Great Britain: Away They Go!

So many criminals have been taking a powder from British jails these days (399 this year) that two months ago, when Soviet Spy George Blake sawed his way out of Wormwood Scrubbs in London, the issue of prison security welled up into a national scandal that acutely embarrassed the Labor government. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins reacted by naming the eminent Earl Mountbatten to head a committee of inquiry. In turn, the onetime First Lord of the Admiralty pledged his word that "We will be out working all the time, not sitting on our backsides."

He had no easy task. For the...

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