Clif Moreton (May 14), is correct of course on the issue of travellers. 

Just why do travellers expect and receive special treatment from local councils and parking wardens?

How come the ‘travelling community’ can pitch up on a car park and stay all day and not pay a penny in parking fees? 

Not be issued with a parking fine? I would be. 

So would the vast majority of people if they overstayed their allotted welcome in a council car park. 

Travellers, it seems, can park their vehicles and caravans in any car park with impunity. With no time limits. 

They just roll up and park up with no fear of a parking fine. 

Then, which is not always the case, they dump their rubbish and casually drive off without a care in the world. And there I was thinking that fly-tipping is illegal. 

Not it appears, for the ‘travelling community’. 

Again, they can fly-tip with no come-backs. One law for them and one law for the rest of us. 

Frances Cook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, says that there is a ‘shameful rise in violence and self injury’ in prisons. 
That many prisons are overcrowded etc. 

Well she would say that. 

If these apologists for criminal behaviour and anti-prison advocates had their way, there would be a lot more overcrowding in UK prisons. 

Simply because the likes of the Howard League for Penal Reform would much rather far fewer criminals end up in prison. 

Instead, their wrong-headed mantra is not to lock up persistent offenders but put them all back into the community where they can and will commit further crimes. 

The main problem with overcrowding in prisons is that there is not enough prisons to house an ever increasing criminal population. That is why UK prisons are overcrowded. We urgently need to build more prisons. 

The problem is, is that a vocal anti-prison lobby and the Home Office do not want more prisons built. They prefer less prisons to be built. Or none at all. 

Until such times that the reality of what is actually happening on the streets of the UK concerning crime and its effects on society in general is tackled comprehensively, prisons will continue to be overcrowded. And no doubt, the liberal anti-prison lobby will keep on living in some sort of fantasy land where criminals never reoffend. They all happily return to a normal life when they’ve served their sentence in the community and so on. A delusion. 

Andrew Martin
Kitchener Road, Weymouth