Mentally ill prisoners taking British government to court for benefits

Four convicted criminals and a former inmate in secure mental hospitals like Broadmoor are taking the British government to the EU Court of Human Rights for the "right" to receive benefits while they're locked up for rape, murder and other serious crimes.

Their case revolves around the fact that other patients who are sent there by the courts for their own safety or because they pose a risk to the public are entitled to claim benefits.

This all comes back to the argument against giving prisoners the right to vote - if you commit a crime and go to prison you have failed to live by the basic rules that society sets and do so in the knowledge that if you are caught committing the crime you will go to prison and be deprived of most of your rights and privileges.

The social security system was set up to help people in need, not to pay for fags and porn for criminals.  These people are locked up in a secure hospital as a punishment as well as treatment of their mental illness.  They can't pop down to the local shopping centre to spend their money and they haven't got homes to keep and bills to pay for.

If the EU Court of Human Rights rules that it's unfair to deprive mentally ill dangerous criminals of their "right" to benefits when non-criminals in the same hospital are allowed them then the answer is simple: don't pay the benefits to any of them.  Pensioners in care homes get their benefits taken off them, as do people staying in hospital long term so why are mental patients any different?

Tory MP, David Davis, said:

Yet again this is not an issue of human rights but of lawyers trying to play the system on behalf of their clients.

It is to be hoped that when the State tries to do the best possible thing, both for society and to rehabilitate criminals, that these efforts are not crippled by the meddling of the European Court.

No Dave, it's a case of the British government letting the EU run our country and you are helping to make it happen by propping up the europhile ConDem government.

Nigel Farage, meanwhile, said:

It would be an outrage if any prisoner received a penny of social security payments. It is disgusting that people like Ian Brady could get a back dated pension, stripped from the pockets of law abiding taxpayers on the wishes of foreign judges.

Ultimately it's the rabid europhile, Ken Clarke, that will make the decision as Home Secretary and as he's going around telling MPs that they're going to have to comply with the same EU court's ruling that prisoners be allowed to vote, the result is a foregone conclusion.