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Germany refuses to extradite man to UK over concerns about British jail conditions
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
123 points (98.4% liked)
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"Just hand it over to us right now. It's overcrowded, but there will be new places soon (tm). Also, we won't tell you what prison."
So sloppy and unprofessional. I didn't think the state of UK prisons was so bad.
There were news reports this week of multiple prison officers smuggling contraband and even having sexual relations with inmates at HMP Berwyn. That's one of the UK newest prisons.
The system feels like it's in free fall at this point.
Man, it really feels like the UK is coming apart at the seams. It's still holding together, but everything gets worse bit by bit. And despite it being in the open, some people just pound the drums louder, wave the flag more and think that past glory will protect from current failures.
I do hope you get a government worthy of Britain's positive legacy, not just rest on it as if it's eternal and unending.
Feels like the entire country is
This sounds like it's kind of even worse than that, looks to me like nobody even bothered reading the response from the German court until it was too late! One vague response from one police station on the final day, sound like this just got forgotten.
I've heard that the British police is understaffed. So that have something to do with this.
Yeah it is.
It's so bad that the Home Office is issuing quotas for "High-priority" crime which is code for solve things that make the news headlines: large scale drug busts, charging murderers, seizing large sums of cash and assets.
But they're completely deprioritising other crimes from bike theft to shoplifting to domestic violence and reducing the amount of community engagement activities.
Addressing smaller crimes and having officers engaged with the community is essential for fostering a safe environment. And here's the kicker; the more these low-level crimes go unpunished, the more high-level crimes happen are more likely to happen when fuelled by economic downturn.
If it's a public service then consider it understaffed and underfunded!
Joking aside, yes, I imagine the todo to respond to this was lost, forgotten, or deprioritised thanks to either poor management/organisation or underfunding.
Remember * when the uk refused to extradite those abused by the USA to the USA? USA has influenced allies in the wrong way, and it’s extremely alarming.
Most countries prisons are not in a good state. Germany is playing hardball here because its funny, but I'd wager German prison aren't really that much better.
The basic reason is that most people don't feel like their country should spend more on convicted criminals than they already do, so running on "I'm going to build better prisons" isn't really a thing that gets you votes.
Actually, we deny requests quite often for various reasons from all kind of countries. Only except is the EU where there are special agreements in place. I think we would've delievered in the UK if the police station named a prison where he would've been gotten in. So I put that on the reluctant communication by the Manchester police station on a large degree.
As for German jails, putting aside some events like someone burning to death despite being completely restrained and the police saying "oh wow, no idea how that happened. Probably magic." we solve overcrowding by letting people with minor offenses go. Although statewise, specifically looking at Berlin, it's getting pretty bad.
I bet the Manchester police station don't actually know where he'll be sent. Police don't actually assign people prisons. That's an admin task.
I'm sure they could find out if they really needed to, and then reply with that information, but they just don't seem that interested in doing so.
Yeah, I mean, they had time and decided to reply at the last day.
Also, they could've just said, that they don't know and can't know or will get back to with a time extension. There is a lot of solutions to this. Instead they just ignored the request.
Thinking about it a little more I don't understand how Germany expects the police to be able to provide this information.
Which prison he gets assigned to will depend largely on prison availability at the time of conviction. We don't know how long the trail is going to last, so there's no way to know this information.
It just seems like everyone involved is trying to be as awkward as possible.
I just looked it up in German media.
So, the point of pressure was that a lot of British jails are overcrowded and the Manchester police replied as to the place as "metropolian London", which includes a the 160% allocated Wandsworth jail. The German authories asked what specific jail so they're sure that it's not Wandsworth and the Manchester police just never replied anything to that.
Germany was asking for guarantees that the prisoner wouldn't be send to an inhumane jail and the UK wouldn't give a guarantee.
This is a normal process for Germany when it comes to non-EU countries.
Odd how quickly this instance became “like the other platform,” isn’t it?
I can’t speak to German prison conditions, but I can absolutely guarantee that it would generate votes if a candidate ran on that; it’s just that those votes are from the underserved and disenfranchised that gave up voting long ago, and we largely want to keep those non-voters underserved, disenfranchised and not voting.
Have you ever head of the word "cope"?