Society

Addicted to punishment

Published 11 December 2006

Observations on prisons

Britain's status as the most punitive nation in western Europe was finally confirmed by the news that the prison population had passed the 80,000 barrier (which, together with 2,660 detained immigrants, is more than enough to fill the expanded Twickenham rugby stadium).

There are two causes - both propelled by tabloid-driven "public opinion". More people are jailed for minor offences, and huge sentences are handed down for serious ones. Short-termers have to be whisked from prison to prison to find cells, thus denying them the chance of rehabilitation, while long-termers face sentences that offer little hope of redemption this side of the grave.

"How do you tell a man straight from court who's been given a minimum 25-year sentence that his life is worth living?" asked a London prison officer, who tries to soften the blow for those facing most of their adult lives in prison.

That evening the prison officer sat and talked with such a man, fast-tracked him a phonecard and organised his "canteen" so that he would have such comforts as biscuits and postage stamps. "Last night he talked to me about suicide, but he's a bit more cheerful today," said the officer. Whatever the prisoner had done, without question, ten years ago the tariff would have been substantially less. The prison population crisis is fuelled by these long sentences.

That man will occupy cell space equivalent to that taken by 50 criminals, each sentenced to one year (who usually serve six months each). In other words, inmates with long sentences "bed-block" the jails. Other officers pointed out to me men serving terms they felt bore little relation to either their crimes or their characters.

Forty years ago, when the Great Train Robbers were sentenced to 25-30 years each, the nation was stunned by the severity of the sentences. Back then, a few lifers (often those said to be "in denial" because they protested their innocence) languished indefinitely, but they were exceptional.

Sentences increase after highly publicised crimes. Some date the present surge from 1993, the time of the Jamie Bulger murder case. Ironically, the two boys who committed that crime were, thanks to liberal-minded interventions, released unusually speedily and without, thus far, the sky falling in.

Elsewhere, magistrates lose courage, and bail is increasingly denied. Foreign nationals linger inside awaiting deportation long after completing their sentences. After the summer panic about foreign criminals, former prisoners who had returned to families and law-abiding lives were rounded up and thrown inside again.

I was once reporting from a young offender institution when a young man on day release elsewhere committed a highly publicised crime. All such schemes were immediately suspended and hundreds of youths suffered for it. Instead of a structured, work-related preparation, they would be cast out of jail cold.

Locking up offenders for ever longer periods demonstrates a woeful lack of imagination. Non-custodial alternatives should be improved and we should turn a deaf ear to the chorus that the government has gone "soft" on crime. Elizabeth Fry, the penal reformer, said: "Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal." Not so long ago, we believed sufficiently in her campaigning wisdom to put her head on the £5 note.

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1 comment from readers

MattCorton
13 December 2006 at 11:54: Without wishing to denegrate your article to a soundbite, there does appear to be a whiff of the "isn't it just awful that there's so many people in prison - surely there's another way" theory that has gained so much space in the 'papers recently. Never have I seen a detailed "dossier", for want of a better word, of an alternative that could work as well as prison for both the criminal and the victim. There has to be a deterrent - if the conviction simply provided skills and "chances" with no punishment then it is hard to see a situation where prospective criminals would turn away from crime in favour of a harder, less supported route to work. It also takes no note of the quite plain fact that there are many people, mainly young people, who don't care at all about getting a job for their money, who see no good in such a situation, who aren't going to be helped by this. A side point, made from a position of cynicism perhaps, also pushes the thought that criminals clearly don't listen to authoritative voices in either school or police form, so why would they listen to another set of, albeit more liberal, authority figures trying to tell them to change their lives? There isn't a simple solution to this, but it is something that, whilst we live in a democracy, is one of the "huge" issues that democracy should have it's say in - and the overwhelming majority of public opinion favours prison and, therefore, the short-term security of that criminal not being on their streets, above anything else. If that's what the democratic public favour, then even if it isn't the most effective system, should we be railing against it when there's no guarantee another system would work any better in terms of ricidivism or protecting public safety? In any case, the only potentially succesful non-custodial alternatives (enforced work for an effective slave wage, counselling and the like) become criminal-focused, lending only more weight to argument that the victims get nothing out of the criminal justic system and the criminals everything. It is nothing like as simple as you suggest to drive a steamroller over public opinion when the potential results of such schemes are so unclear and so against the will of the public.

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