V interesting, Anthony.

I’m especially interested in your assertion that ‘it is the ethical message’ that is most powerful.

Make Justice Work (http://makejusticework.org.uk/home/),launched on 29 June takes the view that the most powerful argument is economic, and that has certainly been the emphasis to date from campaigners, and is reflected in ‘The Economic Case for And Against Prison’ published in Nov 2008 (http://matrixknowledge.com/prison-economics/).

I’m a trustee of a grant-making charity that have funded/are funding both the report and the MJW campaign, and there have been long discussion whether or not the economic case is the best angle – I am not convinced myself, though I’m open to argument, and it would be interesting to see what others think.

Either way, I hope that the Commission on English Prisons, combined with the ongoing Making Justice Work PR now starting up (using what I’m told is a ‘top PR company’) will be the start of a tidal shift in thinking, especally as (as oyu note) Scotland is getting its act together. The other issue we need to factro in of course is where, if the prison population continues to expand, the Titans and the Mini-titans will be built, and an appropriate bit of Nimby-ism on thatr score might articulate well with a growing understanding that England is out of line with lots of other places on such stuff.

David Fraser’s “A Land Fit for Criminals” quotes a home office press release from 2001 stating that “there were at least 100,000 persistent offenders responsible for half of crime”. The problem of course is that locking up all these people would be very expensive which might explain why even Conservative governments are unlikely to take a punitive approach.

Re crime figures, the government’s own estimates put the number of crimes at an astonishing 62 million (Home Office Research Paper 217). The number recorded by the police is just under 6 million and the number estimated by the BCS is 13 million.

I find the New York example particularly compelling. Fear of crime seems to me to be one of the things that continues to sell newspapers and perpetuate the punitive nature of our criminal justice system. New York was a city that made a conscious decision that enough was enough, and took steps to reduce prison numbers, whilst addressing the underlying causes of crime and tackling the public fear.

I think we need to come to the same conclusions – enough is enough, now is the time to take action and change our criminal justice system to be reflective of the society we want to live in.

I would recommend reading yesterday’s report from the Commission http://www.prisoncommission.org.uk

This is so obviously the right thing to do that I’m surprised there was any need for a commission.

If you were setting up a society and wondering what to do with people who didn’t abide by the rules, would you decide that it would be a good idea for them to all go and live together in giant warehouses with nothing to do all day and then let them out a couple of years later? I suspect not.

For too long, criminal justice policy has been dictated by the assorted idiots and morons who read the Daily Mail, flying in the face of the all the evidence about what actually works. And that’s what we need to focus on – the evidence about what works. Government needs to massively reduce prison numbers, introduce innovative community sentencing and be very clear about the evidence for doing so. If people see crime levels fall after the emphasis is shifted away from imprisonment, they will surely be less keen on the current Labour vs Conservative sentencing ‘arms race’.

I blogged on this subject only a couple of days ago, from the perspective of criminal justice reform being a good way to save money. Prison is preposterously expensive and doesn’t work. http://petespolitics.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/a-good-way-to-save-money/

Just one further point I’d like to make; The whole criminal justice system seems to be premised on the notion that people are entirely responsible for their actions. But is that really true? Surely our behaviour is a product of our genes and our upbringing? To what extent can we say that someone can be held responsible for what they’ve done? It’s certainly something which needs to be considered.

I’m all for devolution. But I think prison is the correct place for violent offenders and that there are not enough of them behind bars right now. Naturally, I am for the legalisation of all recreational drugs which should have a longterm impact on reducing prison numbers.

Err, so more people will be doped up and coked up, roaming the streets?

You weirdo

I’ve never understood this left wing mantra that prison doesn’t “work”. If a criminal is locked up then his opportunities to commit crime are curtailed. If prison doesn’t “work” then why don’t we just let all the rapists pedos and murderers out. I don’t want a load of convicts in my “community” thanks very much.

Pete B you are an absolute twat

The thing is Matt, whilst removing the sorts of people you mention from society, will curtail the opprtunity for them to commit crime for the time they are in there, at some point they will be let out. Whilst many prisoners are inside, their mental health problems get worse, they fall even deeper into addiction and the underlying causes for their behaviour are left unchaged, in fact worsened due to the lack of training, education or real work.
One day they will be in your community, and in mine, and I think if we can look at better ways of stopping their offending then we owe it to ourselves, and other tax payers, to do so.

“Err, so more people will be doped up and coked up, roaming the streets?”

Sure. Not a problem for criminal justice until they harm others. And they will have little incentive to do so if drugs are legal, cheap and safe.

Hannah – what if you just keep demonstrably repeat offenders in prison until they exit the 18-35 age bracket? They tend to slow down a bit after that and turn their hand to other things (or at least, less violent crime that might be amenable to community punishments).

What sort of prison sentence (if any) do you think should be due to violent rapists for example (who have any likelihood of re-offending)? Both in terms of the punishment fitting the crime, and in terms of the balance of protecting the public.

Hannah – So keep them in for longer. I simply do not care what happens to serious criminals, the moment they chose to abuse the rights given to them by society, society should abandon them. There are lots of menial jobs that people don’t want to do, get them to do them, for life.

The 2 pieces of rubbish that raped a teenager with a mental age of 8, the scarred her for life with caustic soda (a thoughtfull touch to remove forensic evidence) were given 7 and 9 years yesterday. So in practice they will both be out in 5 – and this is alledgedly under a criminal justice system run by “daily mail readers” – god help us if the lefties ever get to run it.

It’s easy for the middle class islington dwelling contributors to LC to pontificate about how “the community” should support people like that, they don’t, and never will, live in the communities that have to.

“Our criminal justice system is in crisis”.

You don’t say!

Chapter One of British Prisons by Fitzgerald and Sim, Oxford 1979, is titled Crisis in British Prisons.

30 years on and there’s still a crisis.

Michael Howard when Home Secretary was responsible for the “Prison Works” policy.

Labour’s “Tough on crime: Tough on the causes of crime” policy has seen our prison population increase by 30,000. And yet, Labour claims that crime has reduced. All we have to show is that Labour has been tough on offenders.

This fiasco means that a lot of people have got rich as we lurch from crisis to crisis. Only the public and offenders lose out.

Meanwhile, Minister of Justice, Jack Straw, has a solution to the crisis. He intends to flog a dead horse (Ronnie Biggs).

“New York was a city that made a conscious decision that enough was enough, and took steps to reduce prison numbers, whilst addressing the underlying causes of crime and tackling the public fear.”

You’re confusing cause and effect. New York made a decsion that enough was enough, adopted zero tolerance policing and gave the streets back to the populance, something the police have been actively prevented, by the left, from doing in this country (just try prosecuting an under 16 for breaking a window). Criminals then feared being prosecuted for minor offences, and major offences reduced as a consequence, meaning that prisons could be closed because there were fewer criminals. Closing prisons without first reducing crime is an obvious recepie for disaster.

Matt- I suggest you read the report. The points that are being made about serious and dangerous criminals are irrelevant (and emotive)- the Commission does not argue that high security incarceration should be localised. It keeps that in a separate category.

The ‘zero tolerance’ policing argument is highly contentious- there were a number of factors behind the reduction in crime in NYC and ‘zero tolerance’ is ferociously debated. They are now moving beyond ‘zero tolerance’ themselves- why if it was such a startling success? You can lock as many people up as you want but you have to free them at some point. Where do they go? Well, back to the local communities from whence they came. Oh, and two-thirds of them re-offend. Hmmm, starting to see the problem? And just to reinforce the point, international comparisons do not show that there is negative correlation between incarceration rates and crime- quite the opposite.

What is clear is that NYC has deliberately instituted a policy of judicial reinvestment. This has focused resources on local communities to prevent the crime from happening in the first place and dealing with it more effectively when it does- allowing prisons to be closed. The point is that it is a more fruitful exercise to ask ‘what works?’ than just arbitrarily state ‘prison works’ as the starting point. It is right in certain cases but lets us down in so many others while leaving our communities less safe as Hannah rightfully points out.

Here is a quote from the report:

“In the US areas of high risk have been identified and resources targeted to those areas to improve community cohesion and reduce crime. These areas were first identified in Brooklyn as ‘million dollar blocks’ because of the disproportionate number of their residents incarcerated – and the cost of that incarceration – but now have far wider purchase.”

To be perfectly honest, I care not whether this is left or right. I care about what works to make communities safer and what is ethical sound. That’s it. The current system fails both tests and elsewhere they are doing it better. Why would we not want to learn from those examples?

If your objective is just to sound like a tough guy Matt then feel free to carry on. In that case let’s not pretend that your overriding concern is to make communities safer.

“You can lock as many people up as you want but you have to free them at some point.”

Yes, but as I suggested, perhaps when they are less likely to re-offend which is concentrated within a particular age group.

Actually, despite my misgivings, I can see this report has quite a lot of good stuff in it, like its bit about restorative justice. Things like crimes against property (private and public) could certainly be moved into a framework where offenders are expected to offer recompense rather than be incarcerated.

There’s certainly a lot to be said for restitution systems advocated by libertarians.

“It’s easy for the middle class islington dwelling contributors to LC to pontificate about how “the community” should support people like that, they don’t, and never will, live in the communities that have to.”

I live on a council estate in Stoke. By your logic, that automatically makes my views more worthwhile.

I think you’re a total cunt. There, it must be true.

“Where do they go? Well, back to the local communities from whence they came. Oh, and two-thirds of them re-offend. Hmmm, starting to see the problem?”

But that’s a false correlation – how do you know they wouldn’t “re-offend” (as in they would have carried on offending uninterrupted) if they hadn’t been in prison ????

This is why the “prison doesn’t work” argument is bollocks – it assumes a causal link between recidivism (look it up asquith) and prison, rather than inherent criminality and offending.

Legalize drugs.

Prohibition only causes crime.

You’re quite right anon.

Regrettably, & in defiance of all logic, this government is going the other way in its assault on currently legal highs.

“It’s easy for the middle class islington dwelling contributors to LC to pontificate about how “the community” should support people like that, they don’t, and never will, live in the communities that have to.”

Aye, ’tis true, we really do all live in Islington. In fact, we spend most of our evenings sat cross-legged on plush persian rugs, nibbling goji berries, drinking wine from the Rothschilds and chortling at the barbarisms of the masses, all whilst happily cocooned in the safest gated community in Britain.

But here’s the thing…

In the 12 months to May 09, the Met recorded 29,518 crimes in Islington. That includes 8 homicides, 5,822 acts of violence against a person, 62 rapes, 198 other sexual offences, 1,090 robberies, 3,007 burglaries, 78 gun crimes, 3,359 motor vehicle crimes and 1,572 domestic crimes. (http://bit.ly/7fGgA)

So when the area you live in experiences nearly 30,000 crimes a year, I reckon you’ve earned the right to contribute some thoughts about the criminal justice system, regardless of whether some presumptuous thread spoiler starts to dribble some drab cliches all over his keyboard in a (failed) attempt to claim you ‘just don’t get it’.

Matt Munro has a record of making these unfounded generalisations, then backing away, then returning to spew forth the same utter shite.

So then, Matt, would you like to name which particular commentors here live in Islington, or are you incapable of doing any such thing?

This is an interesting thread.

It seems divided between those who treat crime as something that is purely due to intrinsically ‘bad’ criminal individuals, and those who believe that social ills have solutions that lie in inclusion and creating non-criminal opportunities in disadvantaged communities.

I am by no means an expert, but as a film-maker who has worked on a couple of films about the criminal justice system, it seems to me that almost everyone who has had any contact with the prison system belongs to the latter group, whereas most policy is aimed at re-enforcing the ill-informed prejudices of the former group.

Recently I worked on a film about Prisoners’ Families, and this brought home to me how wrong headed our attitude is to criminal justice,

Most crime is a community problem. The building blocks of communities are individual families. More families in the UK are faced with the trauma, stigma and financial challenges accompanying a close relative’s arrest and sentence than anywhere in Europe. (The UK prison population has risen by 30% in the last 10 years to 92, 000.)

The impact of the arrest and sentencing of a parent on children can be severe.

Children of prisoners are three times more likely to suffer mental health problems and delinquency than their peers. 160,000 children a year have a parent taken into custody, more than experience the divorce of a parent.

Research shows that a prisoner who has a strong family unit to return to is less likely to re-offend. Those prisoners visited by a partner or family member have a 25% lower re-offending rate than those whose families do not support them. Sadly, one in four men and half of all women on remand receive no visits from their family.

Crime happens in the community and needs to be solved there, rather than stigmatising individuals and their families and sending people away, there needs to be a frank assessment of why these individuals are failing, and an attempt to prevent their children suffering the same fate. This is not altruism, this is pragmatism and a social responsibility.

You can find out more about prisoners’ families – and watch some moving films here:

http://www.familiesontrial.org/

What’s amusing is how worked up people on LC get about the whole Islington sterotype, almost as if it touches a raw nerve. Ok, so possibly not many of you actually live in Islington, but I doubt if many of you live in New Cross or Peckham either.

[26] Crime happens in the community and needs to be solved there, rather than stigmatising individuals and their families and sending people away, there needs to be a frank assessment of why these individuals are failing, and an attempt to prevent their children suffering the same fate.

Frank assessment by who, school ? family ? friends ?

Its hardly a mystery why the majority of individuals turn to crime.
One significant group are those who develop one type of addiction or another to cope with overwhelming psychological insecurity. Such individuals may revert to robbing, prostitution, or even acts of violence to fund their habit – decriminalisation would go some way to alleviating this problem, as well as strategically placed state run opium dens to facilitate less antisocial forms of drug use.

Now another significant population are those who have never engaged with the education system, and come from families where parenting skills are conspicuous by their absence – since by definition they are chronically needy and immature they will only ever develop limited insight into the effects of their criminal behaviour on others.
Meaningful rehabilitation of such individuals is nigh on impossible because of the intractable nature of their problems, not to mention the kings ransom that would be required to provide both material support while helping them to recognise the connection between their criminal deeds and effect on the wider community.

Already hampered by a criminal conviction such characters are unlikely to have either the skills, or more importantly the motivation to overcome the kind of adversity that will give them a fighting chance to compete with better equipped job seekers in a shrinking market.

Very occasionally – for example following the horrific death of a three year old by two school boys, attentive psychologists, new identities, state funded housing, etc are all afforded to offenders in the hope of achieving some sort of redemption but the emotional and financial cost of such intervention is prohibitive.

My guess, (and that’s all it is) is that most teachers could tell you which 14, or 15yr old are most risk of offending – while some teachers would have such concerns at an even earlier age?

Raj – Yes, Crime is a very obvious facet of the nurture/nature argument. As a psychology graduate I have to disagree that the nature camp are “ill informed”. Twin studies since the 1950s have consistently shown that there is a genetic basis for criminality (as there is for addictive beahviour, low intelligence, mental ill health, and many other things which are common to the profiles of criminals). That’s not to say that the environment makes no difference, but not as much as the (and it generally is) left would like us to believe.

Interstingly if you dare to suggest that the most obvious environmental correlate of criminality (being from a single parent family) should be socially or fiscally discourated, Godwins laws tends to be invoked fairly quickly.

None of what’s being suggested here is new – the idea of community based solutions in one guise of other has been doing the rounds since at least the 1960s. The results in the past have been “mixed” (generally effective for about 30% of the throughput to most programmes, about the same as no intervention at all) and it is very, very expensive.

Matt Munro, you may like to read “Freakonomics” if you haven’t yet. In it, the link between abortion & crime is dissected, & the otherwise inexplicable fall in crime which occured in the USA in the 90s is linked to legalised abortion.

Think about it- women who don’t fucking want to have children, if they were forced to have them, many of whom ill-equipped: is it a surprise that so many of their offspring get into trouble? If Baby P’s mother, for example, had decided that she couldn’t cope, how many right-wingers would have said she was obliged to give birth?

You can see the link between single parent families, low intelligence & crime. No, most people in those categories don’t breed criminals but the origins of most criminals can’t simply be ignored as if it were somehow irrelevant.

It isn’t pretty but nor is violent crime or the home environments of children whose parents don’t give a fuck whether they live or die.

Raj – I disagree. I don’t think there is an easy divide on the nature/nurture debate here. You could hold nurture to be a key feature of people’s criminality, and still believe in prison, not least for the sake of removing criminal influences from the wider community, and the belief that the physical insecurity felt in high crime areas helps to foster further criminality.

Asquith – that is a perfectly reasonable argument but I am sure you can see how that is hardly going to motivate conservative anti-abortionists; any more than telling pro-choice people of the success of Sweden’s sterilisation programme for removing disabilities would make them supporters of eugenics. I am sure an anti-abortionist would rather have a higher prison population than a higher abortion.

I am told that the crime rate has gone up 50- or 100-fold since the 1920s.

Is this becasue they “invested in communities” in the years before World War I?

Asquith – Most women who have abortions are middle class (i.e the type of women society should be encouraging to have kids) whereas larger families are more prevalent the further down the socio economic scale you go. i.e the sort of parents who are less able to cope socially or economically with children. The solution is to reward capable parents for having children, not “promote” abortion (which I think is what you were arguing as a solution to crime).

I’m always sceptical about cross-cultural comparisons of criminality anyway, there are generally too many variables to make the comparisons informative.

“No, most people in those categories don’t breed criminals but the origins of most criminals can’t simply be ignored as if it were somehow irrelevant.”

Agree, but look at the stats the other way round – i.e the majority of people in prison are from single parent families/the care system.

I do hope any community-based approach takes account of THIS type of problem
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7139202.stm

While the Guardian even claims that some crims prefer to be IN prison rather than out (due to favourable exchange rates for certain commodities – the market in action so to speak)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/aug/17/prisonsandprobation.drugsandalcohol

God knows how community elders (or similar august body) will adjudicate in such cases.

AandE, the first link you posted reads “Mournian was sentenced to 20 weeks in June for assaulting mother-of-two Miss Murphy, but was released 18 days early in August.

He killed her five days later. ”
Now what is the significance of this. Would the extra 18 days have properly rehabilitated him so that he wouldnt have come out 18 days later and done exactly the same thing?

Fair question Reuben – and one that I cannot answer because;
[a] I did not have a crystal ball, and
[b] I do not know if the any attempt was ever made by the authorities to rehabiltate Mournian’s drug addiction or penchant for domestic violence.

But as I am sure you have gathered the implied question was more to do with risk assessment, an activity that is hardly a science at the best of times?

So an honest question – who gets to make the call (on risk to the public)?
And if it goes wrong what are the consequences for those who make such judgements (assuming more and more criminals would be let out under this new type of system)?

Managing risk, especially in some of our inner city ghettos is not an easy task – ask any front line social worker involved in child protection work.

If you had a chance to look at my earlier post [28] you would see that Mournian typifies the kind of needy, immature, and volatile addict that many are concerned about once at liberty to roam our streets.

The last great project to close down public institutions led to a body of opinion that regarded the care of psychiatric patients (in the community) as something of a lottery – some may have benefit but many others did not.

As it happens, I think the problem of drug smuggling in prisons should serve to reinforce the calls for penal reform. Three things that people like The Howard League/PRT consistently argue is that our prisons are too big, too overcrowded and the ratio of inmates to staff is too high. This has helped to create conditions where drugs can be smuggled in, where dealing can flourish and where prisoners are more inclined to get high than take advantage of whatever self-improvement opportunities are made available to them (though admittedly some prisons aren’t providing enough of those opportunities).

By all means, let’s build more prisons, but make them smaller and with a lower number of inmates per prison guard. If you did that, I reckon you’d see a significant decrease in the smuggling of drugs, a lower incidence of prisoners copping a fix when they should be serving their punishment and maybe, just maybe, greater success in helping those prisoners who don’t want to return to crime when they’re released.

I agree with Neil. I think we should arrest & imprison less people (drug “offenders” don’t need to be doing time for the most part) & have as many as possible having their own cells.

Indeed, luxury items such as TV & video games should be forbidden. Not only are they a bad use of taxpayers’ money, they do the prisoner so good whatsoever. Far better to have them studying, working (my brother’s local prison has its own farm, for example) & generally doing worthwhile stuff & being offered some vague hope of rebuilding their lives when they come out.

Although I generally view Jackart as something of a cunt, I appreciated this:
http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2009/01/surprisingly-simple-policy-to-make.html

Legalize the public and home defense use of firearms, in the style of Vermont, the safest state in the USA.

Criminals aren’t afraid of the government. They’re afraid of an armed victim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1u0Byq5Qis&feature=related

Why don’t we just put them on the naughty step?

Seriously, it is my understanding that the only people that spend any significant time in prison are those who have committed serious crime. If you go by the media reporting on verdicts and custodial sentences – I believe it is very difficult to actually get one.

Finally I don’y think prisons are a bad concept – but if they are undermanned so inmates can have a 24/7 party, or don’t offer whatever is required for rehabilitation – then obviously they are failing in their target – but its not the concept of prison that’s wrong. You can draw a parrelal between that and the “Care in the community” strategy that was created when mental health asylums were closed as they were deemed not politically correct anymore. What happened was mentally ill people were left in isolation in a community which didn’t care at all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvZs_2W08jo&feature=channel_page

A women can’t even carry a can of pepper spray in this damn country.

RHIANN IS A MEAH HEAD ;}

ANDY BENNET SNORTS !

^^^ anon WTF YOU CHAT PURE SHIT ;} NOW FUCK OFF AND FO CRAWL BACK INSIDE YA MUM ;}x