Estonia for prison overcrowding is a thin end of the Starmer wedge

  • Post last modified:September 6, 2024
  • Reading time:7 mins read


In the Labour Party governments latest ploy, they are looking into sending prisoners to Estonia in an effort to ease overcrowding.

As reported by Sky News, the government is considering having offenders serve out their sentence in the Baltic state. Apparently it is one of many options being considered. Latest figures show that there are only 1,098 free prison spaces across England and Wales – which apparently is not enough. But when they’re aimlessly jailing peaceful protestors – what do they expect?

Since Labour came into office, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has been warning that prison overcrowding could mean law and order breaks down. That is unless something is done to alleviate the pressure.

It was also reported in the Express that ‘magistrates have been asked to stop jailing criminals for several weeks’. Men’s prisons in England and Wales nearly ran out of cells last month, with only 83 spaces spare.

Double standards: Estonia vs Rwanda

Recently, the Tory government’s infamous Rwanda policy – which would ship asylum seekers off to Rwanda – was scrapped by the new Labour government. Starmer said he guaranteed he would tackle the issue upstream, by targeting people-smuggling gangs behind the border crossings:

However, anyone with half a brain knows that the smuggling gangs are not the root cause of our asylum crisis. The UK has backed countless wars, destabilised countries across the globe, fuelled the climate crisis, and propped up our global capitalist system.

All of these entrench poverty and colonialism.

To make matters worse, the UK currently offers no safe asylum routes for the majority of people. This is despite being a part of the Refugee Convention – which means its obligated to. This means our government is forcing people seeking asylum into the hands of smugglers.

The smugglers are merely a symptom – they make it less safe for migrants. They are not the root cause – and Starmer is delusional if he truly believes this is the case.

What this shows though, is the complete double standards that Starmer is displaying. He kicked off big time at the Rwanda plan – yet here is his government looking into sending prisoners to another foreign country. They are attempting to put a sticking plaster on a gaping, open wound – and it won’t fix the problem.

Root causes

Arguably, Starmer could now take the same approach when it comes to prison overcrowding. Tackling the root causes of violence and offending behaviour. Tackling inequality, reducing poverty, and helping victims of violent offences are all proven crime prevention strategies:

Labour also has plans to continue the Tories’ appeal against the High Court ruling which found the government’s anti-protest laws unlawful. This shows that Labour want the state’s criminal justice apparatus – the police and the courts – to continue to have access to these sweeping authoritarian laws that clamp down on people’s right to protest.

To date, who’s that meant cops have been nicking? Obviously, it has been climate protesters and pro-Palestine activists. So when the government plans to send prisoners to Estonia, that could very likely be a lot of these protesters:

Clearly, we need to find a balance. We should be dealing with violent criminals who pose a risk to society. However, at the same time we should not be punishing those who have been protesting, peacefully.

If we carry on the way we are, the government will be sending disabled people to Vietnam – because we all know that disabled people are useless under capitalism. If we’re not productive, then they don’t need us.

Feature image via BBC NEWS/Youtube





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