Chief Superintendent Gavin Thomas, who is the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, has proposed that people who commit cyber-crime should be forced to wear wifi jammers.

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This will prevent them from using the internet, rather than having them clog up prisons.

He rightly says sending cyber-criminals to prison is not appropriate or effective and we need to find new ways to punish them.

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The criminals could be fitted with electronic jammers around their wrists or ankles which blocks wifi signals and keeps them from going online.

Gavin reckons that for many young people, being deprived of access to their smartphone or computer would be an extremely effective punishment.

We have got to stop using 19th century punishments to deal with 21st century crimes. It costs around £38,000 a year to keep someone in prison but if you look at the statistics around short term sentencing the recidivism rate is extraordinarily high.

So while we might feel good about ourselves that we have put someone in prison for 12 to 15 months, the chances are that person is going to come out of prison and commit more crime.

We can continue jailing criminals but it is not going to help the long term situation and I speak as someone who has spent a career putting people in prison.

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What a fantastic idea. You take the internet away from a teenager, you’re basically giving them a punishment worse than prison. Imagine having a computer and not being able to go on the internet with it. It’s the most tragic first world problem imaginable. In fact, you take the internet away from anyone under the age of 50, and they’re completely fucked. No Facebook, no Twitter, no torrents, no Spotify, no porn. That’s the type of punishment that will make any teenager change their ways.

Not to mention no one will want to hang around them because their wifi jammer will (presumably) fuck up their friends’ internet access as well. Brilliant thinking from Superintendent Gavin Thomas – let’s make it happen.

P.S. Did you hear the internet will go down for 24 hours sometime in 2017? That’s what this expert thinks.