2nd December 2022
Here is the introduction to a thing about prisons I wrote at the Financial Times in 2013:
We are all, of course, familiar with the notion of prisons – and many of us will have Very Strong Opinions about the lengths of custodial sentences:
“Six years! Eight years! Fifteen years! More, more!”
“Higher, higher, higher!”
*
But.
For the reasons set out in that Financial Times piece, prisons are a strange as well as counter-productive idea for dealing with most crimes.
Prisons, generally speaking, are an expensive way of making bad people worse.
But the notion of incarceration is so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness it takes real effort to dislodge it.
It was not always like this.
In some earlier times, prisons were where you kept those charged with a crime until their cases could be heard and any sentences – capital, corporal, transportation – could be imposed.
Imprisonment itself was thereby a means to an end, rather than the punishment for criminal activity.
(The position for civil matters was different, with the debtors’ prisons, asylums and workhouses, all keeping certain undesirables out of the way.)
Around 1800 imprisonment became the normal punishment itself for crime – though for many onlookers the loss of liberty was not enough: prisons also had to be as miserable if not brutal as possible.
*
And little, if any, thought is ever given to the (innocent) families and dependents of those incarcerated.
If they are thought about at all, it is with a shrug and a vague idea that it is the criminals who are to be blamed and/or that their (innocent) families and dependents are tainted by association.
And so that the innocent suffer becomes an output of the criminal justice system, as well as the protection of the innocent being the system’s supposed purpose.
The state has to destroy innocent lives, so as to protect them.
*
There are at least two problems for any reform of prisons.
The first is that imprisonment is central to how society thinks about the punishment of crime.
A convicted person receiving a range of sanctions will still be described “as walking free from court” by outraged newspapers to their outraged readers.
The second is a consensus of what should replace imprisonment, especially given the popular view that retribution is the central purpose of punishment.
Of course, those who pose a danger to others or commit murders and other serious offences against the person should be locked away – and, unlike many liberals, I even support whole-life tariffs in exceptional circumstances.
But until and unless we rethink our views about punishment and retribution, the current expensive and damaging system will continue, for want of any alternative.
I was once asked what current day practice would be looked on in the future as akin to how we now see those who facilitated slavery.
My answer, more with hope than expectation, was: incarceration being considered the norm for punishments, with any alternative having to be justified.
Anyway, this post was triggered by reading this piece in the Guardian.
Let me know below what you think – about the points I set out above and the Guardian article, and what you think about prisons and imprisonment as punishment generally.
***
Please support this blog, if you can.
Posts like this take time and opportunity cost, and so for more posts like this – both for the benefit of you and for the benefit of others – please support through the Paypal box (above), or become a Patreon subscriber.
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome.
Neither the Tories nor Labour have the courage to set out a pragmatic evidence based objective for dealing with crime and punishment and proposing a program to achieve it. So we get kneejerk pandering to predjudice that is usually counterproductive.
A good piece and very important. The UK is headed in the same direction as the USA. Private prisons are round the corner.
The single most effective measure would be the decriminalisation of all drugs. Make them available at fair prices from registered centres – centres that also provide support and healthcare and help to get out of addiction.
That would eliminate vast numbers of burglaries and muggings and minor thefts whilst destroying the market of the drug dealers. And that frees police and court time to deal with real crimes and real criminals.
England and Wales have 14 private prisons now, Steve.
In the USA, with the stacking of charges and the plea bargaining arrangements, even the process is punishment. As David avers, incarceration was once merely the process for dealing with accused offenders prior to conviction. For serious crimes in the USA for which bail is either not granted or cannot be afforded, time stewing in a maximum security prison has a tendency to compel the prisoner to take the plea deal. This is accepted and I find it disgusting. At least we’re better than that.
Spot on Steve,
You may then have a specific drug tax which funds the drug education, policing and rehabilitation services, thus encouraging moderation. Possibly the perfect tax; revenue increases and decreases with demand, with the need for services matching the funding available.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Vaping stuff should be treated the same way. The current approach of simply filling the general taxation pot means that politicians raise these specific taxes in the hope you will indulge more rather than connecting taxation to moderation.
No, we do not need any such specific tax. The whole point of legalisation is that it results is a lower total cost to society. Any funding can be taken from that profit.
Very good point, IMHO.
Agree, but add alcohol, poor housing, no mental health support, poor education, poor wages, no security of employment.
The creation of the underclass and it’s maintenance by various methods of state violence (universal credit, policing, imprisonment) is truly shaming.
Sometimes life rhymes. I just wrote two responses to two other blogs discussing this topic of remedy being related to harm. In the U.S. system of justice we provide no remedy if the harm done cannot be elucidated or if it was not the harm anticipated under the law.
While my person experiences have been related to environmental matters within an administrative law context, I see the extension to civil and criminal matters.
We tend to use two remedies readily: incarceration and financial restitution. Give us time or give us money.
I have found, in the environmental arena certainly, that there is never enough time or money to undo the harm.
However, if we were more thoughtful about remedies, we might have been able to create something better than cleaning up a mess that is the bigger scheme of things was not causing the actual harm the parties really wanted addressed.
But one is easy and the other is much harder.
We need to do the hard work and do a better job balancing the harm and the remedy with each other to prevent additional harm and wasted remedies.
I have a Catholic friend who regularly goes into prisons and talks with paedophiles and murderers, just to be a listening ear, a slim connection to a society that has shunned them.
I’ll never forget when she first told me about this. I was aghast and asked why on earth she would want to do such a thing. She calmly said we are all more than the worst thing we have done.
I like to consider myself somewhat of an “enlightened” secular humanist, but this humbled me and made me realise that, at least in my case, all the talk of “rehabilitation” was just that – talk. There are some deep instincts in play here which her religion had allowed her to confront and overcome, and which, if I’m honest I’m not even sure if I have the desire to overcome.
I have no doubt about which of us is truly the more “enlightened”.
Coincidentally I have just finished reading Cries Unheard by Gitta Sereny about Mary Bell who killed two toddlers in 1968. I have also recently read two other books by Sereny, Albert Speer; his Battle with Truth (Hitler’s architect), and Into that Darkness about Franz Stangl, the Commandant of Treblinka. Sereny was a first-rate journalist who worked with these people, not to exonerate them but to get them to tell their own stories. Cries Unheard in particular is a plea to the legal system not to try children in adult courts nor place them in adult prisons. Mary Bell was treated appallingly by the courts and the press and the situation had not improved by 1993 in the James Bulger case. Cries Unheard is particularly moving. The other two are more difficult to read for obvious reasons but very worthwhile.
Britain is no longer a majority-Christian country, as much-discussed lately – the point having been missed that almost half the population does still identify as Christian. A study estimating the figures between 1680 and 1840 puts the percentage identifyin as Christian in the high 90s over the whole period. http://www.brin.ac.uk/eighteenth-century-religious-statistics/
However much we think of modern Britain as a predominantly secular society, it has been overwhelmingly Christian for roughly a thousand years. That can’t but set basic cultural assumptions (as opposed to a vital knowledge of Christian theology) deeply into British culture.
For most of the last millennium the notion of punishment has been central to Christian faith: sin must be punished. It’s been central to Christian theories of atonement for most of that time. Mitchell Merback, in a study of attitudes to punishment in mediaeval Europe, shows that imagery of the crucifixion of Christ (where artists were free to really go to town on the torturous punishment of the two criminals supposedly crucified beside Christ) solidly reinforced the notion that punishment should be a public spectacle, as cruel as possible. (‘The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel) for particularly sadistic punishments, like breaking on the wheel (if you don’t know how that worked, you’re better staying that way). The notion of the imperative of severe punishment for wrongdoing is basic to the cultural baggage that Britain still drags with it. Perhaps the newspaper headlines are the vestiges of that desire for punishment to be as public a spectacle as possible (and hence for the shameful minimising of punishment to be as public a spectacle as possible.
I recall a documentary years ago by Michael Portillo where he researched methods of execution, trying to find something that would be reliable, quick and painless: the premise being that capital punishment is awful, but if it’s going to happen, let it at least not be so often botched and torturous. He found a method, discussed it with US citizens: they didn’t want it, they wanted the brutality – most were avowedly Christian.
God help us.
To counter that, properly understand the Jewish edict of “an eye for an eye”. This is often badly taken out of context by the gentile world to mean harsh revenge. Whereas it was a break with preceding Barbarism where a theft might incur retaliatory destruction of the thief’s whole family. Jewish law (and lore) sought to limit the damage; only one eye for one eye and no more. However, this was not intended to be literal. One should instead seek monetary compensation. Or in other words “Let the punishment fit the crime” (Mikado). Something our Barbaric prisons are failing to do.
The United Kingdom Social Security system has, as far as I am aware, always taken a view until recently that is, that when one person receives benefit for not just themselves, but one or more dependants then any sanction levied on the claimant should not extend to those dependants.
Only the element paid to the claimant might be reduced or ended when the law allowed it.
I have to confess I have no idea of how the growing thicket of Universal Credit regulations is applied in this case.
I fully agree with your points. Among my circle (of course not representative of the population as a whole) no one thinks prisons serve a purpose, except for a few inmates who really are criminals. Most others are there due to societal problems, and efforts to tackle those (sure start centres etc) are declining. Many others are addicts of some kind, or from deprived circumstances, and helping them is surely not the job of prisons. And putting women in prison is mostly completely beyond my comprehension as they tend to be mothers as well.
Rather cynically, I feel that if media reports of terms of imprisonment awarded to the guilty HAD to contain the cost to the taxpayer of funding the incarceration there’d be less unthinking enthusiasm for it.
There might then be a greater degree of interest in how Scandinavia (and the Netherlands?) are reducing their prison populations to the extent they’re having to close jails for lack of residents.
Good idea.
The author of the Guardian piece is falling into her usual trap of blaming the public, as if the public’s view on prison sentencing has sprung up organically as opposed to being cultivated by both political expediency and the media in much the same way as immigration became the political hot topic between 2015 to whenever it was no longer expedient to blame foreigners for the problems the governing party inflicted on us all.
If the purpose of incarceration is only to punish people, then fair enough, say so and also explain how it will not make people less likely to re-offend and how, in turn, it will be more likely for your house to be burgled, your pocket picked, or your car or bike stolen.
If the purpose of a criminal justice system is to deter but also to rehabilitate and make wider society safer and people less likely to be victims of crime, then the evidence seems fairly conclusive to me on what the way forward is. But until the “politics” is taken out of the issue, and for as long has it is politically advantageous to paint one’s opponents as being “soft on crime”, and while we have a media with a vested interest in supporting one party over another then I simply cannot see a future where an evidenced base approach will ever see the light of day, see also drugs.
As a civil servant with some past experience in the theory and practice of the penal system, I would observe that a disproportionate number within our prisons used to have poor literacy and numeracy skills, arguably a factor in how they had ended up in prison in the first place.
I find it hard to believe anything has changed in that regard.
To be fair to most past Home Secretaries in recent decades the problems of poor literacy and numeracy have been recognised and the importance of addressing them as part of any programme of rehabilitation appreciated.
The quality and manner of the delivery of academic education (and vocational training) have been somewhat variable, however.
I and some Employment Service colleagues back in the 1990s were not particularly unsurprised to learn about the poor take up of education services in prison which were voluntary.
We suggested that their appeal might be enhanced by focusing on the literacy and numeracy skills required to undertake practical, relevant tasks, like filling out an appropriately doctored by us Jobseeker’s Allowance claim form.
Impersonation is not unknown in our Social Security system, but thankfully fairly rare, but we saw no reason to inspire known criminals to try their hand at it.
Vocational training within a prison setting presents particular problems, such as the provision of sharp objects to inmates or access to computers with which they may surf the Internet.
Notwithstanding those risks, accredited courses have been delivered. Alas, the range and level of qualifications on offer have been limited and I think remains so today.
Someone who has not done well in education before they go into prison will, quite often, get a big boost from attaining an NVQ1 in bricklaying, horticulture or hotel and catering. The sort of courses that may be easily delivered within a prison.
There are more employers than previously crying out for folk to fill jobs in these occupational areas, mostly due to our old friend Hard Brexit, but an NVQ1 is not especially attractive even today to employers.
Crudely speaking. someone who has attained an NVQ1 requires almost constant supervision, although with time and supervision that need not be the limit of their potential.
Unfortunately, employers are finding it hard to fill jobs at all hard and soft skill levels across our economy. In other words, they may not have the capacity to provide the supervision and training required to realise the abilities of an ex offender.
I am not a big fan of the Government intervening in the labour market in the way many in our body politic, regardless of their political leanings, believe it should.
But, if we are serious about wanting to rehabilitate working age ex offenders then time and effort need to go into providing them with education and employment services geared to reduce the likelihood of them reoffending.
I would, however, strongly advise against the Government going out of its way from encouraging this group to consider going self employed straight out of prison. The failure rate for the average start up is very high.
A high proportion of all the people in prison have mental health issues, drugs issues, or in many cases both. Many have not gained anything out of the education system, and there is a high level of illiteracy.
If we spent more time and money on reducing the prevalence of these issues before people got into prison, we would save a fortune, both financially and in terms of people’s lives.
There will always be people who need to be locked away. But Britain is an outlier in its readiness to imprison people.
The only prisons that work for me are those wonderful carceri in Piranesi’s imagination. The old saw that if prisons worked we would not need any, surely holds some truth. And is it an urban myth that keeping a person incarcerated costs as much per year as sending a child to private school? If so, it begs some very awkward questions. It seems our prisons are a dumping ground for those with mental health issues, the inadequate, the poor, the illiterate, drug users and a few hardened criminals. Drug use seems to be endemic and given the misery and hopelessness and the very high rates of recidivism (because once released they have an in-built lack of support), who can blame them? I believe we lock up a higher percentage of our population than any other nation in Europe. For decades we have insisted on a retributive approach. It does not work. It has not worked. Any more than the “war on drugs” has worked. It is yet another aspect of our polity that needs reform if not revolution. But any change towards a humane system would be impossible to get past the proprietors of the Sun, Mail, Express and Telegraph who, for various reasons, don’t pay taxes in the UK.
The basic problem here is that policy makers cannot decide what the purpose of sentencing is (or should be). The Sentencing Act 2020 s 57 (2) which merely repeats s142 (1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 gives five possible purposes.
They are
The court must have regard to the following purposes of sentencing—
(a)the punishment of offenders,
(b)the reduction of crime (including its reduction by deterrence),
(c)the reform and rehabilitation of offenders,
(d)the protection of the public, and
(e)the making of reparation by offenders to persons affected by their offences.
The sentencer, despite the efforts of the Sentencing Council to promote consistency, has considerable latitude in deciding which purpose should have priority. A sentencer who gives greater weight to deterrence is unlikely to be unduly concerned about rehabilitation. And vice versa.
Until we have a Government, from either side of the political divide, which has the courage to tackle this confused range of purposes the situation is unlikely to improve.
The situation does, however, provide splendid scope for discussion at University – including the one at which I used to teach.
D should always be prioritised, and by extension B.
Blackstone’s Formulation: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
A is dead last, and the others fall away to some extent when you consider that avoiding the criminal conviction of innocents goes a long way towards protecting the public.
I suspect that most of David’s readers would agree with Blackstone. I suspect that a majority of the population wouldn’t.
It is, of course, the first duty of a Government to protect its citizens from enemies both foreign and domestic.
I gather it is a fact that fear of being caught is a greater deterrent to crime than any likely punishment should one be caught.
The establishments of our police forces and related staff have been reduced over the last decade or so with the obvious implications for the detection of crime.
As a result, we now have senior Labour and Tory politicians talking about not just reversing the cuts in staffing levels, but increasing the size of establishments beyond the numbers required to return them to their former size.
Albeit at a time when demand for labour in the United Kingdom extends its domestic supply and politicians are vying with each other to reduce our dependence on ‘cheap, low skilled’ foreign labour.
As an aside, one may currently apply for a visa to come and work in the UK in many occupations in the legal profession.
Two such jobs that stand out, Sir Keir Starmer KC, are Crown Prosecutor and District Judge.
I voted for Sir Keir for Labour leader for a number of reasons, one being that I assumed, given his career background, that he would take an evidence based approach to policymaking.
However, the need to adhere to Labour’s core Red Wall First electoral strategy clearly trumps such an approach, resulting in Sir Keir going on LBC, pledging to enact longer prison sentences for folk taking part in demonstrations such as those carried out by Just Stop Oil.
I am not sure why giving people, who do not look short of a bob or two more opportunities to have their day in court would be a deterrent to them from, as Sir Keir sees it, putting the lives of others at risk.
The Labour Party is also committed to enacting a new range of laws in the areas, particularly, of trans rights and domestic violence.
I choose my words with care, these are not unimportant issues to address, but Labour’s plans smack too much of politician’s logic, something needs to be done, this is something, let us do it, without thinking through the practicalities of delivery and the likely consequences.
Meanwhile, our courts are under ever more severe pressure with too often justice being delayed to the point where justice is not just being denied, but not served at all.
It comes to something when the fear of being caught may be lessened by the growing probability that one might never see the inside of a court if one is arrested.
The Secret Barrister responded to one of Sir Keir Starmer KC’s Tweets on 25th November thus:
“None of this addresses the issues.
Where will you find the capacity in the system, or the judges, or the barristers, for these “specialist courts”? And how would they differ from the current courts?
And what is the point in increasing sentences when we can’t get cases to trial?”
1/2
“We expect this superficial guff from the current government.
I’d hoped that a former Director of Public Prosecutions might have identified the root causes: namely the delay caused by chronic underfunding of criminal justice, and the lack of criminal law specialists.”
2/2
The response to these Tweets from someone fairly high up in the Labour Party seemed to rather miss the point:
https://twitter.com/TheoBiddle/status/1596110981033181185?s=20&t=x9xRHAbHFsJP813O3wD1oQ
One does not expect much sense or good judgement from Tory Home Secretaries, like Priti Patel or Suella Braverman, given neither is cast in the mould of a Willie Whitelaw or a Douglas Hurd, but I had hoped that a former Director of Public Prosecutions would be nowhere near as interested in playing to the gallery as he would be in being tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
Such a policy approach requires an adequately funded, adequately staffed, adequately paid and, unbelievably in 2022, an adequately housed justice system.
Incidentally, that New Labour era slogan was not coined by Tony Blair, but Gordon Brown, the son of the Manse.
To my mind a large part of the problem is that we (the public at large) focus only on the end result of the wider justice system. It is not as simple as making prison sentences longer, or shorter, or making prisons more or less brutal. There is a long complicated process to get from crime to sentence. The police must investigate the crime, they must find, and catch, the criminal, they must gather the evidence against the criminal. After this the Courts must test the evidence, and decide if the person before them is indeed a criminal. Only then can we do something about it.
Before we can really decide what we must do, or not do, with prisons and criminal sanctions, we must make the rest of that long and complex process work. And even that isn’t the beginning of the problem, because crime is a function of the society within which it happens.
But “make sentences longer” is an easy answer, even if it has nothing to do with the question being asked, and we (the public at large) do so love to hear easy answers.
What we want, ultimately, if for there to be less crime. For people to turn away from criminal actions; and for people who commit crimes to be rehabilitated to become happy, healthy, productive members of society.
So, there are elements of retribution, mixed with protection, and deterrence, rehabilitation, possibly even restitution. In a messy compromise that sees us trying to do too many of them at the same time, we end up failing to do any of them well.
Many people in prison suffer from mental health problems that are not addressed – not before they commit a crime nor after, and not before they are convicted nor after. Many have problems with alcohol and other drugs. And too many have underachieved in school education, and shockingly after 13 years of mandatory schooling, prison education often needs to start with the very basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.
At bottom, deprivation, inequality, and lack of opportunity, are motors to criminality. Yet there is simply not enough funding for the prisons that we have, or probation, or other support services.
As in many things, we can learn lessons from what others do – both examples of bad practice as warnings (the US, for example) and of good practice as suggestions for improvements and alternatives (the Netherlands, or Scandinavia, for example).
The political and media culture in this country can’t even motivate itself to help people who are not in prison, let alone people who are in prison. Current poverty and child poverty statistics in the UK are absolutely shocking.
If we can’t achieve kindness towards people who aren’t in prison, how can we expect to achieve kindness towards people who are in prison?
I don’t have “the answer” or know “who is to blame”, but the history of class stratification in the UK might tell us something; and media and political capture by elites might be another place to look. The labour share of income has fallen in recent years, and the best paid have had greater wage increases than the lesser paid.
British society is not fair for people who are not in prison; so it’s unlikely to be fair for those who are in prison.
Unfortunately, there is a uniform laziness of thought with our top politicians. Everything comes down to box ticking and the easiest way to accomplish it.
Task: Appear tougher on crime than the other lot.
A: increase sentences – Job done, box ticked.
When are we going to get a leader who genuinely wants to improve things?
Sadly, I don’t see the answer to that in the current crop.
I have twice sat on inquest juries examining deaths in prison, both by hanging. What I learnt is that the majority of people in prison have been badly let down by society from childhood. Many have mental health problems and/or have low educational attainment. Prison is the last place such people need to be. As with so much to do with public services, prevention is better (and often cheaper) than cure.
Much of our crime and punishment culture is based on reductionist thinking (deterrence, retribution etc) whilst society is a complex, adaptive, system
Systems Theory tells us that the outcome we get is perfect for the system we have in place, from this we can conclude that Britains Crime and Punishment system is for creating crime, criminals and thence prisoners
Most crime is committed by men under 25, much like our car insurance goes down at 25, so does crime. Simply because it is not until about 25 that the male brain fully develops, and the last bit to mature, risk and reward. There is data that suggests 90% of men will commit an imprisonable crime by the time they are 25, thankfully few carry on. Post 25, 10% of criminals commit 80%+ of crime, and all seem to have distinct brain structure (whether that be cause, effect or coincidence is not clear)
We prosecute those 18 to 25 as adults though their judgement is not matured, and then this prosecution lives with them and for many, screws up their future
From a systems standpoint, if the individual is not a significant threat to others well being they should never be imprisoned. If the time in prison is insufficient for the individual to gain the skills to avoid crime, why bother
If the individual is a significant threat to others, should they be released?
Prison – as we run them – clearly does not work
However ‘measuring’ crime reduction is not as easy as measuring crimes committed, arrests, convictions etc (all reductionist) so crime reduction is not a sexy political focus and thus gets little budget compared to dealing with the crime and criminals we have created
I often reflect on this issue – I lost a son to heroin addiction and consider that the prison system contributed to his death. I suspect that a large proportion of the prison population suffers from addiction, mental health issues, or both. For these, prison is rarely helpful and often a large part of the problem. The UK and USA seem to have a fixation on retribution rather than reform. Are there any politicians willing to accept this and act on the evidence rather than meekly follow populist news publications
Your idea of “irksome” is just anything that disagrees with your prissy, twee, self-important little world view, isn’t it David?
I don’t really see David as having a self important world view. He often asks for alternative views. I find following this blog is educational in many ways (I am the child of a a Scottish lawyer) and I certainly don’t regard it as prissy.
Shouldn’t you include a mention of his high-pitched Brummie Wednesday Addams voice as well?
What is the point of your and Kijiri’s personal comments?
Adam’s comment is perfectly fine: it refers to something I often said on Twitter, and I like it as it is true.
Ah, good. Thanks for explaining.
Allowing the above irksome comment through shows that he at least has a sense of humour.
Letting it through also allows the rest of us to form our own opinions about the submitter.
The submitter probably also doesn’t realise that it tells the rest of us something about the submitter which maybe they would have preferred for us not to know.
What a very nasty comment.
Penal reform, like the legalisation of drugs, is clearly a beneficial policy but will never be publicly supported by politicians because the populist media will not tolerate it.
I agree entirely. Early in my ministry I had a member with whom the law caught up. He had moved away from where he had been living as a flash guy, and was living in a council house (Remember them?) and doing a socially useful job.
In the end he was charged with a fairly complicated fraud for which he may or may not have been the patsey. So he got done before the Solemn Sheriff (the equivalent to your crown court, and drew think 18 months.) I visited him a few times, but he was over 100 miles from home. After 9 months, having lost his job, and his family having been reduced to his wife’s work and the support from her wider family, he was released. OK we got him another job, for this was rural Scotland.
My visits to HM nick convinced me that there was little point in warehousing people and that a short sentence was a waste of time.
So that is my story of Prison. Mind you I had a Murder later, and the visits to a woman’s prison were actually more distressing, but that is a different story
Would it be too much trouble to get the boffins to develop a Phantom Zone, much like in the Superman franchise, where we could send the worst of our miscreants. We could have a trial run sending instigators, demagogues and fomenters like
Nig-el and Jac-ob to test the machine out. Perhaps if we were to approach that kindly Mr Musk it might be possible to move forward expeditiously.
Any farmer can tell you why we have a problem with the stock. Any philosopher can tell you why fixing that problem would come at a cost not measured merely in money.
Just one idea to add. Make directors of education and housing be licenced to provide a defined and satisfactory service. Let magistrates etc call in those directors for evidence that education and housing has indeed been provided. If not provided then those directors have their licence publicly taken away and can no longer work for the public service.
Might encourage a bit of ‘kiss down, kick up’ government.
Otherwise take a look at how other countries deal with penal policy.
Thanks for this.
In my view, the principal aim of criminal justice should be to reduce crime, though building a good society is a more important and effective way to do that.
The aims of punishment are five-fold: deterrence, retribution, protection, rehabilitation, and as a ‘signal’ of our attitude to that crime. Retribution features too strongly, with deterrence, yet the latter is more effectively delivered by certainty of detection and rapid conviction, not by length of sentence.
Magistrates and judges also need a wider range of good quality community sentences. Many petty criminals already have a hefty list of fines, so fines don’t punish or deter!
Any policy that can be tagged as “letting burglars go scot free” will be an electoral catastrophe. In order to implement any policy you have to get elected first. In order to that you have to meet the public half way.
Prison reform always get tarnished by association with the “abolish all prison crowds”
For any policy not to be a complete vote loser it must make clear that
1. Certain offences will always carry imprisonment, residential burglary at night is one that comes to mind.
2. That is is not a let out and the offenders will be sent to prison if they breach the diversion orders
3. Dangerous offenders like murderers and rapists will still be sent to prison.
4. It is not an attempt to abolish prisons.
My Father became a probabtion officer back in the 60s.
He once argued hard in front of Magistrates that prison would be entirely wrong for the youths up before the bench, for many of the reasons above, and successfully persuaded them that he could get them to help renovate some dilapedated properties, therby giving them a purpose, and potentially a trade that could help to keep them out of trouble.
This was one of the first projects that would then become “Community Service”. I know not the success of it for the individuals concerned, but I do know that it was one of his proudest moments in his career.
He would have been appalled at the way it has transitioned though “Community Payback” and become some sort of “Punishment in the community” like it is intended to be a way of preventing overcrowding in prisons, rather than a positive way to turn lives around before it was too late for them.
It’s great to have this debate, but I can’t even find a link to it on Twitter. Was there one?
I am less likely to tweet links to this blog, as I am on Twitter less often under the new regime.
If we want people not to commit crimes mustn’t the consequences be deterrent? And if they are deterrent, must they not also be punitive?
Some criminals seem to most of us to deserve punishment, e.g., crimes of greed, covetousness, lust, anger. Many of us see “victims of society” differently. It seems absurd that a judge sentences a convict knowing very little about him except what he has heard and perhaps observed during a trial – when the defendant’s lawyers will probably have told him to clam up.
Perhaps we need a system under which a convict is expertly diagnosed to assess whether he can be helped to “go and sin no more” and if so how, or whether deterrence and punishment are the right response. But that would require more money, and the judiciary to acknowledge that when it comes to sentencing they are out of their depth.
Michael W
Judges get comprehensive reports about the offender before passing sentence, but the nature of the crime is very important too.
Prison doesn’t seem to be much of a deterrent since criminals don’t expect to get caught and it is a risk they are willing to take.
Assuming you’re right about prison not being much of a deterrent – I don’t know, but assume – what’s the point of including it as an objective in sentencing?
Michael W
Clearly some offenders need to be imprisoned to protect the public. Also very serious crimes require very serious punishment. So it has to be a sentencing option.
Losing one’s liberty is a grave punishment in itself. If we don’t respect prisoners as human beings, whatever they’ve done, we have little hope. This is not to exonerate them. Equally we should train prison officers better, treating them too as the human beings they are.