Bubblehammerblog

We're currently seeing frequently rotated recruitment adverts for the British Army on television. They show a group of squaddies in the back of a bumping lorry, one of them tells the camera, 'We work hard, but we play even harder'. They pull up at a wrecked village, & jump out into the lashing rain & mud. They are not carrying guns. The young woman commanding them briskly gives them their orders, then explains to us, rain teeming from her forage hat, that this is a disaster relief mission. There's been a hurricane, & they're there to help the villagers. It's clear that this village is in neither Afghanistan nor Iraq.

Perhaps the 'play even harder' bit might help explain the recent findings by Napo, the probation officers union, that at least 9 percent of the UK prison population of 93,574 (the biggest in Europe), is made up of ex servicemen, most of them having served in Afghanistan & the Gulf. That's over 8,500 - more troops than the British currently have stationed in Iraq.

The report says the number could be higher, & cites violent offences fuelled by alcohol & drugs as a common factor. It also said that the most of the men in the case studies had shown symptoms of untreated post traumatic stress disorder.

Of course, it's easy to find yourself behind bars in Britain. The prison population is not just the largest in Europe, it's bigger than the prison population of the rest of Europe combined. Locking people up in large numbers has been Government policy for the past three decades, both under the Tories & what used to be the Labour Party. Some magistrates & members of the judiciary, hardly bastions of liberalism, regularly complain about having to bang up so many people. The Government responds by proposing the building of 'Titan' prisons, to hold vast numbers of overwhelmingly poor, damaged or mentally distressed inmates - including more of the young men & women lured into the forces, sent to futile or illegal wars to be brutalised, devastated, & then let loose on the streets, awash with other youths enjoying our renowned culture of binge drinking & casual violence.

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