26 April, 2006

Super hostels

Firstly I have given my computer at home and in the office a rest for a week and had a short holiday because I have been through one of my most difficult phases since I stopped using drugs but now I am back with a new lease of life and a new outlook. Plus a change in wardrobe.

Now, this government seem to want to do things on huge scales and they think the way to get people off the streets is to build bigger hostels in fact build super hostels to cope with the bed shortage but I think the government seem to forget is there is a huge shortage now and by the time they get to building these hostels they will have to build more which will cost more and will be harder to manage. The government always put one figure and it always costs more. Hostels are not meant to be permanent. They are meant just a temporary place for people to stay. They are meant as a stop gap to people getting their own place. The question I am asking is where and when are they going to move on to their own permanent accommodation? Because the housing shortage at this minute is dangerously low. By the time people are ready to move on. Will they have learned the necessary skills to keep their homes? This is only one of the problems homeless people face when they get their own place because they have lived on the streets they lose that charge in life and some of the skills people need to cope with everyday life.
The other thing is the idea of serious offenders who are put on license or paroled. Everyone should be entitled to have somewhere to live but putting serious offenders together just creates another problem. When offenders get together they talk about crime it's just one of those things but they also learn about crime that is why I have always maintained that the best school for learning how to commit a crime is prison and this is the worry of residents near hostels at the present moment. The home office have emphasized the need to provide secure accommodation but how can they? This is the question in the publics mind. One of the reforms of the home office was to give offenders bans on going to sports grounds and have limits imposed on how much alcohol they drink. Funny but true. How on earth are they going to do this give them release id cards and every time they go to a shop get it stamped. To me this does make much sense. The governments shake up in the probation system was and is needed but we always seem to shut the gate after the horse has bolted and the public out cry over several offenders that where released and went on to commit murder is still high. the thing is should these people have been let out of prison in the first place. I think we have to look at this first before shutting the gate.

No comments: