So here’s an amusing idea, take a former prison and turn it into a hotel. Plus points: the room security is going to be good. minus points? not many, maybe sitting tennants…
of course the main problem is finding any empty prisons – penal reform is not particularly high on the political agenda last time I checked – if anything we want to build more prisons at the moment.
we have become far too risk averse as a society. letting people out of prison after a period of incarceration inevitably has an element of risk associated with it – they may re-offend. Ultimately though we have to accept this risk as being inevitable.
we have lost sight of this decision at the moment – we expect every judgement to be perfect, are unwilling to accept that there is always an element of risk with every prisoner released. we need to understand this risk is inevitable and expect that things will go wrong sometimes.
