Offenders to be sent to Wales’ beaches to clean up litter, UK Government says
Offenders will be sent to Wales’ beaches to clean up litter as part of the UK Government’s “community payback” scheme, they have said.
Those convicted of theft, assaults and criminal damage will be put to work in high-visibility vests as part of Keep Britain Tidy’s annual Spring clean next week.
The UK Government said they were an attempt to end the perception that they are a “soft touch” that “let off” offenders from their crimes., they told the Telegraph newspaper.
The project will include litter picks on Anglesey and in the Dyfed-Powys Police area.
Kit Malthouse the Policing and Crime Minister said: “To criminals, there are few stronger deterrents than a community that is able to take pride in their area. Safe neighbourhoods attract jobs and investment and let people thrive, free from crime.
“Getting offenders to pay for their crimes in a way that visibly benefits the community they have harmed is critical to making them think twice about tormenting their fellow citizens.
“Offenders are involved in community projects around the country every day, and next week, to support this year’s Great British Spring Clean, we are mobilising more than a thousand to give criminals a chance to clean up their act, payback our communities and show that justice is being done.”
The Telegraph described the groups of offenders as “chain gangs” but the UK Government clarified that they would not be visibly shackled.
Speaking in the House of Commons this week, Kit Malthouse said that “dozens of teams of offenders are fanning out across England and Wales and doing fantastic work, paying back into their community by improving the environment”.
“When they do catch them, it is absolutely appropriate that they pay back into the community through the kind of work that we now see on a daily basis.”
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How about instead of using slave labour we just hike up the fines for littering to two thousand pounds per item of litter dropped. ZERO TOLERANCE, with litter patrol officers fully employed on good terms at a fair wage and any verbal or physical assault on those officers adding an extra (up to) four thousand pounds to any fine issued. This way we avoid the moral nastiness of “community payback” (the only people I want to see paraded around in orange bibs with “community payback” stamped on them currently hang out in Westminster), creates an employment opportunity for people, generates… Read more »
I’ll agree if it’s fifty and one hundred respectively.
Aren’t you the one who suggested that Engish people should be served urine and faeces on their chips in Wales?
https://www.reddit.com/r/BadWales/comments/shy459/nation_faeces_urine_chips_people_from_england/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Only the idea you have just vomited into print is similarly deranged.
This sounds like another cynical Tory carrot and stick ploy to show voters how they are still the party of law & order, certainly not low tax and fiscal prudence. Here’s the carrot Wales and this is where we are going to stick it. Brace yourselves. I’m surprised they never suggested using the unemployed too. They could adorn them in orange jumpsuits as a warning to ones thinking of become unemployed. See, to be on benefits or jobless these days is effectively a crime. Enough is enough! Having an English Criminal Justice System imposed on Wales with hare-brained schemes and… Read more »
Chain gangs next ?
So, unpaid labour and public shaming.
Yeah, that’ll fix everything. 🙄
Powys is not Botany Bay and Anglesey is not Tasmania and this is not the 19th century. They really are pushing this muscular unionism too far and in very much the wrong direction.