Another day, another government data loss

Sigh.

In a major coup in the government data loss stakes PA Consulting - which until Monday was one of the Home Office's favourite consulting outfits - has contrived to lose the entire prison population of England and Wales. Personal details of the 84,000 people behind bars, along with those of 10,000 prolific offenders, have vanished on a memory stick, it was revealed last night.

It's by no means the biggest of government data losses, but it shows style. Historically the prison service hasn't found it particularly easy to tally up precisely who they've got and where they are - leading to bizarre cases where we've been told that escaped prisoners might have been recaptured, but they can't be sure - so it's an achievement to get them all in the one place and then mislay them. And as it's actually the Ministry of Justice that runs the prison service these days, it wasn't even the Home Office's data, really.

If it wasn't even their data, what the fuck were they doing with it? What the fuck is this government doing, pushing ID cards when they can't even manage the simplest of databases?

And there was this little gem tucked away in another report:

The data on the stick also includes information from the Police National Computer of some 30,000 people with six or more convictions in the last year.

I'm sorry? Six or more convictions in a single year??????? Surely those 30000 people just need locking up on some remote Scottish island for the rest of their lives? What the fuck is going on with the CPS and our wonderful judiciary?

(Yes, I know it's not a very Libertarian thing to say, but FFS!)