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Are prisons racist?

It may have escaped your notice, but there was an NUS Black Students Conference held over the weekend in Bradford.

One particular motion which won support has hit the national media. It was in the Times and Independent and Mail.

The motion called for the abolition of prisons on the grounds that black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Clearly this cannot be anything other than institutional racism. Therefore they should be closed.

Now some of us are starting to feel the term loony left has lost a little resonance. It implies a modicum of jocularity. But this kind of policy is so far outside what any Government would ever or could ever implement, that it passes the comprehension of any sensible, sentient being.

It passes into insanity. These students have arrived in a kind of la la land in which a dangerous murderer should not be locked away to protect the rest of society, but must be released because it is racist to imprison him.

Is there anyone on this website prepared to defend this motion?

And has racism as a term become so misused that it literally means nothing at all?

If it is racist to imprison black people who have committed and been convicted of a crime then I am a racist, and proud of it. So is everyone pretty much I imagine.

The left has gone so far round the bend it has emerged from the other side.

Or have I missed a real point here? Are prisons racist?

Reply 1

queen-bee

I don't think they're racist and I certainly wouldn't want a serial killer walking the streets no matter what his skin colour was

Reply 2

anosmianAcrimony

Prisons aren't racist, but in the United States, at least, black people do serve longer sentences on average for similar crimes. I don't know what the situation is like here. I guess that means that judges and/or juries are racist? Still no reason to abolish prisons, I agree.

(Look how reasonable the left can be!)