How to get tough on the causes of crime
Posted on Tuesday 19 June, 2007
Filed Under Society
Gordon Brown has today pledged cash to create 8,000 more prison places next year. I don’t know how much money that will take
But I do know that it costs roughly £40,000 a year to keep a prisoner behind bars for 12 months. So if those cells are to be filled, the implied additional annual expenditure is £200m, on top of the capital outlay.
That’s a lot of money, and yet a lot more is likely to be needed still. Britain’s prison population has almost doubled from the 41,000 seen in 1993, and on present trends, is likely to hit six figures some time in 2012.
Yet we are consistently told that ‘prison works’, just like we were under the Tories. A progressive government should frame a slightly more rational debate, rather than recycle Daily Mail headlines in a manner that makes Paul Dacre the de facto man in charge of Britain’s incarceration strategy.
The idea that prison works is pure nonsense, of course. From any rational standpoint, prison fails. Some 57% of male ex-prisoners are reconvicted within two years, and 68% within four. Nine out of ten of teenagers that serve time in youth custody centres are reconvicted within two years.
It is well established that the effect of incarcerating minor offenders and abandoning serious attempts at rehabilitation is to make them more likely to become repeat offenders. According to the government’s own Social Exclusion Unit: ‘By aggravating the factors associated with re-offending, prison sentences can be counter-productive as a contribution to crime reduction and public safety.’ Translation: prison actually encourages crime.
Three-quarters of people in prison have a reading age of ten or less. More than 40% are mentally ill, with 10% schizophrenic. Prisoners are 13 times more likely to have been a child in care, 14 times more likely to be unemployed, ten times more likely to have been a regular truant.
If we really want to get tough on the causes of crime, let’s put money into education, training and drug rehab rather than into the pockets of the private prison industry.
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13 Responses to “How to get tough on the causes of crime”
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The key point the “prison works” people are trying to make is that whilst they are off the streets offenders are unable to commit further offences.
This is a convincing argument, but obviously the overwhelming majority of prisoners will be released from prison at a later date.
We need to stress that the policy of mass incarceration and lengthy sentences is costly and ineffective.
The press will have a field day with the seeming u-turn on early release and Lord Falconer’s claims last month that it was inconceivable. The discourse will be of a government soft on crime, and Brown will be tempted to push for more of the same.
I was pleased to hear about Billy Bragg’s campaign, by the way.
PS: A bit surpised that I’m the first to comment on this post. Nothing to say on the matter, folks?
One thing that you have to get straight is that the vast majority of that which bourgeois laws describe as ‘crime’ does not get within a mile of the criminal justice system. Most conviction rates are around 1% in relation to the amount of crime that we know is out there so the idea that locking people up makes any real difference to harmful behaviour is misguided. Once you look at the volume of harmful behaviour in society you have to ask yourself why is it that those who are inprison are there? Might it be because they are those most vulnerable to capture? Those who are policed most often? Those who have been targetted already? Maybe the reason that most of them are from working class backgrounds is something to do with it? Maybe the closure of mental health institutions has simply led to the transcarceration of the mentally unwell who do harmful things into prison. Maybe prison numbers are going up because of these people are what David Blunkett described as the ‘wreckage of neo-liberalism’ – the non-neo liberal option is to change the type of society that leads to this outcome. In this context all the stuff about rehabilitation, education, training is the type of reformist waffle that we get from the Howard League and the Prison Reform Trust – middle class do gooders trying to help the ‘needy’. Capitalism and neo-liberalism produce very harmful behaviour, most of it is carried out by states and corporations and not individuals, the prison system is a disciplinary device for the working class. There is a really interesting debate to be had about what we do about the large amount of sexual and physical assaults that mainly men carry out against women and children. If you were to jail every one for a violent offence then a gulag system woudl be required.
“There is a really interesting debate to be had about what we do about the large amount of sexual and physical assaults that mainly men carry out against women and children. If you were to jail every one for a violent offence then a gulag system woudl be required”
And a study reported today (from the BMA) state that tens of thousands of domestic violence goes unreported. They also quote the British Crime Survey that states that 1 in 10 think domestic violence is “something that happens”….
I witnessed a woman getting beaten up, a couple of years ago, on a tube platform. It was rush hour in the morning and the platform was heaving with commuters and nobody blinked an eye witnessing this woman being beaten. I was the only one who intervened.
But it also reflects the position of women within this society (the powerless position of children as well within the family)and there is still this belief that women “ask for it”..
My experience of members of my familly being in prison is that as a punishment, there is absolutley no point in anyne being in prison for more than TWO years.
It is the first two years which mean that you lose your job, probably lose your house, lose your wife/ girlfriend if you are a bloke (if you are a woman maybe lose your children as well as yr bloke) have the psychological shock of deprived liberty, go through the depressiona nd brutalisation.
A longer sentance than that just allows prisoners to become further institutionalised and less able to cope once released, aand therorfre more likely to reoffend.
Of course it depends on whether the sentancing policy is there to deal with crime or to please Daily Mail columnists.
Andy,
I think people would be horrified if the sentence for murder was reduced to two years. Is that really what you want?
I broadly agree with Dave’s point (though don’t see why a state prison is somehow more socialist than one run by a voluntary organisation or even by the private sector – the state doesn’t exactly strike me as the carer of choice in many cases).
But then again, dave has also been ranting (:)) abour the need to jail more car drivers. can’t have it both ways comrades.
The key point the “prison works” people are trying to make is that whilst they are off the streets offenders are unable to commit further offences.
I’m loth to admit it, but there is some fairly sophisticated research in this area which suggests that prison can “work”. The idea is that the experience of having been in prison does deter some people from reoffending, at least for a limited time – so a six-month sentence ‘buys’ nine months without offending, let’s say. (Yes, there are all sorts of unpleasant assumptions built into this model, which I’ll go into in a minute. Bear with me.) What’s interesting about this argument – which seems to be borne out by the data on reoffending – is that it tends to favour shorter prison sentences. The ‘shadow’ of the prison sentence doesn’t seem to get any longer as the sentence itself gets longer, so diminishing returns rapidly set in: a 36-month sentence only ‘buys’ 39 months without offending, and 10 years will ‘buy’ 10 years plus three months. On cost grounds alone, longer sentences are really hard to justify.
All this, of course, is based on the assumption that crimes are instantly recognisable as bad deeds committed by criminals, and that criminals are instantly recognisable as bad people who commit crimes. The reality is a lot more complex, and by and large I agree with atis mia – a socialist perspective should start with harmful acts, irrespective of their legality or illegality, not with illegal acts which may or may not be harmful.
Having said all of that, there are such things as burglary, TWOCing and street theft, and it’s hard to argue that the law shouldn’t have something to say about the people who do those things. Which is where I part company with atis mia – I agree that we need to change the type of society that leads to this outcome, but I don’t think that’s a substitute for all the stuff about rehabilitation, education, training. Even if there are lots of people who should be punished & aren’t, and lots of people who are getting punished who shouldn’t be, there are still some people going through the courts who deserve punishment – but that punishment should be accompanied by rehabilitation. Almost everyone who goes through the system ‘goes straight’ sooner or later – we owe it to them to help them make it sooner.
LOTB,
the problem with retributive punishment is that there is no way f scaling punishment for murder, even death is not adequate for a double murderer, say. There is the social protection angle, but that relates to a couple of hundred inmates in most prisons – for most killers parole for life could well be punishment enough.
The vast majority of crimes from burglary onwards a one year penalty would be enough (recidivists would get long sentences purely by re-offending).
Phil’s right – prison works.
I haven’t studied this academicaly, but friends and familly of mine who have been inside have dramatically changed their behaviour to avoid going back. It is also true that personal experince of friends and relatives going down does concentrate the mind and it is a deterence.
However, short sentances are more effective (and cheaper!) than long ones.
In many European countries sentances are much shorter than in the UK, including for murder.
The trouble is that over this issue politicians of all parties ahave been involved in a race to the bottom trying to outbid themselves in pitching for the dailt mail vote, rather than a rational debate about deterence, public protection, and a proportionate need to express societal disapproval.
BTW LOTB, it seeems the Labour party is quite happy for murderers to get away scott free, as long as they are employers. The numer of prosecutions has gone down at the same time that the number of deaths at work has gone up under labour.
Andy,
Cheap shot. And in any case – have you any evidence to show that the Labour Party is stopping the prosecutions?
How about answering the point about two year sentences for murderers.
all have mamanged to avoid the main point that I made – that it is a certain group of poeple who end up being put in prison. All of the research about re-offending rates is really about reconviction rates ehich is categorically not the same as re-offending rates. Given that 99% people who do harmful things are not put in a cell the sample you are looking at in the system is skewed and buys into the argument that there is a rationale for this particular group of people being there. The criminal justice population is made up of particular kinds of people who do particular kinds of things – not necessarily the most harmful. Most murders are either relational (e.g. “If I can’t have you neither can anyone else”) or street based violence based on a mixture of a version of masculinity and inequality – it is in the data – go and look. Putting someone in a cell is an irrational response to these factors. Of course harmful behaviour needs to be tackled but we need to develop a hierarchy of harms and deal with them in priority e.g. 5,000 die each year because of hospital viruses which we could change in the short term but we see that differently because it does not fit in to the idea that bad or mad kill.
LOTB
I wrote about this a while ago:
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=402
UCATT commissioned a report that showed that in a six-year period from 1998 to 2004 Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecutions in construction deaths plummeted from 42 per cent to just 11 per cent. The study covered the deaths of 504 construction workers. It often takes over three years following the death of a construction worker before a company is brought to trial and convicted.
So convictions have dropped by 75%, and during the same period work related deaths have increased by 25%.
The Health and Safety Executives own internal audit concluded that prosecuations should be running at three times the current level, but the number of HSE inspectors have been cut under Labour.
Under a Llabour government the number of prosecution is falling and the number of inspectors has been cut! And deaths are rising.
But hey I understand that business profits have to be protected. You must be so proud of New labour’s Jerusalem.
Most murders are tragic familly quarrells where the murderer has to live with guilt and shame for the rest of their life. In many cases two years might be an appropriate tarriff.
Obviously if New labour was oconsistent in treating murder as laxly as it does corporate manslaughter, only a third of murderers would even be prosecuted.
I hate to be pendantic but in the case of tragic family quarrels in which someone is killed this would is manslaughter — murder is premeditated killing, not accidental or tragic. Corporate manslaughter might be higher up the hierarchy of harms than usual manslaughter because it often arises out of willful neglect in enforcing health and safety standards.
Andy,
You missed my point (probably deliberately). You haven’t presented any evidence of party or ministerial involvement.
Though, under your proposals people would be able to conduct a new Bopal and go to prison for two years, so that would really toughen it up.