Petition Reduce the number of people sent to prison

More details

Today's prisons are overcrowded and a drain on the tax payer's money. Surely the two main purposes of prison are to remove someone from society who poses a threat and take away that person's independence as a punishment for their crime.
So why are those who commit fraud or fail to pay their TV license sent to prison? They are not a threat to society and would be much more beneficial carrying out community service or paying a fine, instead of being locked up and costing us thousands of pounds.
Prison should be for violent or threatening crimes only.

This petition is closed This petition ran for 6 months

8 signatures

Progress of the petition towards its next target: 8 of 10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Show on a map the geographical breakdown of signatures by constituency

10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Date closed 8 August 2012
Get petition data (json format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.