The HOWARD league for PENAL REFORM: Intelligent Justice: Balancing the effects of community sentences and custody
A pamphlet for the Howard League for Penal Reform by Mike Hough, Stephen Farrall and Fergus McNeill
Lire l’article: Intelligent justice
Foreword
The debate over whether ‘prison works’ seems interminable. The Howard League for Penal Reform has well established views on this topic, but political realities make revisiting this question, and perhaps deconstructing assumptions on both sides of the argument, both timely and valuable. The prison population in England and Wales has more than doubled since the mid 1990s. While the latest projections over the coming six years suggest that this growth may be slowing, there is no suggestion that the number of men, women and children incarcerated on any one day will drop below 80,000. Statisticians’ most optimistic assessment suggests numbers could at most drop to the level first reached in 2007 – an increase of 86 per cent compared to the prison population in 1991.
At the same time, the realities of running a justice system during an age of austerity are becoming ever clearer. The Ministry of Justice must achieve £2bn annual savings by March 2015 and the failure to deliver sentencing reforms originally proposed by Kenneth Clarke has meant that around £130m of potential savings have been lost. A recent report by the National Audit Office found that the agency in charge of prisons and probation is now projected to overspend by £32m in 2012-13 alone. If that is the difficult context for policymakers, then this paper, written by three leading criminologists on behalf of the Howard League, provides a framework for new thinking that might provide an escape from the current prisons crisis. The Ministry of Justice does not have the funds to build its way out of the overcrowding in the system, and there is little scope for further efficiency savings without endangering key principles of security and giving up on any pretence of a ‘rehabilitation revolution’. As the Chief Inspector of Prisons wrote in his most recent annual report, “if a rehabilitation revolution is to be delivered, there is a clear choice for politicians and policy makers – reduce prison populations or increase prison budgets.” This paper begins by examining the perennial arguments around the efficacy of community sentencing over short spells in custody. An even-handed analysis concedes that the picture is not a simple one, and that indeed it is the very complexity of the problem that necessitates a value-based approach to penal policy. It suggests that any cost-benefit analysis must take into account the long term impact of dramatic increases in imprisonment, which bring with them increases in a number of social problems that themselves sow the seeds for future crime: be it family breakdown, drug and alcohol addiction or poor physical and mental health. In the United States for example, this has seen the creation of a system “that feeds upon itself” and which has left many individual states near bankruptcy.The authors conclude by asking for a new emphasis on not simply the prevention of reoffending through deterrence or incapacitation, but on constructing a penal system which seeks to encourage compliance with the law. This idea that people respond best when buying into behaviour such as abiding by the law, rather than being constantly compelled or cajoled into doing so, has powerful implications for future policymaking. It suggests, for example, that a narrow focus on paying providers by their results using the limited picture of reconviction rates may not be the best way to structure prisons and probation. It also suggests that an overweening focus on containing risk, essentially basing a system on a fear of failure, precludes redemptive narratives that promise more success in changing lives and reducing crime. Is the penal system to be based on unaffordable expansion and a fear of failure, or shall it live within its means and celebrate success? This is a question that must be answered sooner rather than later.
Frances Crook
Chief Executive, The Howard League for Penal Reform
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