I would seriously ask the current set of Home Office & Justice ministers to walk around any town centre unescorted late on Saturday night (come on, no-one’s going to recognise them, I’d bet real money 100% of them couldn’t name the Home Secretary much less recognise her, and as for the junior ministers, forget it). You may recall the last time the Home Secretary tried this, she needed a police escort and a stab vest.

I’d bet they wouldn’t do it citing security, yet each of us runs the gauntlet without armed guards or any means of defending ourselves every day. I’m not honestly sure they even recognise this phenomena. So really, the “tough on crime stuff” is just so much talk.

Certainly, in British society, there is insufficient anarchy and sufficient opportunity for me to feel that there is no reasonable cicrumstance that would justify any reasonable excuse for committing crime. Consequently, I see it as entirely a matter of personal responsibility.

“If however you take the view that if you put a person, *any* person, in the right situation, that they will commit crime, then you begin to look at solutions along the lines of reforming their situation.”

Well, if you want to be an apologist for scum, be my guest.

For years and years people have said – as you do – that if every crime were detected, then the punishments would need to be that much less harsh.
When I trained to be a teacher all those years ago, we were told there were three ingredients to changing people’s behaviour: Recency: immediate punishment/reward. Intensity: the force of the punishment/reward. Frequency: what are the chances of getting away with it/not being rewarded?
Well it works with my dog, anyway!
I suggest that the Police and courts are still pretty good with Frequency. We are mediocre with Recency: trials take ages. But, I suggest, we are pretty hopeless at intensity.
For a lot of people, the warmth, three meals a day, warm baths and showers and clean clothes regularly, as well as totally free medical provision and, yes, safety from crime and violence, are a lot more than they would get were they on the street/poor/in the armed services/old/back in the country which they left in the first place.
In these circumstances, prison ceases to be a deterrent and becomes an unaccustomed luxury.

I wouldn’t believe a word that man, or any man in the current Government, says. There is a fundamental and profund absence of credibility. I do not believe he or anyone in power actually understands the situation on the ground, in this or in any other matter, for if they did, their actions would be very different.

Today’s blog entry, funnily enough, is about just this issue. The blog in question is by a Magistrate of long standing.

Basically; some people grow up in situations which are outside of their control and make it many times more likely they will turn to crime. For example, children who have to be taken into care.

To be sure, they chose to commit a crime and most of their peers do not; but it equally sure that over the whole of all children who have to be taken into care, had they better parents and not been taken into care, they would have been many times less likely to commit that crime, or any crime.

> And call it revenge or whatever you like, if I live my life
> under the strictures of society

What strictures are these, exactly? why do they exist? are the strictures which now exist justified? in what way did you accept or have any choice or influence over the existence of those strictures? does this mean liberals living in say Iran, where homosexuals are judicially murdered by hanging, should expect to be punished for transgression? do we assume since we’re a democracy, the powers we grant by democratic process to the State will be *used* democratically? what about Damien Green? what about Mark Aspinall? what about the increasing use of summary penalties, where the policeman (who, in the heat of the moment, thinks you did it) is also your judge and jury?

> then I expect those who
> choose not to to be punished for the transgression. If there
> is no punishment for transgression, why should any of us
> adhere to the law? Because we’re all inherently good?

There is something very wrong here. You imply – I don’t know if you mean to – that strictures (law, presumably) are only adhered to because of the threat of what will happen if you break the law.

I do not believe for one second this is true. The vast majority of law naturally tends to define what the vast majority of people *never do* – commit crime. We do indeed behave as we choose to, because we choose to.

If you take the view there is *only* personal responsibility, that an individual is purely and soley willfully responsible for their criminal actions and that they choose, knowingly, to harm others, then the idea of reform is obviously problematic.

If however you take the view that if you put a person, *any* person, in the right situation, that they will commit crime, then you begin to look at solutions along the lines of reforming their situation.

I’m not well informed about situations and crime, but I do know for sure that you can take pretty much 90% of people, put them in a certain situation (Milgram’s 37, Abu Gharib, the Stanford prison experiment) they *WILL* behave in appalling ways.

When you know that’s true, it becomes very easy to imagine that people are primarily driven by circumstance, by poverty, by what their peers do, and can just as easily be upstanding citizens as criminals.

Most of us really are sheep. Baaa!

Any other punishment would itself be an injustice – a crime – just as much as the original act of crime which merited this punishment.

As such, the correct and just punishment *is* the deterence; knowing that if you commit a crime, you will bear the punishment.

If deterence requires us to strengthen the punishment in some way, to provide *extra* deterence, *then the punishment itself has become a crime for it is no longer appropriate to the crime*.

In fact, deterence really comes from *the chance of being caught*, not from the punishment when caught. If you believe you won’t be caught, the punishment – unless extreme – will not deter you, and if we make most punishments extreme (to compensate for a lack of policing) then we are deeply unjust, because we massively penalise those few unlucky enough to be caught, relying on their deeply unjust suffering to deter the rest.

Deterence is really about making sure you have an effective police force. It’s not about making punishments inappropriately – unjustly – harsh for the crime.

Also, if someone persistently commits serious crimes, I am not prepared as a taxpayer, to fund his free life (i.e. dole, tax credits, housing benefit, endless bastard children etc). I am prepared to fund his indefinite incarceration however.

So can prison “cure” all offenders and make good-little-boys of them? No. Can it make damn sure that after repeated chances they don’t get the chance to commit any more crimes? Yes, it really can. So two recommendations/requests.

1. Increase the prison estate to 120,000 places, so all persistent offenders are permanently locked up.
2. After your third serious crime conviction (probably your twentieth actual serious crime!), no release, ever.

If you want vote winning policies you would be surprised how popular this would be.

(And please bleeding hearts, don’t tell me how much it costs to jail people, what is the cost to an elderly person burgled, or mugged, or the shopkeeper forced out of business by thieves, or the person mugged by drunken violent unemployable buffoons)

And call it revenge or whatever you like, if I live my life under the strictures of society then I expect those who choose not to to be punished for the transgression. If there is no punishment for transgression, why should any of us adhere to the law? Because we’re all inherently good?

Personally, I don’t subscribe to this lunacy about “what led someone to commit a crime”. People make decisions and they should accept the consequences of those decisions. I don’t blame “society” or “circumstances” for the consequences of MY decisions. If you make a decision to step outside the law, you make that decision, for whatever reason.

End of.

People by and large grossly under-estimate the current range of penalities applied for crime. As a result, the Government has been continually hardening sentencing. As a result, many sentenace are now, in my opinion, unjust – disproptionate and summary.

Furthermore, while the Government has been hardening sentencing, it has not invested in the necesary prison facilities to support the inevitable increase in prisoners. As a result, the sentencing guidelines have been something of a hollow shell – which is a further form of injustice, for those who truly do deserve their sentences are not in fact receiving them.

Punishment. Is that what the penal system is about? what exactly *is* it for? is it just to hurt people for committing crime – institutionalised revenge? or is it there to make things so that criminals don’t commit any more crime when they leave? do we think that punishment will act to stop people committing crime when they leave? or do we think punishing people might in fact make them want to commit more crime? or do we think that the side-effects of punishment (loosing your flat/house, car and job) might well push people into crime? do we think punishment is in fact always even *just* – what about people who’s situation and circumstance is such their lives have led them to crime?

> Where is the sense of justice for the victim?

What is a “sense of justice”? is it the feeling of revenge? I do believe that punishment in return for crime is revenge, because I do not believe it has a significant effect upon recidivistism. If justice is actually about looking at what led a criminal to crime and trying to change things so they don’t do crime any more, a victim looking for revenge is going to find the justice system sorely lacking.

Yes-s-s-s-s…and no. I think there is a third thing; what people sometimes want is simply to punish, to inflict harm in return for harm. Not useful, but instinctive.

> I am not sure putting so many people inside for theft and other financial crimes makes a lot
> of sense.

It’s important to also consider the larger impact on the criminals life. If they go inside, they lose the place they were renting or they lose their house, if they had a morgage. It’s a crippling blow, setting that person back many, many years. If the goal of prision is to rehabilitate, crippling someones life after the leave prison is not useful. If the goal of prision is to punish, do we properly take into account the massive harm done to the criminals life after prison?

> If people are too greedy, let the punishment fit the crime. Why not make them
> stay at work or make them get a job, so they pay full reparaitons to the victims of their
> crime and pay full charges for the police and court work involved in finding them and
> bringing them to justice?

To some extent this occurs, I believe, for fines are a common penality. Indeed, the Government, in wishing to appear “tough” (which is cheaply done, since it simply requires rewriting a sentencing guideling), has grossly over-populated the prisons and so the Government is now instructing the courts to apply fines where-ever possible, including cases which previously would have attacted a jail sentence.

This is occurring at the same time as the judicial system is experiencing massive funding cuts and indeed while the State decides to engage in borrow-and-spend to address the current economic crisis. Why not spend some money on the justice system?

Justice is something most of us never have to worry about, since we are not involved in crime, and so I think by and large we are unaware of the extent to which the justice system has been sold down the river.

> I have never understood why, if someone is burgled, they not only lose their possessions to
> the burglar but then have to help pay to keep him in idleness in what can be a seminary for
> crime called prison. That only makes sense if the burglar refuses to co-operate with any
> sensible programme of rehabilitation, and refuses to work and pay recompense.

I suspect that by and large people know that prison does not reform. Given their individual inability to fix that problem, they must select from the options on offer, and there appears to be only the one, which is send the criminal to prison to punish him. The alternative is to do nothing.

This is in stark constrast to, for example, the Nordic systems, where prisoners keep their jobs and work normally during the sentences (unless of course they’re an actual danger to the public). These people, having completed their sentence, return automatically to society.

Why is so much wrong with our State?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1101785/Browns-U-turn-2-000-foreign-prisoners-granted-early-release–168-gift-taxpayer.html

‘Almost 2,200 foreign prisoners have been released from jail early with up to £168 each of taxpayers’ cash to compensate them for the loss of bed and board.’

£10 for the British pensioners for Christmas – £168 for the foreign criminals. £10 for the people who have contributed to the country for up to 40 years. £168 for people who have possibly contributed nothing to the country ever but have taken everything they could. That’s ‘fairness under’ Socialism.

Reply: First find the criminal. That is crucial- the clear up rate is very low so too many thieves reckon they can get away it.

And are you personally going to keep an eye on all of them 24×7 to make sure they don’t commit any more crimes? Didn’t think so. Where is the punishment? Where is the sense of justice for the victim?

I’m sorry John, but I can’t agree with you on this one.