“The guideline doesn’t propose that sentencers shouldn’t send serious violent offenders to prison: for the most serious assault offences, such as causing grievous bodily harm with intent, substantial custodial sentences are set out as the appropriate response.”

Sure. But we know this dance. It is a Golden Oldie. The truth is that this little bit of blarney covers up the fact that it is soft on crime and fewer people will be going to jail and those that do will be going for shorter periods.

“This approach is the right one.”

No it isn’t. It means more criminals in the community and offending when they belong behind bars doing time.

“Firstly, the focus on proportionality promotes fairness and consistency in sentencing.”

There is nothing fair about telling someone his injuries are minor and the man who inflicted them will be out next week to inflict some more.

“Secondly, it makes it clear that custody should only be used in those cases where the offence committed is truly deserving of it, a crucial message at the current time.”

No, it makes it clear that custody should only be used in those cases where the bleeding heart liberals in the government and the usual pro-criminal pressure groups thinks it is appropriate. Not for those who are truly deserving by any sane measure. Or even according to public opinion.

“It’s worth repeating the much-quoted that the prison population in England and Wales has almost doubled since Ken Clarke was Home Secretary in the early 1990s.”

And yet that is the problem – you are looking at the wrong measure. How many criminals are in prison is irrelevant. It is how many that are out that counts. We need to jail more people until Britain is once more safe. If that means twenty times as many prison places, so be it. If it means half as many, then we should cut. But the tail cannot wag the dog.

“Increasingly punitive sentencing since then has meant that more people have been going to prison, and for longer”

And as a result crime has been dropping.

“It also struggles to rehabilitate”

It would anyway. There is no such thing as a viable successful rehabilitation programme and so we shouldn’t even bother.

“A renewed focus on proportionality should help to alleviate overcrowding by reducing the number of custodial sentences imposed”

In other words the author is, at best, disingenuous. She knows that it will do precisely what the Sun says it will and it is precisely what the Sun says it is. Soft on crime. It is just that most of us think this is a bad thing and she does not

“Wider use of community sentences for those who haven’t committed serious offences could also contribute to a reduction in reoffending.”

And if pigs had wings they could fly. Community sentences do not work. They will not contribute to reducing offending. Only prison will.

“Promoting, as it does, fairness and effectiveness – two principles which should be integral to any criminal justice system – the guideline on assault should be welcomed and extended.”

Except it is not fair and there is no evidence it will be effective. And in ten years time when offending rates are once more vastly higher, no doubt the author will still be pushing a lonely barrow, insisting that if only we stop punishing people they will stop offending.

You have noticed that crime has fallen as the prison population has risen?

That’s known as the incapacitation effect.

And you have to try quite hard to get into prison. How many chances has the average prisoner been given before a custodial sentence is (finally) passed?

You also know that it is the poor who disproportionately are the victims of crime?

Apparently there’s nothing the “caring” classes love to do more than wish more crime on the poor.

cjcjc

“You have noticed that crime has fallen as the prison population has risen?”

And when it rose during the first years of Labour’s tenure, at the same time that the priosn population was rising, what was happening then?

Can you prove or even remotely substantiate causation here?

@1 SMFS

Wow…you really are living down to your profile ID aren’t you?

You’re seriously asking us to take your statement seriously: “She knows that it will do precisely what the Sun says it will and it is precisely what the Sun says it is. Soft on crime. It is just that most of us think this is a bad thing and she does not..”

Oh please…. it’s a pretty good bet that ANY policy advocated by the Sun will be wrong. It is quite obvious that your kneww-jerk “flog ‘em” approach to sentencing owes more to the ideological itch you just have to scratch than any sensible approach to policy.

I love the idea that you feel it would be OK (let alone desireable or feasible) to build and staff 20 times more prison places. Locking up more and more people won’t necessarily have the desired effect, but even when if it could be demonstrated that better outcomes could be obtained by non-custodial sentences, or shorter sentences with resources spent on rehabilitation, ideologues like you wouldn’t want it, because they have an atavistic urge to punish people.

No doubt you’d be in favour of public hangings, birchings and putting petty criminals in the stocks?

“No doubt you’d be in favour of public hangings, birchings and putting petty criminals in the stocks?”

Must we give them ideas…?

@ 5 Ellie

.. best to know your enemy, don’t you think?

Scratch the surface of most apparently reasonable conservatives calling for harsher treatment for crims/immigrants/gypo’s/strikers/protesters [delete hobby horse du jour] and you’ll find a frothing, carpet-biting, wing-nut not far below the surface.

The other day I heard a man tell a story. In it, he described how he lost control of the car he was driving and this led to a fatal accident. The accident was his fault – he never sought to deny it. He was of course put on trial (as it happens, in what was at the time a Communist country). The judge refused to jail him, saying that he would punish himself far more than the court ever could. You see, the fatalities he caused were those of his wife and infant daughter.

But SMFS knows better. Every violent criminal should go to jail, without exception.

And subsequently kept falling, right?
There will always be some variation.

The causation is absolutely clear. “Habitual” criminals – to use the Porridge terminology – cannot commit crimes when incarcerated.

“Offenders about to start a prison sentence were asked how many crimes they had committed in the previous 12 months. The average was 140 crimes a year and, for those on drugs, 257.”

(Yes, I favour drug legalisation.)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4353433.ece

@8 cjcjcj

Given the role of addiction in so much crime, might it not make more sense to spend some of the money spent on locking people up on rehab and other programmes to stop them using in the first place, instead of trying to do it after the event?

Just a thought……

We have this rising prison population. but what are they all in for? Are they rapists and child abusers, people who haven’t paid their council tax, nutjobs who whack random victims in the street or people with psychiatric problems?

Without some clearer idea of what the prisoners have done, it is very difficult to judge whether we should be building more prisons or letting more prisoners out. It doesn’t help when the odd extreme case anecdote is quoted.

Is there information on what crimes have been committed by the prisoners in the public domain?

Ellie cubo ,crime didnt’ rise during labour first few years, Violent crime rose ,but that was in no small measure to the recleassification ,plus in the 80′s if A Woman was beat up by her husband or a gay person was attacked or even a black person was attacked in a race hate crime they didn’t always report it, they do now, as such violent crime goes up,

4. Galen10 -”You’re seriously asking us to take your statement seriously”

Given she admits it, yes I am.

“Oh please…. it’s a pretty good bet that ANY policy advocated by the Sun will be wrong.”

I see. Their prejudices are wrong but your prejudices are right?

“It is quite obvious that your kneww-jerk “flog ‘em” approach to sentencing owes more to the ideological itch you just have to scratch than any sensible approach to policy.”

An interesting view and an odd expression of what you clearly *need*to feel. But in reality, when we jailed fewer people crime exploded, when we started jailing them once more, crime dropped. And it did so without reference to me or my views.

“I love the idea that you feel it would be OK (let alone desireable or feasible) to build and staff 20 times more prison places. Locking up more and more people won’t necessarily have the desired effect”

I kind of think it would. Actually. All evidence suggests it will.

“but even when if it could be demonstrated that better outcomes could be obtained by non-custodial sentences, or shorter sentences with resources spent on rehabilitation, ideologues like you wouldn’t want it, because they have an atavistic urge to punish people.”

Show me how non-custodial sentences work better and I will support them. You won’t because you can’t. They do not work.

“No doubt you’d be in favour of public hangings, birchings and putting petty criminals in the stocks?”

Do you need to ask?

7. Mike Killingworth – “But SMFS knows better. Every violent criminal should go to jail, without exception.”

Sorry but in what sense is a man who has a car accident a violent criminal? What sort of legal system would even bother putting him on trial?

Which leads to the follow up question – why are you wasting our time with patently bogus stories?

9. Galen10 – “Given the role of addiction in so much crime, might it not make more sense to spend some of the money spent on locking people up on rehab and other programmes to stop them using in the first place, instead of trying to do it after the event?”

You assume that drug use causes people to commit crimes instead of the perfectly viable alternative that people who commit crimes also use drugs. Why?

How precisely are we to spend money to stop people using drugs? People who want to use will use. We could make it harder for them to get the drugs. By jailing people. But you don’t want to do that so the drugs will still be available. So how precisely do we persuade people that Keith Richards and Kate Moss aren’t having a whale of a time and aren’t, like, really cool?

10. James from Durham – “Without some clearer idea of what the prisoners have done, it is very difficult to judge whether we should be building more prisons or letting more prisoners out. It doesn’t help when the odd extreme case anecdote is quoted.”

Sorry but no. It is irrelevant what they have done. What matters is that crime is still high. You are looking at the wrong end of the beast. We need to jail more people until crime is low. That is all that matters. Prisons need to expand to deal with those numbers. How many people are locked up or for how long or even for what is all irrelevant.

“Is there information on what crimes have been committed by the prisoners in the public domain?”

But yes, a quick google search will get you this information.

@9 yes it might do.

But then I live in a rich area.
They won’t be living next to me while the experiment is running.

“We need to jail more people until crime is low. That is all that matters.”

As soon as someone says there is only one thing that matters rather than the messy reality of competing priorities you know you are dealing with a fanatic – this can be true of people on the left as well as those on the right.

john Ried

“crime didnt’ rise during labour first few years”. That’s not what it says at the Home Office website: http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb1210chap1.pdf

It gets pretty bumpy from 1999 onwards, even though the overall trend was down. This overall dowanward trend was also reflected globally, so correlation with our increasing use of custody seems somewhat questionable.

“We need to jail more people until crime is low. That is all that matters.”

And crime committed on one prisoner by another, or on prisoners by guards?

(Now there’s an issue that most politicians are happy to completely ignore)

@14 SMFS

“You assume that drug use causes people to commit crimes instead of the perfectly viable alternative that people who commit crimes also use drugs. Why?”

Simple. Drug addicts need to fund their habits. This is hardly news. The idea that if they weren’t addicts they would still be out robbing just because they are a thoroughly bad lot doesn’t really stand up. There’s a debate to be had about how you best tackle the addiction/substance abuse angle, but locking more and more people up hasn’t been notably successful thus far.

“How precisely are we to spend money to stop people using drugs? People who want to use will use. We could make it harder for them to get the drugs. By jailing people. But you don’t want to do that so the drugs will still be available. So how precisely do we persuade people that Keith Richards and Kate Moss aren’t having a whale of a time and aren’t, like, really cool?”

Rehab programmes: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Also, jailing people to keep them off drugs isn’t failsafe, given how easy it appears to be to get drugs inside. We could decriminalise drugs of course… not that the Red Top reading classes and most of the wing-nuts are likely to welcome it (well, OK SOME of the libertarian wing nuts would welcome it). Some people will always think such people are cool, same as some think smoking ciggies is cool.

Your prejudice is that jail always works, and is the correct default response. History shows you are wrong. More worryingly however, it wouldn’t matter to people with your outlook even if you were proven manifestly wrong, because you’d still advocate the failed policy for ideological reasons… it’s what Tories do.

@12 SMFS

“Show me how non-custodial sentences work better and I will support them. You won’t because you can’t. They do not work.”

Quote below is from:

http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/newResources/criminological/A2_AQB_crim_nonCustodial.pdf

That said, large scale reviews have generally found that non-custodial sentences are at least as effective as imprisonment. Gendreau and Goggin (1996) reviewed 105 studies comparing imprisonment and community-based sentences and concluded that there were no differences in recidivism. This being the case, community punishments emerge as superior on economic grounds,
at least for non-violent offenders, since they cost substantially less than imprisonment. Government statistics also support the effectiveness of non-custodial sentences. Recent data put the one year recidivism rate of those sentenced to community-based punishments at 36 per cent compared to 59
per cent for those sentenced to short prison terms (Ministry of Justice, 2008).

‘It’s worth repeating the much-quoted that the prison population in England and Wales has almost doubled since Ken Clarke was Home Secretary in the early 1990s.’

Kinda makes it look like you are blaming Ken Clarke here, like New Labour had nothing to do with it.

Its welcome news nontheless.

Scratch the surface of most apparently reasonable conservatives calling for harsher treatment for crims/immigrants/gypo’s/strikers/protesters [delete hobby horse du jour] and you’ll find a frothing, carpet-biting, wing-nut not far below the surface.

What’s more important to you, insulting ‘right-wingers’ and displaying how liberal you are, or reducing crime?

The reality of crime is that it makes poor people’s lives a misery. Go to any council estate and ask the residents how they feel about criminals. You’ll probably get a lot of ‘wingnuts’ who fail to ‘understand’ crime as it’s their window being smashed, their children being beaten up on the way to school.

This country’s justice system is an abject failure – because it is way, way too soft.

@22

“This country’s justice system is an abject failure – because it is way, way too soft.”

Eh? We have one of the highest prison populations in Europe!

“Go to any council estate and ask the residents how they feel about criminals. You’ll probably get a lot of ‘wingnuts’ who fail to ‘understand’ crime as it’s their window being smashed, their children being beaten up on the way to school.”

And often their own kids who are committing the crime, and are stuck in the revolving prison door with no real help? Your comment is something of a sweeping generalisation.

@22 Jaz

“What’s more important to you, insulting ‘right-wingers’ and displaying how liberal you are, or reducing crime?”

The latter is much more important obviously… the former is just fun and and added bonus.

“The reality of crime is that it makes poor people’s lives a misery. Go to any council estate and ask the residents how they feel about criminals. You’ll probably get a lot of ‘wingnuts’ who fail to ‘understand’ crime as it’s their window being smashed, their children being beaten up on the way to school.”

The fact that these statements may be true, does nothing to prove that your solution is the correct one. The general social malaise reported isn’t going to be magically solved by banging more people up. If it were that simple, it would have been tried, and if it worked we’d have been building prisons by the dozen as SMFS wanted.

“This country’s justice system is an abject failure – because it is way, way too soft.”

Nah..just because you say it, doesn’t make it a fact. Crime has been falling… people *think* it has been going up, because wing-nuts like you uncritically swallow the bilge spouted by the right wing media and the Tory right. Moral panic is so much easier to whip up than actually doing something meaningful after all.

ideologues like you wouldn’t want it, because they have an atavistic urge to punish people.

What a joke. Ideologues like you have a desperate urge to show off how caring and soft you are so that you feel good about yourself, ignoring the mayhem and brutal chaos that poor people suffer as a result.

Every society in the world, past and present, has punished its criminals because they recognise that punishment, unpleasant as it is, is the only way to deter crime – only in Britain do we indulge criminals and pretend we’re being ‘sensible’, for ideology and nothing else.

25 Jaz

I didn’t say punishment wasn’t an important part of the equation, just that it isn’t the only part, and that where it is demonstrable not to be the best option, other methods should be used.

There is a difference between that approach, and the ideologically based prejudice that the default answer is always retribution, building more prisons, and locking more people up.

As the MoJ figures quoted above show recidivism rates for non-violent crime are better when non-custodial sentences are used, so why would you be advocating locking more people up? Similarly studies like the British Crime surveys show crime isn’t as bad as people generally think. Of course that’s no comfort to victims, but their pain doesn’t justify the red mist falling before your eyes and calls for a return to good old Victorian or medieval values.

@ 1 SMFS

“No, it makes it clear that custody should only be used in those cases where the bleeding heart liberals in the government and the usual pro-criminal pressure groups thinks it is appropriate.”

Could you please name a couple of these pro-criminal pressure groups with enough sway to influence sentencing?

It is true that over the last decade or so, crime has experienced modest falls. But looking just at the last 20 years is like looking at the FTSE100 for 2008 alone and concluding that stocks will always fall.

The relevant stats are for the entire postwar era or indeed 20th century. Why? Because in the 1960s Britain experienced a ‘sea change’ as harsh punishments (hanging, birching etc) were abolished together with the introduction of shorter sentences.

See for example p16 of
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-056.pdf

or p14 of
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf

The facts are absolutely clear. Some time around the 1950s, crime (per capita) in the UK started a dramatic rise which has been checked by recent declines but still remains very, very high.

People aren’t afraid of crime because of your tabloid straw men, they’re afraid because there’s a lot of lawbreaking about.

@25 Jaz

“– only in Britain do we indulge criminals and pretend we’re being ‘sensible’, for ideology and nothing else.”

Amongst a raft of ridiculous statements by the “hang ‘em, flog ‘em” brigade, this has to be the stupidest. What does it even mean? You really think (even if the premise were true, which of course it isn’t, it’s total bollocks) that we’d believe you know a lot about the penal systems anywhere else, when you are obviously so painfully ill-informed about our own?

Feel free to actually produce some evidence backing up your assertion that things in Britain are so much worse than everywhere else in the world though…!

@ 28 Jazz

“People aren’t afraid of crime because of your tabloid straw men, they’re afraid because there’s a lot of lawbreaking about.”

No, they really are often afraid for no good reason due to exactly this kind of thing. People habitually over-estimate the risks of being a victim, and the actual amount of crime going on. And no, before you accuse anyone who disagrees of being a bleeding heart liberal, that doesn’t mean it isn’t serious, or that the victimes don’t deserve better.

As was also pointed out, many crimes which used to go unreported are now captured in statistics, or were previously simply not included… so earlier figures need to be treated with caution.

Naturally crime will be much worse in certain areas, but it doesn’t mean the sky is about to fall down.

@ 28 Jazz

“The relevant stats are for the entire postwar era or indeed 20th century. Why? Because in the 1960s Britain experienced a ‘sea change’ as harsh punishments (hanging, birching etc) were abolished together with the introduction of shorter sentences [...]

Some time around the 1950s, crime (per capita) in the UK started a dramatic rise which has been checked by recent declines but still remains very, very high. ”

In which case, the root cause obviously isn’t the “sea change” caused by the lessening of punishment in the 60s, is it? If anything the data provided by you suggests that the reduced punishments eventually started to cancel out the rise that started in the 50s, although I wouldn’t claim that’s what actually happened.

‘The relevant stats are for the entire postwar era or indeed 20th century. Why? Because in the 1960s Britain experienced a ‘sea change’ as harsh punishments (hanging, birching etc) were abolished together with the introduction of shorter sentences.’

Wow, its not enough to maintain a shamefully high prison population – you want hanging and flogging back too?

As was also pointed out, many crimes which used to go unreported are now captured in statistics, or were previously simply not included… so earlier figures need to be treated with caution.

True, but we have no data other than that collected by the authorities, which I have provided. Let me know if you have other data, I’d be glad to look at it. As we all know, many, many crimes today go unreported. How many people don’t bother telling the police about break-ins because they either fear the police or fear reprisal from the culprits who live on the same estate?

Naturally crime will be much worse in certain areas, but it doesn’t mean the sky is about to fall down.

Thank you for proving my point for me. Your major concern is with your liberal ideology. You don’t actually care about the victims of crime living in poor areas, as your contemptuous comment shows.

Could someone making the “prison works” argument explain how the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world (and holds 25% of the world’s prisoners) when it’s crime rate is probably higher and certainly no lower than the rest of the Industrialised world?

Wow, its not enough to maintain a shamefully high prison population – you want hanging and flogging back too?

‘Shamefully’ is an assertion. Facts please. We have a low number of criminals incarcerated per crime compared with other EU countries. The prison population on its own tells us nothing, we need to look at how much crime is being committed.

http://www.civitas.org.uk/data/prisonTooMany.php

@34

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/crime-rates-in-england-and-wales-worse-than-us-2042216.html

It is quite obvious that imprisonment is the most effective solution. Look at the USA, with its enormous prison population – there’s hardly any crime giong on there at all now. Unlike those cesspits of rampant gang violence in Europe – you can hardly step out on the streets in Netherlands and Sweden without witnessing the carnage.

Errr perhaps not….

Causes of increased crime in the 1950s. We only stopped rationing in the 1950s. Maybe we need to bring back ration cards…

@33 Jazz

“Thank you for proving my point for me. Your major concern is with your liberal ideology. You don’t actually care about the victims of crime living in poor areas, as your contemptuous comment shows.2

It’s not proving your point, because you appear not to have one; either that or your reading comprehension just isn’t very good. My major concern in this debate is to challenge the right wing obssession with provoking some kind of moral panic about crime which isn’t merited by the statistics, and isn’t demonstrable in fact.

I already stated a number of times my concern for the vistim, but don’t let your outrage goggles stand in the way of actually reading what people write will you? The comment wasn’t contemptuous, it is a simple statement of fact (I know you appear to have problems with those). This isn’t a competition to prove who can be most heartfelt about the victims.

As stated above, if we jailed fewer people for non-violent crimes (because the MoJ’s own figures say recidivism rates are lower for those given non-custodial sentences) it opens up more prison places, reduces crime and reduces cost…so no doubt you’d have to support that, yes?

If not, it looks like your support for simplistic answers for complex systems leaves you guilty as charged.

‘‘Shamefully’ is an assertion. Facts please.’

Bit rich from someone making ad homs about liberals not caring about poor people.

‘We have a low number of criminals incarcerated per crime compared with other EU countries. The prison population on its own tells us nothing, we need to look at how much crime is being committed.’

No, we need to look at causal relationships not epiphenomena.

And you didn’t answer my question: do you support flogging and lynchings?

As stated above, if we jailed fewer people for non-violent crimes (because the MoJ’s own figures say recidivism rates are lower for those given non-custodial sentences) it opens up more prison places, reduces crime and reduces cost…so no doubt you’d have to support that, yes?

Yes, provided there is some punishment. And to be clear, we should legalise or at least decriminalise drugs. Locking people up for dealing weed is stupid.

Bit rich from someone making ad homs about liberals not caring about poor people.

Apologies.

And you didn’t answer my question: do you support flogging and lynchings?

Don’t be silly. Lynching is the act of a mob. I support capital punishment after a fair trial – a position shared by either a signfiicant minority or majority of Brits depending on which poll you look at, and by President Obama.

provoking some kind of moral panic about crime which isn’t merited by the statistics

Look, I don’t read tabloids and some of their headlines are bollocks. But this isn’t a ‘moral panic’. Look at the stats. Crime today is much, much higher than it was a generation ago. At the very least, come up with a leftwing explanation instead of just claiming it didn’t happen. The facts are abundantly clear, just click on those links above.

@41 Jaz

“At the very least, come up with a leftwing explanation instead of just claiming it didn’t happen. The facts are abundantly clear, just click on those links above.”

Jaz, we can both google mine to our hearts content and still never convince each other, or others who oppose our own views. There are lies, damn lies and statistics on this, as in lots of other areas of policy. I don’t buy the line that crime is increasing and is a huge problem, whilst not for a moment trying to downplay the role it has in ruining many peoples lives.

I am more convinced that on balance we lock too many people up, often for the wrong things, and spend too little on preventative methods which are both more effective penally, more humane, and (and added bonus) cheaper. That being said, I’m also in favour of harsher sentencing in some cases, and ensuring that the punishment really does fit the crime.

Is out system perfect? No, of course it isn’t. Is it worse than those abroad? Well, I don’t know a whole lot about many other countries systems, but I kinda doubt it.

Again as note by others above, the US example hardly bodes well for those arguing that locking up more and more people (and God forbid privatising the process) actually works. It justdoesn’t.

cjcjc,

You have noticed that crime has fallen as the prison population has risen?

That’s known as the incapacitation effect.

Yes. But what do we do with them on release? We have to be concerned about recidivism then.

But SMFS advocates indefinite detention for particular people, therefore recidivism doesn’t apply to them.

A helpful intervention from FullFact here, indicating a most uncharcateristic bit of misinformation from the Daily Mail:

http://fullfact.org/factchecks/dailymail_crime_violent_sentencing_police-2575

‘Don’t be silly. Lynching is the act of a mob. I support capital punishment after a fair trial – a position shared by either a signfiicant minority or majority of Brits depending on which poll you look at, and by President Obama.’

Given that people like Jack Straw were quite happy to surf the tides of hysteria there’s little to seperate our penal policies and mob rule.

And I’ll take Obama seriously when the US’s legal system isn’t an embarassment to the West.

OK. Enlightening debate about why the debate on imprisonment never gets anywhere…

Thing that interests me most though is that the original post identified some issues that are common is prisoners:

mental health problems, drug and alcohol dependency, homelessness and poor levels of education

which, apart from a brief remark by Galen10 about rehab rather than prison (not necessarily a good idea because for rehab to work you have to want to do it…) no-one has addressed. But crime is linked to these factors, so surely the key thing is ensuring that they are dealt with (I admit a solution to mental health problems may be challenging things…). Rather than seeing everything in terms of a simple two axis graph between crime rates and imprisonment, perhaps we should consider how best to solve the problems.

And in this sense, perhaps prison is the answer, at least on drugs and alchohol and education – certain conditions could be laid on a sentence (attaining certain qualifications, being provably clean for a certain period of time) which have more chance of working in an artificial environment. Only a suggestion, but perhaps it is worth remembering that prison might work, but only if used sensibly.

@46 Watchman

I think there are 2 aspects to this: substance abuse as a cause of crime (either to fund a habit or just because drugs and drink are behind a lot of violence and organised crime), and then the role of rehabilitiation programmes. Obviously being in prison *might* be a good thing for some, but it’s not as though prisons are drug free.

You are right, that people have to want to change…. but in many cases, a fraction of the amount it costs to jail someone will have a better outcome if spent on prevention.

As somebody who thinks the CJS is about right on violent crime, but soft on low level crime, I think the question isn’t really whether prison works, but what kind of prisons do we want, and what kind of non-custodial punishments do we want.

I would hope no sane person would advocate a sprawling US style prison industrial complex of warehousing not rehabilitating people, but instead would want extensive efforts of rehabilitating regardless of length of incarceration. However this is expensive, and also tends not to work for short sentences as there isn’t the time to do positive stuff (so you’d need a minimum sentence for offenses considered worthy of prison).

However, as has been pointed out a great deal above, incapacitation is an important function. So as a secondary option, I’d say electronic tagging combined with strict curfews, could be a cheaper option. Particularly if combined with compulsory attendance on educational courses etc.

Sorry to come in on this so late …

@Watchman

“And in this sense, perhaps prison is the answer, at least on drugs and alchohol and education – certain conditions could be laid on a sentence (attaining certain qualifications, being provably clean for a certain period of time) which have more chance of working in an artificial environment. Only a suggestion, but perhaps it is worth remembering that prison might work, but only if used sensibly.”

As I hope I made clear, I think prison does need to be made to work better – for those people who need to be there (if they’ve committed a serious offence, for instance, or if they pose a grave risk to public safety). But for those who haven’t committed offences serious enough to warrant custody, community sentences should be the norm. The “artificial” environment of prison isn’t conducive to rehabilitation: it separates offenders from support networks, including family and friends, that play an important role in the rehabilitative process. It also leads to loss of housing and employment, which can contribute to reoffending (stable accommodation and employment have been shown to reduce reoffending significantly).

Community sentences avoid the disruptive (even criminogenic) effects of custody, they challenge and change offending behaviour more effectively – and they cost a lot less than prison.

@49 Gemma Lousley

At last…the voice of reason!

You don’t have to be an expert in criminology to look at the evidence; meta studies which have analysed handreds of studies around the world show that recidivism rates are lower where non-custodial sentences are used.

Obviously for some crimes and categories of crimes and individual prisoners a custodial sentence is the right thing, but the refuseniks above will continue to insist (irrespective of any actual evidence) that the only thing that works in locking more people up, building more prisons, and imposing harsher sentences.

@2 cjcjc: “You have noticed that crime has fallen as the prison population has risen?”

I observed three simultaneous trends during the New Labour years:
A Economic crime fell
B Prison population increased
C GDP per head increased

If B caused A, as you suggest, why not assume that B caused C?

Correlation does not prove cause. However, most analysis suggests that C caused A.

18. cim – “And crime committed on one prisoner by another, or on prisoners by guards?”

We need to jail them in harsher conditions for longer as well. America has tried this. The New York prison system used to be a violent mess of con-on-con violence. They simply started charging people for the crimes they committed inside and, surprise!, violence dropped dramatically.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_2_why_the_jails.html

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_3_snd-ny-imprisonment-rates.html

The way to prevent crime is to punish it.

19. Galen10 – “Simple. Drug addicts need to fund their habits. This is hardly news.”

It is also not true. No they do not. They can simply stop using. It is not hard to do so. It is not dangerous to do so. Users do it all the time. They choose not to. They choose to fund their drug habit. That is, they are criminals from the start.

“The idea that if they weren’t addicts they would still be out robbing just because they are a thoroughly bad lot doesn’t really stand up.”

Actually it kind of does. Most of us are exposed to opiates of various sorts on a regular basis. Virtually none of us become “addicts”. That is, we are reasonably law abiding. Even though some people spend months in hospital on industrial-strength morphine, I don’t think there has been a single case in modern Britain of someone becoming an “addict” as a result. People choose crime. One type of crime is drug use, another type is mugging people. It is irrelevant. Someone who will do one is likely to do the other.

“There’s a debate to be had about how you best tackle the addiction/substance abuse angle, but locking more and more people up hasn’t been notably successful thus far.”

Sorry but we have been not locking people up for drug use for decades. You can’t say what hasn’t been tried does not work.

“Rehab programmes: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

That would be nice if any of them worked. They do not. They can help an user who wishes to stop using, but in the real world, they warehouse people for a little while. No more. People who want to stop, stop. People who don’t don’t. Wasting money on rehabilitation makes no difference.

“Also, jailing people to keep them off drugs isn’t failsafe, given how easy it appears to be to get drugs inside.”

I don’t give a damn if it is easy to get drugs inside. It is irrelevant. We could, of course, stop that too if we wanted to – bans on physical contact, regular drug tests, punishments for users. But it is enough they are kept away from us and that they are not luring more people into using.

“Your prejudice is that jail always works, and is the correct default response. History shows you are wrong.”

No it does not. We stopped punishing people slowly over a period starting in the 1950s. Crime rose slowly. Until Michael Howard got a little tougher. Crime dropped. America suddenly stopped punishing people in the 1960s. Crime rose suddenly. They started punishing again in the 1980s. Crime has been dropping ever since. Prison works.

20. Galen10 – “Quote below is from: That said, large scale reviews have generally found that non-custodial sentences are at least as effective as imprisonment. Gendreau and Goggin (1996) reviewed 105 studies comparing imprisonment and community-based sentences and concluded that there were no differences in recidivism.”

Yeah but of course you are quoting selectively. They also say:

There are significant difficulties in evaluating the relative effectiveness of different types of noncustodial sentence. First, many variables influence offending, of which the type of punishment given is only one. McDonald (1989) observes that offenders’ decisions to reoffend involved weighing up potential benefits against an ‘entire gauntlet of punishment’ involving the effects of arrest, remand, raising bail money, leaning on friends and family for help and so on. The actual judicial sentence was a relatively minor factor in their considerations. Second, it is rarely the case that offenders are randomly assigned to different types of sentence. Rather, the sentence given reflects the nature of the offences, the court’s assessment of the risk posed by the offender and a variety of judicial priorities including punishment and incapacitation besides the desire to reform the offender. The apparent effectiveness of different sanctions may reflect these decisions, rather than the effect of the punishment itself.

So first of all, we do not punish enough to actually pose a deterrent of any note. They simply do not view Britain’s Club Fed as a punishment. And second, the people being sent on to these jollies are the least serious offenders, the first-timers, those whose crimes were minor and so on. You are not comparing two equivalent populations. Yet they went on to offend as much as recidivists who got jail time. Now either the judiciary is p!ss poor at spotting people who could be reformed, or community sentences simply do not deter. First timers go on to offend as much as serious criminals who get jail time. That is, they do not work. First timers ought to offend less often all things considered.

“This being the case, community punishments emerge as superior on economic grounds,”

Only if you count the cost to the government and not the cost to the community at large.

“Recent data put the one year recidivism rate of those sentenced to community-based punishments at 36 per cent compared to 59 per cent for those sentenced to short prison terms (Ministry of Justice, 2008).”

Bring on the study. Again it is highly unlikely they are comparing like with like and so you are not measuring the effectiveness of punishment, but the likelihood that hard core long-term prisoners will offend compared to first time, minor offenders.

Prison works.

51. Charlieman – “If B caused A, as you suggest, why not assume that B caused C? Correlation does not prove cause. However, most analysis suggests that C caused A.”

We have had a global financial crisis. If economics plays such a big role, then America and Britain should have seen a spike in crime. America has not. In fact New York is now so safe – safer than London for all crimes except murder – the prison population is dropping. People have been deterred.

I doubt Britain has by much although of course Clarke’s weakness will only encourage more crime as criminals guess, rightly, they will get away with it.

49. Gemma Lousley – “As I hope I made clear, I think prison does need to be made to work better – for those people who need to be there (if they’ve committed a serious offence, for instance, or if they pose a grave risk to public safety).”

Sorry but it seems to me you are adopting some private version of reality and insisting that this policy be judged accordingly. Define those that need to be there – and explain why your personal preferences should take precedent over the will of the British public. I have another simple definition of those who need to be there – those that break the law. All crime is serious. All criminals pose a grave threat to the public. How can you claim otherwise?

“But for those who haven’t committed offences serious enough to warrant custody, community sentences should be the norm.”

Community sentences do not work. On what basis are you arbitrarily deciding of an offense is serious enough? Why is it you want so many criminals out of prison?

“The “artificial” environment of prison isn’t conducive to rehabilitation: it separates offenders from support networks, including family and friends, that play an important role in the rehabilitative process.”

Sorry but that cuts both ways. Rehabilitation does not work so it does not matter if prison is conducive to it or not. But also those support networks can and do lead people into crime as well as out of it. America has just done a study where parolees were *not* allowed to return home – and they were less likely to offend. There is no reason why we should give any priority to allowing a criminal to keep in touch with his homies.

“It also leads to loss of housing and employment, which can contribute to reoffending (stable accommodation and employment have been shown to reduce reoffending significantly).”

Sorry but again, you say this as if it was true. It is just as likely that people who choose to give up crime have fewer problems holding down jobs and hence paying the rent. You cannot prove causation. Nor do most criminals hold down jobs anyway.

“Community sentences avoid the disruptive (even criminogenic) effects of custody, they challenge and change offending behaviour more effectively – and they cost a lot less than prison.”

There is precisely no evidence for these statements of faith. What we do know is that they do not have a significant impact on re-offending. We know that prison incapacitates. There is no justification for non-prison types of punishment.

24. Galen10 – “The general social malaise reported isn’t going to be magically solved by banging more people up. If it were that simple, it would have been tried, and if it worked we’d have been building prisons by the dozen as SMFS wanted.”

It is working nicely in America. And of course it is absurdly simplistic to say that if it worked it would have been tried. We know the death penalty works and yet we do not apply it on the third felony conviction. We have other considerations. One of the main ones is that the cost of prisons falls on the government, while the cost of crime falls on everyone else. That is why governments do not want to build prisons while the voters want them to. Another is that people who do not like criminals are not organised. There is no Howard’s League for crime victims. Given that all the NGOs are working to free criminals, it is no surprise they tend to dominate the QANGOs that tell the government to free more criminals.

“Nah..just because you say it, doesn’t make it a fact. Crime has been falling…”

Which does not change the fact that crime has risen enormously over the past 6 decades. That it may have fallen a little over the past two does not change the fact most people can remember a time when crime was rare.

26. Galen10 – “I didn’t say punishment wasn’t an important part of the equation, just that it isn’t the only part, and that where it is demonstrable not to be the best option, other methods should be used.”

And I would believe you if you also took the other approach and said that where punishment was demonstrably the best solution it should be used. Given that all the evidence points to the fact that it is the best solution, you ought to be calling for it. You are not. You are allowing your personal prejudices get in the way of the evidence.

“There is a difference between that approach, and the ideologically based prejudice that the default answer is always retribution, building more prisons, and locking more people up.”

Except there isn’t. The evidence shows prison works and nothing else does. I expect you know this, you just don’t want to admit it. There is at least as much prejudice in insisting that community sentences etc work. But of course you cannot face that fact.

“As the MoJ figures quoted above show recidivism rates for non-violent crime are better when non-custodial sentences are used, so why would you be advocating locking more people up?”

They do not. They show first-time low-risk offenders with non-custodial sentences are at least as likely to re-offend as repeat-offenders who commit serious crimes who get prison time. That is, they work poorly compared to prison. Again you let your bigotry get in the way of the facts. The real question is why aren’t you advocating locking more people up given it works? But we know the answer, don’t we?

“Similarly studies like the British Crime surveys show crime isn’t as bad as people generally think.”

Which doesn’t mean it isn’t serious.

30. Galen10 – “No, they really are often afraid for no good reason due to exactly this kind of thing. People habitually over-estimate the risks of being a victim, and the actual amount of crime going on.”

Except, of course, they can remember a time when it was otherwise. They are not afraid for no good reason. You may be young and fit and have no particular fear of fragile bones when smashed to the pavement, but a lot of other people do. That does not make them irrational. It just makes you young and inconsiderate. No surprise.

“As was also pointed out, many crimes which used to go unreported are now captured in statistics, or were previously simply not included… so earlier figures need to be treated with caution.”

They are probably wrong. Crime used to be rare. It is not now. So much so that people no longer bother to report it unless they have insurance. The police won’t come. They won’t catch anyone if they do. So why even bother?

The evidence shows prison works and nothing else does

No it doesn’t. You ignored my conclusive evidence that the opposite is true last time you played this trolly role, and you’ll ignore it next time – but the consensus among academics who actually research this is that prison unequivocally does not work. The only way you can conclude otherwise is to completely ignore the changes in society and demography that drove rising crime in the UK and US after WWII, and that cut crime in the US in the 1980s.

You don’t even *need* to believe the nonsense you believe. It’s generally accepted that the 1960s rise in crime is associated with the parallel rise in individualism and decline in respect for authority, which fits well with your ideology. Because I’m not a gibbering paranoid idiot and understand that crime is negligible and irrelevant, I’m happy to accept that trade-off, but that’s a value judgement and you’re welcome to do otherwise.

The things which are known to work at crime reduction is 1) reducing levels of perceived liberty for everyone within a society 2) reducing the number of young people 3) reducing income inequality 4) cutting the number of illegal drug users. Nothing else does (including cops-on-beat, jail everyone, rehabilitation programmes, whatever). I support a focus on 3 and 4 (the latter through the means of “drugs on the NHS”); given your ideology, your best response to the evidence would be to advocate 1.

57. john b – “No it doesn’t. You ignored my conclusive evidence that the opposite is true last time you played this trolly role, and you’ll ignore it next time”

Yes it does. I did not ignore it. I pointed out how flawed it was and your gross misrepresentation of what it said. It was no more conclusive than I am Dutch.

“but the consensus among academics who actually research this is that prison unequivocally does not work.”

Even your own article did not agree with that piece of nonsense. Although I do tend to think you are right. Given how often sociologists have been wrong in the past it would be a surprise to find them right this time.

“The only way you can conclude otherwise is to completely ignore the changes in society and demography that drove rising crime in the UK and US after WWII, and that cut crime in the US in the 1980s.”

On the contrary. It takes a great deal of special pleading to explain away the simple fact that crime rises in line, lagging slightly, with prison. Special pleading of no great competence or scientific accuracy I might add.

“It’s generally accepted that the 1960s rise in crime is associated with the parallel rise in individualism and decline in respect for authority, which fits well with your ideology.”

I am not sure you have a clue what my ideology is and even if you did, general conclusions are not scientifically valid. In fact they are not even useful.

“The things which are known to work at crime reduction is 1) reducing levels of perceived liberty for everyone within a society”

I am unconvinced that is true but bring on the evidence. We have not only become less free, we perceive ourselves as having less freedom and it has not done much to bring down crime.

“2) reducing the number of young people”

That I would agree with.

“3) reducing income inequality”

There is nothing to even suggest this might be the case.

“4) cutting the number of illegal drug users.”

This is simply a tautology. If we reduce the number of criminals, we will naturally reduce the number of criminals.

“Nothing else does (including cops-on-beat, jail everyone, rehabilitation programmes, whatever).”

Which is simply an ideologically-driven refusal to accept the American experience. And I see no value in it at all. Produce the evidence.

SMFS:

Bloviating like some sort of wind-up Michael Howard doll (and I apologise to everyone for that image) and constantly repeating “Four Years Good! Two Years Bad!” just won’t cut it.

It’s been obvious to anyone who doesn’t deal solely in saloon-bar/tabloid-rant hysteria that for years we have been putting more and more people in prison for longer and longer periods of time for less and less serious offenses. And the result? Adult ex-prisoner recidivism close to 50%, youth ex-prisoner reoffending over 70%. The policy has been, is, and is ever likely to be a failure even if the sole aim is to reduce crime levels.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to make this case in a society which seems to believe that the only thing that can possibly count as punishment is locking someone away (and thereby punishing their families as well) for ever-longer periods of time, doing nothing to address their offending behaviour, and then turning them back onto the streets months or years later and then being shocked that they’re not behaving any better.

Unless, of course, you believe in the idea that anyone committing a crime – however minor – should be thrown into prison and left there. After all, as you say, “community sentences don’t work”, “rehabilitation doesn’t work”. Indeed, why not just put anyone who is convicted to death immediately after sentencing if they are all so totally irredeemable? After all (to use one of the few clichés you haven’t resorted to yet) “they won’t do it again!”.

What this obsession means in turn is that more appropriate and more imaginative ways of sentencing never get tried. For example, the other day a couple of fraudsters were given six-year sentences. What is the point – practically speaking – of putting them in prison for upwards of three years at great expense, when a more imaginative approach would see them, for example, be made to live in low-grade accomodation and carry out minimum-wage work for the benefit of the community for a similar length of time?

This is not a ‘namby-pamby’, ‘do-gooding’, ‘wet liberal’ option, because they would still have lost all the benefits of their criminal acts; it is merely using a set of punishments which is more likely to be appropriate to the case and to bring actual benefits to society as a whole.

I don’t know how many of you read (or even responded to) the “Breaking The Cycle” green paper from the Ministry of Justice recently. Although it includes the standard obsessions with bringing the private sector into greater involvement with the criminal justice system, its emphasis on a more flexible approach to sentencing options and upon non-custodial alternatives was very refreshing after nearly two decades of policy being stuck on the Howard-Blunkett axis of dog-whistle policy making. I fear, however, that the more sensible proposals will not survive the scrutiny of screaming tabloid headlines, rent-a-quote Tory backwoodsmen and saloon-bar bores such as SMFS.

I will leave the ideologically-driven statistical cherry-picking to others, and ask this:

What is an appropriate punishment for, say, someone convicted of burglary, who has already been convicted of the same crime on two previous occasions?

I am assuming that people think there should be a reasonable degree of consistency in sentencing.

@58: So Much For Subtlety: “It takes a great deal of special pleading to explain away the simple fact that crime rises in line, lagging slightly, with prison [population].”

Not really. It is insufficient to demonstrate a correlation between increased imprisonment rate and declining offence rate.

* You shouldn’t use the same timeline. Convictions occur after crimes. If 100 people are caught mugging in September, they’ll be judged and imprisoned in Oct/Nov.

* Sentencing guidelines and patterns of crime change over time. Somebody who gets nicked for a petty offence may receive a community punishment today; if the sentencing guidelines change in the future, the same offence might draw 30 days.

* If you believe that imprisonment acts as a deterrent, you have to assume that criminals have foreknowledge of the penalty. For the sake of argument, I will assume that criminals understand the consequences and act rationally; some might continue to pursue their crime of choice and others might choose something else, hopefully legal. Aggregate crime and imprisonment figures do not tell us whether banging somebody up acts as a deterrent; useful information is obtained by interviewing offenders and ex-offenders and it won’t be easy data to analyse.

@60 Trooper Thompson: “What is an appropriate punishment for, say, someone convicted of burglary, who has already been convicted of the same crime on two previous occasions?

How old? What is the offender’s background? When were the offences committed?

From time to time, The Magistrate’s Blog asks similar questions with open comments. S/he has knowledge about how an offence might be treated according to guidelines and current practice. S/he has probably discussed the scenario beforehand with colleagues.

http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/

@62 Charlieman,

“How old? What is the offender’s background? When were the offences committed?”

The question I put was obviously general. What I was looking for was a guideline for an average offence, so assume it’s not a very young person, and that the previous offences were in the last few years. As for the offender’s background, personally I don’t see the relevance, as everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law, but if you want to differentiate in your answer you are free to do so.

@63. Trooper Thompson: “As for the offender’s background, personally I don’t see the relevance, as everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law, but if you want to differentiate in your answer you are free to do so.”

Determination of guilt is yes/no. The accused’s background may throw up some extenuating circumstances that permit a discharge, but they are “guilty”. In Scotland, not-proven is a verdict. That is (crudely) equality before the law, what happens before judgement in the UK.

Determination of punishment: Offender background defines punishment and (hopefully) rehabilitation.

The example that you presented would be a “three strikes and you are out” in some parts of the USA. Are you suggesting that our hypothetical burglar should be banged up for the duration of his/her life?

Assume our offender had an appetite for youthful petty crime with two court judgements. And has then changed, for ten years. And s/he then fell out with a partner, entered the home through a window and recovered undergarments from the shared home owing to a lack of undergarments. Depending on time of day, the act is breaking and entering or (post twilight) burglary. It’s the same deed; but burglary requires that the sun is turned off.

In the UK, our offender will get a minor spanking, metaphorically. That makes me proud.

But our offender is on his/her third strike. In some USA states, that means life imprisonment.

@64 Charlieman,

what you seem to be saying is that you don’t actually think breaking into people’s houses and stealing their property deserves any kind of punishment worthy of the name.

You try to find the most mitigating circumstances (bizarrely, retrieving underpants from an ex-girlfriend’s flat – couldn’t he just buy some more or were they his lucky pair?) to make an example and then say; “In the UK, our offender will get a minor spanking, metaphorically. That makes me proud.”

You also digress into irrelevant comparisons to other countries. It was, you should recall, a pretty simple question I posed. You asked:

“Are you suggesting that our hypothetical burglar should be banged up for the duration of his/her life?”

No. There’s no suggestion in what I said. I just wanted to try to gauge from the people on the thread what they thought was appropriate punishment for a burglar, to try to put into context such things as this, from the original post:

“This approach is the right one. Firstly, the focus on proportionality promotes fairness and consistency in sentencing. Secondly, it makes it clear that custody should only be used in those cases where the offence committed is truly deserving of it, a crucial message at the current time.”

You’ve gone all round the houses, but haven’t answered, apart from saying ‘a minor spanking’. What do you mean in terms of months or years in jail, amount of money in fines, hours of ‘community service’ etc?

59. The Judge – “Bloviating like some sort of wind-up Michael Howard doll (and I apologise to everyone for that image) and constantly repeating “Four Years Good! Two Years Bad!” just won’t cut it.”

Nor will refusing to read what I said. Which you clearly did not. Nor would I ever proclaim Four years was good. There is no point to short sentences. Forty years perhaps.

“It’s been obvious to anyone who doesn’t deal solely in saloon-bar/tabloid-rant hysteria that for years we have been putting more and more people in prison for longer and longer periods of time for less and less serious offenses. And the result? Adult ex-prisoner recidivism close to 50%, youth ex-prisoner reoffending over 70%. The policy has been, is, and is ever likely to be a failure even if the sole aim is to reduce crime levels.”

The result has been declining crime. We tried not locking people up for thirty years. All we got for it was more crime. If recidivism rates are still high – and I see no evidence they have gone up since Michael Howard – the solution is to jail people for even longer. Jail reduces the crime rate by incapacitating people. They cannot assault us while they are locked up. It works.

“Unfortunately, it’s not easy to make this case in a society which seems to believe that the only thing that can possibly count as punishment is locking someone away (and thereby punishing their families as well) for ever-longer periods of time, doing nothing to address their offending behaviour, and then turning them back onto the streets months or years later and then being shocked that they’re not behaving any better.”

Naturally if we let them out after months they are going to re-offend. If they are hardened enough to go to prison in the first place, they are career criminals and should not be let out. If they have gone to prison it means they have already had their third chance, community sentences, and all the other wastes of time. They are going to offend until they get too old. We may as well stop wasting time and jail them until they are eligible for the pension. That will work.

The only thing that causes offending is the offender. That is the only thing that needs to be addressed.

“Indeed, why not just put anyone who is convicted to death immediately after sentencing if they are all so totally irredeemable?”

Well. Why not? Why, after the third conviction for what used to be called a felony, don’t we execute someone? What point is there is allowing them to go on brutalising other people? Can we agree that your approach would reduce the crime rate substantially?

“What is the point – practically speaking – of putting them in prison for upwards of three years at great expense, when a more imaginative approach would see them, for example, be made to live in low-grade accomodation and carry out minimum-wage work for the benefit of the community for a similar length of time?”

I agree about the waste of time jailing them for six years. But by all means, I am happy to bring back the chain gang and see prisoners working hard for the community’s benefit all day long. It is the Unions that made us stop. So why not start again? I see no downside. However leaving them out of prison means they will just go on offending. While inside they won’t.

“This is not a ‘namby-pamby’, ‘do-gooding’, ‘wet liberal’ option, because they would still have lost all the benefits of their criminal acts”

The one they were caught. The average offender commits something like 140 offences in the year before they are sentenced to jail. Some punishment.

“it is merely using a set of punishments which is more likely to be appropriate to the case and to bring actual benefits to society as a whole.”

Refusing to punish people is never appropriate.

“I fear, however, that the more sensible proposals will not survive the scrutiny of screaming tabloid headlines, rent-a-quote Tory backwoodsmen and saloon-bar bores such as SMFS.”

Nor should they. Yet again the legal establishment seeks to protect their lucrative careers by letting as many criminals out as possible while the government seeks to transfer the costs of crime from their prison budgets to the rest of us. I hope this report dies a quick death.

60. Trooper Thompson – “What is an appropriate punishment for, say, someone convicted of burglary, who has already been convicted of the same crime on two previous occasions?”

I see no reason why such a person should ever again drink in a British pub or walk down a British street – or even be buried in British soil. Can anyone think of one? Why would we want to release this person?

61. Charlieman – “Not really. It is insufficient to demonstrate a correlation between increased imprisonment rate and declining offence rate.”

In theory. But as we have no other way of doing these sorts of studies, it is all we have. Although I suppose we could set up a control group of randomly selected criminals and you could spend what you liked on rehabilitation. And the other group could be jailed for life. Then we could compare who commits fewest crimes. That could work.

“You shouldn’t use the same timeline. Convictions occur after crimes. If 100 people are caught mugging in September, they’ll be judged and imprisoned in Oct/Nov.”

As I said, it is a lagging indicator.

“Sentencing guidelines and patterns of crime change over time. Somebody who gets nicked for a petty offence may receive a community punishment today; if the sentencing guidelines change in the future, the same offence might draw 30 days.”

That is true. But also irrelevant. Sentences tend to get tougher and longer at the same time for a whole range of crimes. Or they tend to get weak at the same time. Either way, what we know is that the more people get sentenced to prison, the less crime there is.

“If you believe that imprisonment acts as a deterrent, you have to assume that criminals have foreknowledge of the penalty.”

Yeah. I am not sure it is a deterrent. To be honest, the police are unlikely to catch even a mildly competent criminal. Even the dumb ones take hundreds of crimes before they get caught. So I doubt punishment, such as it is, is ever a deterrent. Perhaps in theory. Incapacitation is more likely.

“Aggregate crime and imprisonment figures do not tell us whether banging somebody up acts as a deterrent; useful information is obtained by interviewing offenders and ex-offenders and it won’t be easy data to analyse.”

Asking scum about their scummy behaviour is an utter waste of time.

I see no reason why such a person should ever again drink in a British pub or walk down a British street – or even be buried in British soil. Can anyone think of one? Why would we want to release this person?

Because that’s gibberingly insanely disproportionate.

I’m going to go out in about half an hour’s time. If, when I return to my flat, someone has broken in and nicked my computer, telly, etc, that will be a bit annoying and upsetting. It’ll take me a few weeks to earn the money to replace the things they’ve stolen, and I’ll feel uneasy and shaky for about the same length of time.

That’s a level of harm that equates, at the absolute most, to a short jail sentence. How can it possibly be considered reasonable to jail someone for the rest of their natural life for inflicting that kind of minor harm three times?

On the other hand, for serious violent crime, I agree that we don’t make enough use of whole life sentences. If someone were to assault me to the point where I was left maimed and mutilated, that’s a level of harm caused where never releasing them from jail would seem proportionate.

But as we have no other way of doing these sorts of studies, it is all we have.

Says a man who knows fuck all about doing research. The point is, you consider as many variables as possible, and control for the ones that you can control for. Once you do that for crime and prison studies, it’s completely transparently clear that the correlation is utterly spurious. If you’re too ignorant to understand the concept of spurious correlation, then you probably shouldn’t be pretending to know about the data.

68. john b – “Because that’s gibberingly insanely disproportionate.”

I don’t think so. Why do you think it is?

“I’m going to go out in about half an hour’s time. If, when I return to my flat, someone has broken in and nicked my computer, telly, etc, that will be a bit annoying and upsetting. It’ll take me a few weeks to earn the money to replace the things they’ve stolen, and I’ll feel uneasy and shaky for about the same length of time.”

Feel free to forgive your thief then. But I don’t see why the rest of us should do so.

“That’s a level of harm that equates, at the absolute most, to a short jail sentence. How can it possibly be considered reasonable to jail someone for the rest of their natural life for inflicting that kind of minor harm three times?”

Just because you think it is minor, does not make it minor. The rest of the community has opinions on this too. Added to which it is not a minor crime three times. It is a stubborn refusal to learn or abide by society’s values. Someone who so persistently refuses to be part of society has no real right to continue to be part of society. Nor do I see any reason why they should be. Added to which three crime is rarely three crimes unless we are dealing with a very stupid criminal. It is more like 450 crimes.

British people have a right to live their lives free from the fear of crime. Locking people up after three felonies makes people safer from crime. Thus we should do it. It has no downside except to the criminal.

69. john b – “Says a man who knows fuck all about doing research. The point is, you consider as many variables as possible, and control for the ones that you can control for.”

Says a man whose golden standard of proof in this area is a guy who could not distinguish between people who want to complete their education and people who do not. Of course you do. But the problem is that there are so many and for most of them you cannot.

“Once you do that for crime and prison studies, it’s completely transparently clear that the correlation is utterly spurious.”

Even your own treasured source claimed that longer prison terms played a part. It is not transparent. It is one of the few things that stands up to scrutiny.

SMFS,

thank you for answering clearly. I agree with John B that life imprisonment is disproportionate, but I don’t treat such a crime as lightly as he does.

@72 Trroper Thompson

“SMFS,

thank you for answering clearly. I agree with John B that life imprisonment is disproportionate, but I don’t treat such a crime as lightly as he does.”

You obviously have very low standards, or an over inflated sense of SMFS’s reasonableness…. or did you just fail to read the clap-trap he comes out with?

If you read above, he has continulally tried to argue black is really white, with no more evidence than the fact his knee-jerk Daily Mail frothing at the mouth tells him so. Someone who blithely states that the death sentence works, that (against all evidence to the contrary) that custodial sentences are more effective than non-custodial ones for non-violent offences.

How can you trust anything that comes out of his misguided and deeply unpleasnat mind?

73. Galen10 – “Someone who blithely states that the death sentence works, that (against all evidence to the contrary) that custodial sentences are more effective than non-custodial ones for non-violent offences.”

The death penalty does work. It works in the particular and in the general. It is hard to deny otherwise. And there is plenty of evidence to that end including the Emory University meta-study that showed every execution saves between 8 and 28 lives. But no matter. Are you really saying that if we executed 100,000 persistent offenders it would have no impact on crime rates?

As for custodial sentences, there is no study that shows non-custodial sentences work better. And johnb’s article shows that they don’t.

“How can you trust anything that comes out of his misguided and deeply unpleasnat mind?”

Depends how much of his objection comes from his own cognitive dissonance I would suppose.

@73 Galen10,

I just thanked him for answering my question in a straightforward manner, which he did within his first sentence, thus:

“I see no reason why such a person should ever again drink in a British pub or walk down a British street – or even be buried in British soil. ”

He then went on for a considerable time discussing other things. I wanted to get an idea of what people thought a common crime merited in terms of punishment. As the above string illustrates, you can argue over statistics for as long as you like, and what ‘works’, but my view is more simplistic: People who do bad things should be punished because they deserve it. They should also be forced to make restitution to the victim. As the original post says, there should be ‘consistency in sentencing’. That means that someone found guilty of crime X, should receive sentence Y give or take, and should know what this is before the guy in the stupid wig announces it.

Now, Mr SMFS probably shares my simplistic view on the moral requirement to punish wrong-doing, but, as I indicated, I would not be as harsh as him in the punishment.

@ 74 SMFS

“The death penalty does work. It works in the particular and in the general. It is hard to deny otherwise. And there is plenty of evidence to that end including the Emory University meta-study that showed every execution saves between 8 and 28 lives. But no matter. Are you really saying that if we executed 100,000 persistent offenders it would have no impact on crime rates?”

Source please? Saved 8 to 28 lives how? No, I’m not arguing that…it’s a totally ridiculous statement. What crimes would your deem worthy of the death sentence just out of interest? I’d sooner we chose 100,000 people with views like yours in the country, and marrooned them on some distant and uninhabited land; it would certainly be a huge improvement.

(2nd attempt to post this – the ruddy site swallowed the 1st one)

@66 SMFS:

“There is no point to short sentences. Forty years perhaps.”

For shoplifting, perhaps? Why not just cut their hands off? After all, as Kim Howells said, we have ‘shared values’ with régimes which do that.

“We tried not locking people up for thirty years.”

If so, why has the prison population gone through the roof (as it were), with more people getting longer sentences for more and more minor offences?

“If they have gone to prison it means they have already had their third chance, community sentences, and all the other wastes of time.”

This is quite clearly incorrect. There are a large proportion of people in prison for their first offence, and who are there either because of the seriousness of their offence or the perceived risk they pose to the public; or who are there because of the same obsession with imprisonment to the exclusion of more sensible options which you amply demonstrate. See under “Ed Woollard” for just one example.

“Why, after the third conviction for what used to be called a felony, don’t we execute someone?”

Oh yes, why don’t we? We could restore the public finances by selling the TV rights to one of Rupe’s subscription channels. “The Charnel Channel”, perhaps.

I wouldn’t want to live in such a society.

“The average offender commits something like 140 offences in the year before they are sentenced to jail.”

You’re extrapolating from one survey carried out more than a decade ago by the Home Office, who were no doubt looking for collateral for their latest dog-whistle soundbite (the wretched Straw was HS at the time). I doubt if reputable studies would reproduce that result.

“Refusing to punish people is never appropriate.”

Where have I (or anyone else on this thread) said that it was? What we must ensure is that any punishment is measured, proportionate and is imposed in a humane fashion. To do less than this is to undermine any claims we have to live in a civilised society. Even Churchill recognised that a hundred years ago.

@67 SMFS:

“Either way, what we know is that the more people get sentenced to prison, the less crime there is.”

We know nothing of the sort: correlation is not causality.

@70 SMFS:

“British people have a right to live their lives free from the fear of crime.”

Yes, they certainly do. Which is why the low-grade media, desperate and calculating politicians and a wide variety of columnists and sock-puppets should stop spreading that fear when there is no factual justification for it.

@68 john b (just in case SMFS thinks I’m just after him):

“I agree that we don’t make enough use of whole life sentences.”

I don’t go along with that. I think we rightly reserve those for the most extreme of the extreme; the Sutcliffes, the Hindleys, the Wests, etc. To start using them more widely for lesser (in a strictly comparative sense of the term) offenders would, as it were, debase the currency and – if experience of things such as the Anti-Terrorism Acts and the Sex Offenders’ Register are any guide – would start to be applied in completely inappropriate cases. I’m content for other offenders of the more serious type to get some chance to have their sentences reviewed, even if it’s merely for the look of the thing rather than any realistic chance of being released.