A Way of Saving Money on Town and City Rates.

Rubbish removal is a service provided by the local town and city council services where we all live and rate payers are the ones paying a very large cost towards this service. Money has been wasted by councils with the proviion of different bins which add to difficulties we as the rate payers already face.

The latest news I heard on this subject was that city councils such as in Liverpool are thinking of cutting down these services by the city engineering departments. Cutting public services is only going to create more hardship for people and to then cry about the increase of crime will hjnust not hold any valid discussion when wde live in a situation where employment, opportunities and help and council services are being cut back. This is nothing other than a counter productive move.

Have any of these authorities thought that it would be more wise and purposeful to get offenders on community service to pay back their debts to society by undertaking such services as sorting out and grading the household waste for us all? They could be helped to find a purpose in life lor even expose a latent ability to do something that will benefit themselves as well as others instead of being defeatest and acting in anti social behaviour. It is not strange by any means to have started in work – that may even not be so pleasant to do – but to go further forward and find out where they fit in.

Three things come to mind here. 1) Offenders can start earning and building up a level of self respect together with a sense of purpose and 2) Very often when spotted for abilities opportunies can be found for furtherment with greater opportunities being offered and 3) Costs of the upkeep of prisoners to the ratepayer will to a point be justified by the service they would be providing to the ratepayers without the costs of outside companies doing this work being further placed on rate payers as well as this sort of experience serving as a detterant against further offending.

There are no doubt many other tasks that can be undertaken in this manner and to work with a highly visible garment on with the words ‘COMMUNITY PAY BACK SERVICES’ clearly and luminously supplied with such offenders made to wear such garment will also serve and help to deter further offending. I am aware that this sort of work is being undertaken but I feel this idea could be further used.

This is just one idea of saving more expense on the rates and this nonesense about possible abuse of Human Rights does not even come into question. What about the Human Rights of the victims of such malevolent actions by these prisoners when they were abused by the fact they were victims in one way or another by criminal actions against them? When imprsoned the main of the idea of such punishment is to be deprived of rights as an individual as long as there is no physical or mental form of abuse by officers working within the police or prsion services.

Leslie Lewis