked, monitored and adhering to the requirements needed of them. This was further added to by the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and formally codified in the Sex Offender Notification Requirements. These are requirements incumbent on ALL rso's to register their names, aliases, addresses, passports etc. Failure to do so is a criminal offence with a maximum sentence of breaching being 5 years imprisonment.
At this juncture it is worth pointing out that we are one of the few countries to have such a Register. America and Australia (along with a few others) also have one. Almost none of our European contemporaries do. Indeed the idea of a European Sex Offenders registry has been mooted numerous times and has failed to come to fruition. A number of European countries including Spain and France have explicitly argued that such a Register would breach the human rights enshrined by the ECHR for those subjected to it. All these countries despite not having such a Register to manage and Police have vastly greater Policing resources available to them. The U.K. has one of the lowest Officer to population ratio in all of Europe. Approximately half that of France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Russia. About a third less than Germany. Bear that in mind as and if you read on as despite us having such low numbers and resources we have correspondingly far greater duties. All whilst being routinely unarmed.
In the U.K. when the Register was first established it was recognised that it would need officers and staff to manage the RSO's on it. To visit, monitor, support and if necessary arrest them for infractions of their conditions or further offending. When the guidelines for workload were drawn up it was decreed that no individual Officer would have more than thirty Offenders to manage. Anything more was seen and inherently unworkable and likely to result in increased risk. This number and the time it was created is, again, very important to bear in mind as you read on. The limit of thirty was imposed before the creation of Sexual Offenders Prevention Orders and their later successor Sexual Harm Prevention Orders. These are Court Orders bespoke and tailored to an RSO's offending. They will limit things such as an Offenders access to children, Internet access, apps they can use, registering internet enabled devices with Police e.t.c. e.t.c. Their use has vastly increased and results in large numbers of arrests and investigations as Offenders breach them. Again the maximum sentence for breaching such an order is 5 years.
Fast forward to 2010 and the Home Office quietly changed the maximum number of Offenders an individual Officer could manage. Instead of thirty it was now fifty. This was not debated in Parliament. It was not really debated at all. It was not imposed due to increasing resources or lack of work the stark naked truth was there were too many Offenders and not enough Officers. Indeed despite the ever increasing number of RSO's there had been an approximately 20 percent in the number of Public Protection Offficers to deal with them with greater workload and complexity due to the introdution of SOPO's. You will note the date. 2010. The start of austerity. Bear in mind how bad the situation was therfore prior to austerity and brace yourself accordingly for what has come next.
Since 2014 the number of RSO's has doubled. From approximately 50,000 to 100,000. In that same timeframe Police funding has been catastrophically slashed. The Met alone has lost a billion pounds in real term funding. My own force has lost hundreds of millions. Between 6 to 8 hundred Police Stations have closed. Tens of thousands of Officers have left. That was all needed experience. As of today around a third of Officers in the U.K. have less than five years experience. That is an appalling, disastrous figure. Government spokesman about healthy churn. In reality they wished to gut Police of experience as it was cheaper to have lots of inexperienced Officers bith in terms of general pay and pensions.
Governmental Ministers will often talk about protecting the front line. This is meaningless jargon. Back office staff are crucial and critical. Worse when they are gone the tasks they performed still have to be done..... by the front line. Remember this when you are struggling to get hold of emergency response officers with their tiny numbers and horrific myriad of duties and tasks they need to complete. You were warned about this. You were warned of the consequences of the cuts and what it would mean to Policing. You did not listen. The Government gambled, correctly, on your stupidity, myopia, apathy and ignorance. They knew that when the chickens came home to roost that the Police would be Blamed for the effects of the cuts imposed upon them. They were, heartbreakingly, entirely correct to gamble as such.
So 100,000 RSO's, decreasing staff and Officer numbers, greater tasks. On my team the current average is now 64 Offenders each to manage within the community. Over double the number to manage than when the Register started. Every single member of my team failed their last psychological screening which we have to complete yearly. Every single one. If one of them goes off sick or decides they can no longer bear to carry on the number we will manage will jump to around 76 each. This isn't manageable. It isn't right. This is a national disgrace replicated across the board. If you think my colleagues seem weak or unmotivated consider the conditions they labour under on your behalf. Due to our tiny numbers we have noone to hand onto. This means if we arrest someone we deal with them entirely. Arrest, searches(section 32 and 18), interview, casefile building, going to CPS to obtain charges e.t.c. An arrest will usually result in a remand given the level of risk we deal with. That means a shift of, ordinarily, between 16 to 20 hours. On average we arrest 2-3 RSO's a week. Our stations are often, literally, falling apart with leaks and crumbling infrastructure. Waiting for solicitors which, like us, have been denuded of funding and investment so there are not nearly enough. This means my team are exhausted with massive impacts on their personal lives and missing out on children and family events e.t.c... even basic expectations of sleep cannot be met. My colleagues and I regularly deal with extrme offences and exceptionally dangerous people. Two weeks ago one of the men we deal with was sentenced, amongst the things we uncovered, for assaulting two of my colleagues whilst arresting him. To say nothing of the appalling material we regularly are subjected to when gathering evidence. Having to grade multiple videos of babies and toddlers being raped and provide a statment after 16 hours on duty in a station so stripmined off funds it cannot even supply sachets of squash for its officers to drink is not an ideal work environment. All this before we get to the Courts..
The Court system has, broadly, ceased to function. There are not enough specialist lawyers and Judges to deal with normal cases let alone specialist and sexual cases. Trial dates are, in of themselves, a national emergency. Basic task like transferring Defendants from prison to Court or getting liveliness to prison regularly simply fail to work. Accelerated by the privatisation of these services. The prisons themselves are collapsing. In the U.K. the Prison estate is operating at just under 100% capacity. That is a disgrace. Again successive Governments have failed to invest and fund. The Public have failed to hold them to account. Prison Officers operate in squalid, dangerous, terrifying conditions. They don't have the equipment and backup they need because Governments have "allowed" themselves to be led by pressure groups and activisits because its chepaer than properly equipping them. Something that many of these groups may wish to ponder. Yoy are simply carrying water for Governments looking to do things on the cheap. Prison Officers don't have tasers because the reality is it costs money. Both for the equipment and training. It is cheaper to "listen" to pressure groups to provide the political cover as a reason. The Government don't really believe or care that violent prisoners might be "traumatised" by the sight of a taser that may have been used on them outside of prison. It's just a hook to hang failure to resource on.
This complete abrogation of responsibility from those who Govern in our name has made our prison estate woefully over populated, highly dangerous and open to corruption and subversion by organised crime. The tactics and technology are readily available, for instance, to prevent drone drops of money, drugs, phones e.t.c. They are not implemented because they cost money. Or indeed because the tentacles of corruption have embedded themselves ever further up the chain. It is hard to believe our ministers are such paragons of virtue that they are beyond the purview of being corrupted by organised crime.
I am now arresting and breaching Offenders who are arriving at bail hostels with undeclared internet enabled devices, simcards and USB sticks that they have brought with them from prison. Prisoners in many establishments openly film and record themselves, they have YouTube channels and update their dating profiles from inside.... and continue to offend.
That prison crisis directly impacts the management of RSO's. Prison terms have been cut from 50% of a sentence to 40% now to 30%. Ministers have repeatedly assured us that violent and sexual offenders are exempt from th3se releases. That is a straight lie. Sexual and Violent Offenders as graded by Police and Probation are regularly being let out using these schemes. I have already arrested and remanded quite alot of them for further offending. Ministers language has now changed saying that dangerous offenders will not be released. Again this is pure mendacity. Mendacity erected on your gambled ignorance. What Ministers are saying here is that those prisoners designated as a dangerous offender by a Judge and sentenced accordingly are exempt from these release schemes. That is a very rare designation. It means that an offender who is found dangerous will serve two thirds of their sentence and be subject to an extended license period. The vast majority of sexual and violent offenders are not so designated. From rapists to domestic abusers north of 95% of such individuals will not be deemed dangerous. When Ministers say dangerous offenders will not be released they are lying. They are deliberately using technical legal terminology not in any way shape or from the meaning of dangerous as the public would understand it.
There's so much more to discuss but most won't ever read as far as this. Asylum seekers? There's a hot button issue. Are yoy aware that the Home Office won't deport someone (as rarely as they do anyway) if they have an active criminal investigation against them? Repeatedly raped a child?when you're released and waiting for the deportation process carry on committing crime. It stops the process. What a design system. I haven't even touched on Probation and their crucification and disintegration. Reactive management of RSO's? Such a cornucopia of horror and decay you are all kept deliberately ignorant of
I can only use the tools and resources given to me by the Government to protect you. The Government will only give to me what it feelsit can get away with. It is up to the Public to redress the balance. I cannot strike. The Police and the Military give up the right to strike to serve You. You will note that bith organisations have been filleted and gutted by successive Governments. The Police are the Public. The Public the Police. When you denigrate me and mock me for failings that I have had no hand in creating and you have allowed you are simply engaging in self-harm. The results of that are now manifest everywhere in our society. If you want to start to redress the issues than do so. Ask politicians about what i am saying. Demand answers. Is anyone marching and protesting about this? Are they bollox. I have said it before but it is worth repeating I find it more stress relieving and rewarding to drive aid convoys to Kyiv them I do serving the British public. I go again October. I will be met by people who are kind and decent to me, pleased to see and grateful for my meagre efforts at help.
Go on ask your local MP about all thus, ask your elected officials. They will not answer me. I have tried. They will all, uniformly, ignore me.
It's cheaper that way.
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I appreciate that quite a few people have replied to this post and one of two have privately messaged me. I apologise for not replying yet and will endeavour to do so later when I have a chance.
I am currently at work. I have spent the past five hours grading child abuse material for one of my cases where the Defendant is currently on remand awaiting sentencing.
By policy I should never undertake more than 4hrs at a time of this work due to its nature and the toll it takes. However due to the cuts and lack of staff in conjunction with the desperately urgent need to get the results to Court on average such sessions last eight hours. I'm currently having a coffee and cigarette break and as I would cheerfully stab myself in the eyes rather than get back to what I have just had to be doing I am going to give this post some additional important context.
Please bear in mind that amoung the endless parade of horror that I have just graded one of the videos was of a group of men taking it in turns to try and choke and drown a baby in their semen whilst they high fived above her. You will forgive me if my tone is therfore a little brusque I am currently ill disposed towards the Public.
I said in the post above this that you can face check me. Use Grok should you so wish or any other data available to you. All I say is openly, publically verifiable. That is the tragedy. Should you wish yo be informed you could be. That you are not is, to a degree, personal failure. To a far larger degree it is a failure of those organs of state and media whom are meant to keep you informed and educated so you can, in turn, make informed choices.
I will turn now to something I hold very dear. Something I have dedicated my adult life to. Victims of rape. To listen to media, social and otherwise, rape has been effectively "decriminalised". This is horseshit. In approximately 2014/2015 recording standards for nearly all crimes changed. It became far broader in scope and therfore far more crimes were recorded regardless of the circumstances of them being recorded. Until this point between 8 and 10 percent of all recorded rapes led to trial. Then the numbers nosedived. This coincided with the recording of third hand party reporting of rapes as full offences regardless of whether the aggrieved confirmed an offence had taken place or wished for any action to be taken. The time period also coincided with the widespread adoption of the D.A.S.H. form which is a risk assessment tool implemented to help grade the risk of Domestic Violence to victims. It is not a statement nor is it evidential it is a tool to assess potential risk. One of the questions surround sexual violence. Large numbers of people will disclose sexual violence without wishing to make any form of complaint but will often want it formally logged. All of these contribute to the rape statistics.
A far greater metric is to measure how many rape offences with an aggrieved who wishes to support a prosecution are charged. This drastically changes the picture. There are all kinds of issues with the investigation of rape and serious sexual violence. I do not claim in any way that the system for this is perfect nor that the experience can be extremely difficult, frightening and traumatising. However.
The media are deliberately feeding a narrative that makes victims of rape less likely to come forward because theu think the statistics show there is no point. This simply isn't true. The media know this. So do Politicians. They know this because they have been informed.
Perhaps as I am weary of investigating someone could pick up the slack and opine on why an institution such as say, the BBC, would deliberately put out a statistically warped narrative that discourages victims of rape from reporting to the Police? What a mystery that seems to me.
I know there are issues and failings when it comes to rape investigations and for those who have suffered because of it I am extremely sorry. But if someone is reading this and is scared to report something that has happened to them because they've heard there's no point and it isn't taken seriously please, please dont listen. If you feel strong enough the Police will take you seriously and offer support. The Detectives dealing with these cases are amongst the most dedicated to ever serve.
CEOP and the NCA estimate through IP traffic and consumption of CSAM material that approximately 800,000 people in the U.K. have a sexual interest in children.... and that is only one strand of sexual offending, albeit a large one.
Do you think my team and it's counterparts are going to get eight times the number of Officers anytime soon?
My posts are geared towards Public Protection but I wish to make it clear there ALL my colleagues work in intolerable conditions on your behalf. None more so than Response. When you mock them for Policing "hurty words" it is an incredibly deep betrayal.of what they go through every day to tey and maintain some semblance of order as our Society devours itself.
The woods are burning Joe Public. Over to you. This is your job. We live in a Democracy. Use it.
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I'm aware those who follow and interact with me must be tried of seeing me endlessly scream the figures and facts below into the electronic ether. I'm just going to start copy and pasting this under politicians posts from now on. I may not get a response but it potentially might be harder to ignore.
To begin with I will provide some background, facts and figures to provide context to the situation. Over the past 15 years the Police has been denuded of funding and resources. In the Met alone there has been nearly a billion pounds in cuts in real terms since 2010. A billion pounds. My own force, Thames Valley, has lost hundreds of millions. Real term spending on the Police as a whole has fallen by a fifth. In the same time frame between 600 and 800 Police Stations have closed. Police's real term wages have fallen by approximately 21%. In terms of raw numbers and resources we have nearly the lowest officer per capita ratio in all of Europe. Per 100,000 capita we have approximately half the number of Officers compared to France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Russia. Approximately a third less than Germany. All those countries have routine arming of their Officers. None of those countries have a Sex Offenders Register. In the U.K. we have roughly 100,000 Registered Sex Offenders that require Policing and management. It is highly intensive. Around 20% of the prison estate (currently operating beyond operational capacity at around 88,000) is comprised of Sex Offenders. This is to say nothing of the other arms of the Criminal Justice which has been ruined by successive Governments. The Prison Estate has been allowed to decay. Our prisons are literally full. Conditions are squalid. Organised crime has infiltrated and seized control of portions of the estate to woeful effect. Routine violence, use of internet enabled devices (prisoners updating social media channels from within prison openly is a national scandal in and of itself successive Governments have done nothing) drone drops are all but derriguer. Government presided over this. We now have a situation where prisoners are being released after 40% of their sentence and now 30% due to the backlog the Conservative Government cynically and cowardly did nothing about. There have been a large number of weasel words spoken about these schemes. The most oft repeated is that dangerous offenders won't be included, nor sexual offenders. This is, simply, a lie. Not only is it a lie it betrays the complete lack of knowledge of the ministers saying it. I can state, unequivocally, that Sexual and Violent Offenders deemed to be High Risk by both Police and the Probation Service have been and continue to be released under these schemes. When Government ministers speak of dangerous offenders they do not mean it in the sense that the Public would understand it. They are talking specifically about those offenders found to be dangerous by a Judge and designated as a dangerous offender. This destination is very rare and means an offender has to serve two thirds if any sentence they are given and is made subject to an extended license period. The vast, vast majority of rapists, violent offenders, paedophiles e.t.c. are not found to be and designated as dangerous offenders. Probation was disastrously partially privatised and now is collapsing. The situation is so bad that policy now is that Offenders with between 1 and 4 year sentences cannot be recalled for more than 28 day as standard. This is shameful. Why did your Government do nothing? You are the conservatives what have you conserved? You strip mined a CJS which was the envy of the world you shouldn't ever be allowed near power again. The Courts themselves have seized up and are ceasing to function. Your Government presided over the collapse of sitting Courts, an exodus of Judges, Prosecutors and Defence barristers which now cannot be made good. There is a dearth of specialists needed for serious cases including rape and murder trials. Waits for trial are an abomination. You have desecrated the rule of law with your abhorrent, crass irresponsibility. I could go on and on and on. All the facts and figures are publically available. I work in Public Protection. Would you like me to quote some figures at you for that? As if you even know what the role entails. My colleagues toil, tirelessly and unceasingly in a hellscape YOU created and presided over. The systems you are criticising you appear to have no knowledge or understanding of. TWIF is appalling and all but universally despised. As someone who has to send sexual offence case files to CPS constantly they are always failing not because the documents and statements aren't there but because the system is incredibly unwieldy and complicated.
Police forces across the country have prosecuted, literally, thousands of members of grooming gangs going back many years. Many of the failings and issues surrounding child exploitation have been known and reported on for nearly twenty years. In my force Operation Bullfinch was launched in 2011. The Sex Offenders Register (we are the only country in Europe to have one) began in 1997. At the time Home Office rules meant that an Officer in Public Protection should have no more than 30 registered sex offenders to manage. In 2010 that was quietly raised to fifty due to the explosion in the number of RSO's. Resourcing has failed to keep up with demand. In my team the average is now 63 offenders to manage each. When I was training in Merseyside my colleagues there had approximately 80 each. The situation is disastrous. Here's some more facts and figures. In the entirety of Great Britain there are approximately 100,000 registered sex offenders. They comprise approximately 20% of the prison estate. The number of RSO's has doubled since 2014. This is, broadly, driven by the explosion of sexual abuse, exploitation and use of child abuse imagery online.
There are, demonstrably, issues with asylum seekers and the disastrous, chaotic nature of the way the way they have been dealt with by successive Governments. Placing them in hotels without the lawful ability to work or even have bankcards whilst waiting often for years for decisions to be made on their status is, in my opinion, the height of stupidity. None of that has been decided on by the Police however.
When the Home Office rules were initially drawn up it was before the technological revolution and the proliferation of internet offending. In turn it preceeded the creation and imposition of Sexual Harm Orders. These are Court Orders given to many RSO's which have conditions on limiting their behaviour to protect the public. They are regularly breached leading to arrests and investigations. This means in effect that the current situation facing Public Protection is that we have around double the number of offenders to manage than when the scheme started, more responsibilities, more arrests, more investigations, far more complexity. On average my team arrests, charges and remands two RSO's a week these shifts are usually in the region of 16-20 hours long a time frame often exacerbated by the communication system between Police and CPS which Mr. Jenrick recently opined on but appears to have little to not idea of what he is talking about. It would be fair to him to say he is not alone in being clueless. I have not seen or heard a Governmental minister in my 13 years within the Service that has.
On my team three Officers including myself are Level 2 trained. This means abstractions. Some will say why not give it up. It the answer is threefold. The most pressing is level 2 Officers need to come from somewhere. If I quite someone else and some other department needs to take up the slack. Secondly we use our level 2 training and equipment relatively regularly in our day jobs. Finally Level 2 work is just as important as Public Protection it keeps out skills fresh and gives us a needed break from the relentless horror and stress of Public Protection. As one can imagine though this does not aid resourcing issues. It also means I am regularly told I am a Facist, a Communist, too woke, too racist, too soft, too brutal, antisemitic, a pawn of Israel, part of the WEF, transphobic, pro trans, islamaphobic, trying to estabkish a caliphate, clamping down on free soeech, allowing people tonsay things they shouldn't e.t.c. e.t.c. The Public as incoherent in their rage as they are broadly ill informed.
The numbers don't stop there though we also have reactive management. This is a national policy (which HMIC are very keen on) whereby an RSO who doesn't have a SHPO and has been deemed low risk for three years can be placed onto reactive management. This means they are not visited, spoken to or managed in any way unless Intel comes through suggesting there are concerns. Considering well over 90% of such Intel comes from PPU visits it means broadly speaking once someone is in reactive management they are in essence no longer managed. Due to the guidelines for reactive meaning no SHPO the most common reactively managed are serious contact offenders with lengthy spells in prison. In terms of numbers in my force there's about 250 of them. We try and dipcheck them as we don't really agree with reactive management in my force and think there are serious issues with it. We were hammered by HMIC for visiting reactively managed offenders. On paper it's hard to justify visiting someone deemed to need no management to the detriment of the endless parade of Very High,High, Medium and Low risk offenders there are. We have concerns that not visiting RSO's including multiple convicted child rapists for years on end though is problematic. Last year three reactively managed offenders came into my Police Station to enquire about coming off the register having got the fifteen year milestone out of prison which makes them eligible. I arrested all three for further offending. Two are in prison, one awaiting charges. One of them was charged with multiple rapes of a child, voyeurism, possession and distribution of indecent images. His index offence was rape and attempted murder. The other two had index offences involving serious, prolonged abuse of their children. One of which involved the rape over years of their child during which they would urinate and defecate on said child. That should be a clear indicator of some of the issues with reactive. HMIC are very keen however as it is the only method to get the numbers of managed RSO's down without increasing resources... and it has been made abundantly clear no further resources are coming. I don't blame HMIC for this particularly it is not their fault the Police have been stripmined of funding and resources. Government has done this. Successive Governments. They have know of the situation, the risks the lack of resources, the spiralling demand and they have done nothing. Impact that is incorrect they have done something they have made things worse. They have looked directly at this mess and decided to take away huge amounts of funding and resources. They have done this because they gambled, correctly, that the Public would not know or care or listen to what the Police were telling them about the consequences of these actions.... and when the chickens came home to roost and the consequences made manifest the Government knew it could simply blame the Police for perceived failings and the Public would accept it. They rely upon your stupidity and ignorance. It breaks my heart every time that they are right so very, very often.
Our sister services are collapsing. The Probabtion Service whom we work closely with are struggling to function and are disintegrating. They are haemoraging experience at greater level even than us which is truly saying something. This is not hyperbole and many Probation Officere would agree. It is not their fault they work incredibly hard but have been starved of resources for years and years. In my area it is policy that Probation Officers no longer check offenders phones to ensure license condition compliance. The results are as you would imagine. Recalls are incredibly hard to activate and now usually require further charges being brought by Police. This isn't conjecture this is in writing. This has been directly brought about by the disintegration of the prison estate. There's no places. Organised crime effectively run a large portion of the estate now. Prisoners openly film themselves and run social media channels from inside their cells. Nobody in power cares or even appears to know. I am breaching Sex Offenders who are coming to bail hostels (so High Risk Offenders) with undeclared internet enabled devices that they have brought from prison. The situation is completely catastrophic across the board. I look out now as the nation gears itself up for apparent civil war and the left and right cannibalise one another for influence and all I endlessly hear is people proclaiming they are worried about children's safety. They are not. None of them care In power or without.If they did my colleagues and I wouldn't be working in these conditions. Due to the utter dearth of resources I work approximately 40-50 hours overtime remanding people every month. I've had two periods of sickness this year. In March I got an ear infection which burst my eardrum. Two weeks ago I managed contract shingles. I had two days off as that is all I could realistically take with the workload. On my first day back I arrested, charged and remanded a High Risk RSO with breaching his SHPO and IIOC. That was an 18 hour shift. My body is beginning to break down. I'm 38. I've worked in Public Protection for just shy of six years. I truly believe it is killing me. My greatest respite comes from driving aid convoys to Kyiv. Driving into an active war zone is more rewarding and relaxing than serving the British Public. Again that isn't hyperbole. The Ukranian people are pleased to see me, grateful for my meagre efforts and respond in kind... Here it's hard to remember I'm a part of the Public I serve I may as well be a fucking alien.
You might not want to hear this but you need to. You should already have done as these issues have been raised for many, many years now. Public and Governmental inertia and apathy means you are complicit in the effects whether you wish to accept that or not.
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..crimes in furtherance of an ideology. That's not what a political prisoners is. Particularly not in a liberal Democracy.
JSO aren't being imprisoned for what they believe. Just as none of the rioters were jailed for this. They have been sentenced for their criminality.
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Oh I disagree, I think hypotheticals and their discussions of them can be very useful in talking rhrough issues moral and otherwise.
Again I feel the language I am using is easily understandable but in the spirit of mutual understanding. Say part of a group means being one of
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..extremely frustrating but that's a reasonable price to pay to maintain a presumption of innocence. Most of our most I.portsnt institutions and structures, Democracy, free speech, protest e.t.c. e.t.c. are at their most important to protect when they don't personally benefit us
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...your position? As if it matters. I'm just screaming in the wind, my musings an utter irrelevancy. You've used your voice, much larger than my own, to make my job that little bit harder and more unpleasant. Your original views presented, unfair and inaccurate, will have more..
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