Sophie Willett, of The Howard League for Penal Reform, reports on public attitudes to crime and punishment and the need for more evidenced based policies to reduce crime.
Sophie Willett, of The Howard League for Penal Reform, reports on public attitudes to crime and punishment and the need for more evidenced based policies to reduce crime.
The Times’ poll (£) into public attitudes on crime and punishment has found the public worried that sentences are too short and they blame the lack of deterrent as the principal reason for their fears over crime.
The timing of this poll is important; at this moment the prison population is teetering on the brink of a record high. Never before have we sent more people to prison; 126,000 men women and children last year alone. Consecutive governments boast about locking up more of their citizens in prison than ever before; a badge of honour for being the tough guy of politics.
But this tired rhetoric has failed to engage with the common man. After 20 years of being tough on crime, at a cost running into billions of pounds for the taxpayer, people still aren’t happy. Three quarters of those polled say that the coalition is no tougher than the previous government.
The reality is that sentences have got steadily longer over the past 10 years. The average time served of those on determinate sentences has increased by 14 per cent since 2000 and we now jail more people on life and other indeterminate sentences than the rest of Western Europe combined. Sending ever increasing numbers of people to prison does not work. People are still fearful of crime. So maybe it’s time to look beyond the Mitchell brothers’ school of tough politics.
Now is the time to focus not what is tough, but what is effective. If given a choice between a punishment that will reduce the chances of somebody going out and doing the same thing to someone else, or a punishment that will encourage it, I know what I’d pick. It doesn’t really matter what the remedy is, as long as it works.
Ever increasing prison populations are a sign of failure, not success. In recognising that the criminal justice system is a blunt tool, and that lasting solutions to crime lie outside the confines of the prison cell, the government is taking a major step towards meaningful reform that will shape the way we respond to crime in the 21st century. I just hope they rely on empirical evidence on reducing crime to inform public opinion, and not the other way round.
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23 Responses to “Progressives should rally around coalition’s better instincts on prison reform”
AltGovUK
RT @leftfootfwd: Progressives should rally around coalition's better instincts on prisons: http://t.co/Nc8xF1G writes @TheHowardLeague's …
neilgall
RT @leftfootfwd: Progressives should rally around coalition's better instincts on prisons: http://t.co/Nc8xF1G writes @TheHowardLeague's …
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Jack Barker
RT @leftfootfwd: Progressives should rally around coalition's better instincts on prisons: http://t.co/Nc8xF1G writes @TheHowardLeague's …
Anon E Mouse
Sophie Willett – If you tried living on some inner city sink estate on unemployment benefit and you kept getting your house robbed you may feel differently. Does anyone at The Howard League come from a council estate?
Prison works. If a rapist is behind bars he cannot commit the act of rape.
People released from prison who go on to reoffend show they should be locked up for longer – the judges know it. Normal people know it. The last Labour government know it. The current government know it.
The reason they are letting people out is to get the costs down and to try to argue that the last government were wrong means you aren’t living in the real world.
Labour were right to lock people up for longer and the current government are wrong not to. (That hurt saying that)