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Wednesday December 9 2015 | thetimes.co.uk | No 71776
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Trump attacked after he claims British police fear Muslims
Fiona Hamilton Crime Editor
Boer Deng Washington
Britain’s biggest police force last night
joined a chorus of condemnation facing
Donald Trump after he claimed officers
were afraid for their lives in London
because some areas were so radicalised.
In a highly unusual political intervention, Scotland Yard said that the
Republican presidential hopeful “could
not be more wrong”.
Mr Trump had already demanded a
“total and complete shutdown of
Muslims entering the US”, which
yesterday led to a backlash from his
own party and international derision.
David Cameron described the comments as “divisive, unhelpful and quite
simply wrong”. Boris Johnson, the
mayor of London, said: “Crime has been
falling steadily both in London and in
New York. The only reason I wouldn’t
go to some parts of New York is the real
risk of meeting Donald Trump.”
On Monday Mr Trump, 69, said that
none of the 1.9 billion Muslims worldwide should be allowed into America
because they “want to blow up our
country”. Yesterday he strengthened
his stand, telling a breakfast television
show that Muslims entering the US
risked “many more World Trade Centers”. His comments follow the killings
of 14 people in San Bernardino, California, by a couple after the wife apparently pledged allegiance to Islamic State.
Mr Trump also claimed Europeans
lived in fear of Muslims. “We have places
in London and other places that are so
Thousands
of prisoners
to have jail
terms cut
radicalised that the police are afraid for
their own lives,” he told the show.
The Met offered him a briefing “on
the reality of policing London”, adding:
“We would not normally dignify such
comments with a response. However,
we think it’s important to state . . . that
Mr Trump could not be more wrong.”
Leading article, page 31
Don’t let Trump poison minds, page 32
DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES
Overcrowding crisis forces new Gove revolution
Richard Ford Home Correspondent
Rachel Sylvester, Alice Thomson
Thousands of criminals will have their
jail terms cut under plans by Michael
Gove to lower the prison population.
More foreign inmates would be
released at least nine months early on
the condition that they leave the country, in an effort to boost the number of
such offenders removed from the UK.
More than 10,000 are incarcerated in
England and Wales.
British prisoners would also have
sentences reduced and more would be
let out on day release monitored by satellite tracking devices. This could allow
them to work during the week and
return to their cells at weekends.
The revelations arise from an investigation by The Times into the state of
prisons across the country. Through a
series of interviews with Mr Gove, his
predecessors as justice secretary,
several former home secretaries and
prison insiders, it can be reported that:
6 Organised crime gangs are running
sophisticated networks and smuggling
legal highs into jails using catapults,
bows and arrows and even potatoes.
6 Governors and others fear that the
system could “explode at any time” as
tensions mount in overcrowded prisons and violence increases.
6 Lord Woolf, who led the inquiry into
the riots at Strangeways prison in
Manchester 25 years ago in which two
people died and 150 officers were injured, believes there is “disturbing evidence” that history is repeating itself.
Mr Gove, who is to carry out a sen-
tencing review that many hope will
lead to reductions in the jail population,
said that prisoners should not be punished when they were behind bars, adding: “Sending someone to a cell is
punishment itself.”
A Whitehall official has admitted
that an early release scheme, rather
than the “failed” system of prisoner
transfer agreements, will be the main
way of reducing the 10,442 foreigners
held in jails, at a cost of about £360 million a year.
Under the early removal scheme, foreign inmates can be freed up to nine
months before they reach the halfway
stage of their sentence as long as they
leave the country. Under prisoner
transfer deals, they are returned to their
native country to serve their term.
Some foreigners already leave jail
early under the scheme but officials
plan to widen it to deal with the majority. Latest figures show that transfer
deals, which they had hoped would lead
to big cash savings, have resulted in few
offenders being sent home.
Since Britain agreed an EU compulsory prisoner transfer deal in 2011, only
68 inmates have been sent to member
states to serve their sentences. The low
figure is partly down to some EU countries taking years to implement the
deal. Transfer is also only an option for
those serving a fixed-term sentence of
at least four years.
To try to get more foreign criminals
out of the UK, David Cameron signed
a deal with the Jamaican prime
minister in September under which
Continued on page 2, col 3
Red carpet, tartan suit Eddie Redmayne and his co-star, Alicia Vikander, at the British premiere of their film The Danish Girl
Middle-class children are bigger drinkers
Kat Lay Health Correspondent
Middle-class parents risk turning their
children into alcoholics by offering
them drinks at home, according to
government research which showed
that affluent teenagers were twice as
likely as the poorest to be regular
drinkers.
Young people from middle-class
backgrounds are also more likely to
have tried alcohol and to continue with
the habit once they have started, said
the survey of 120,000 15-year-olds.
Charities warned that many parents
still mistakenly believe that introduc-
ing their children to alcohol at home,
even a glass of wine with a family
dinner, might protect them from
becoming problem drinkers. Despite
being legal, it is likely to have the
opposite effect, campaigners said.
The study, the first of its kind
published by the Health and Social Care
Information Centre, a body funded by
the Department of Health, found that 70
per cent of boys and girls aged 15 in the
least deprived areas had tried alcohol,
compared to 50 per cent in the most
deprived.
Those in the richest areas were twice
as likely to be regular drinkers, at 8 per
cent against 4 per cent, and significantly
more likely to be current drinkers, at
66 per cent against 44 per cent.
Tom Smith, director of campaigns at
Alcohol Concern, said: “Studies have
shown that parents are often the main
source of alcohol for underage
drinkers. All the research indicates
that the younger someone starts drinking, the more likely they are to have
problems with alcohol in later life. The
evidence suggests that the safest thing
parents can do is set clear rules and
boundaries for their children about
alcohol, and give them an alcohol-free
Continued on page 2, col 5