CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

WHEN WE ATTENDED the Prison Governors Conference at Buxton this year,
my colleagues and I learned the disturbing but not unexpected news
that the total number of people locked up in British prisons had just
passed 65,000, yet another record. Even more troubling were the
gloomy--- but realistic---predictions that next year there would
probably be over 70,000 prisoners and that prison planners were having
to contemplate forecast figures of over 80,000.

In the years between the two world wars, the prison population in
England and Wales fluctuated between 10,000 and 13,000. This was a
period of high unemployment and much less prosperity than we enjoy
today. When I joined the prison service in 1963, we were responsible
for 28,000 prisoners. By the 1970s, there were 40,000 people in
prison. Prosperity and crime seem to be glowing, hand in hand.

The immediate cause of the present explosion of prison numbers was
the policies of the last Home Secretary, Michael Howard. His slogan
"Prison Works" has unleashed a tidal wave of prisoners propelled
through the judicial system into the prisons. Leaving aside issues
such as whether the prisons can cope and whether the country can
afford the substantial resources required to contain the ever-rising
prison numbers, the important question is whether this dramatic rise
in the use of imprisonment will benefit society and prevent future
crime.

The rise in imprisonment in the United Kingdom partially echoes the
quite extraordinary growth in imprisonment in the United States. In
less than twenty years the prison population in the USA has tripled,
and there are now approaching 2 million people behind bars. A
substantial new industry is developing to manage and profit from this
phenomenon. Private prisons are a major growth business. Thus a
powerful lobby is developing with a substantial vested interest in a
large and expanding prison population.

GOING BACK TO FIRST principles, we need to consider the purpose of
imprisonment and our attitude to offenders. The value of each human
being and the responsibility of individuals for their actions are both
important principles underlying our whole philosophy of criminal
justice. Of great importance too is the notion that few individuals
carry the sole responsibility for their actions: upbringing,
environment, the influence of others have all usually contributed in
one way or another to criminal behaviour. As for the purpose of
imprisonment, this has changed dramatically over the centuries as
punishments such as the death penalty, corporal punishment and
transportation to the colonies became unpopular, unacceptable or just
impractical.

So prison is now the ultimate sanction of the courts in dealing with
offenders. But what is the nature of this punishment? Alexander
Paterson, the great English penal reformer, coined a most important
distinction. "Prisoners are sent to prison", he declared, "as a
punishment, not for punishment." In other words, it was not the job of
the prison service to inflict further punishment during a prison
sentence; the punishment was the loss of liberty itself for the period
imposed by the court.

Paterson laid down that the acid test of a prison administration was
the proportion of prisoners who, having served a first sentence of
imprisonment, return for a second term. Few returns were the sign of a
good prison administration. Our present-day prisons fail the Paterson
test. High proportions of those serving sentences return to prison.
This is especially true of young offenders where the return rate may
be over eighty per cent. The published figures are incomplete as they
only include those caught and convicted for further crime. Because
people have to be released from prison for some years before a
conclusion can be drawn, the statistics are always well out of date.

What then should we be doing about crime and offenders? Who are these
offenders? They are, by and large, people who have had few
opportunities and many handicaps. They often come from dysfunctional
or disadvantaged families; they frequently have missed out on
education and training opportunities. Even more worrying, they have
often suffered serious harm such as physical and sexual abuse in their
formative years. The poorer sections of society and ethnic minorities
are heavily over-represented. Few prisoners have employment records.

There are considerable dangers in incarcerating an ever-growing
number of people. Locking people up does not just take them out of
circulation. It may make them worse. As David Waddington, Home
Secretary in 1989-91, said, "Prison is an expensive way of making bad
people worse."

So what is to be done? First, make less use of imprisonment. We
should use alternative penalties. Fines, community service, probation,
attendance centres, electronic tagging are all available. But
community penalties need to be further strengthened, particularly by
giving the courts the powers to order attendance at training courses
which are designed to reduce offending behaviour. If people can find
meaningful and satisfying work, they are less likely to commit crime.
We must put more resources towards education and training. Prison must
be used only as a last resort, for dangerous and violent offenders
from whom the community requires protection. Prisons can then
concentrate on a much smaller group of offenders. The task for the
Prison Service, after ensuring safe custody, is to offer a challenging
and demanding programme of activities to reduce further offending on
release.

BUT THE PROGRAMME outlined above only deals with a part of the
problem. There is much more to do. The underlying causes of crime need
to be identified and action taken, for example to reduce social
exclusion and long-term unemployment. But action to tackle the causes
of crime has to recognize another range of problems at a deeper level.
There is much to be questioned about our society's present priorities.
Radical change in society's attitudes may be needed if we wish to make
a substantial and lasting impact on the problem of crime. Take the
problem of alcohol and violence, for example. There is a great deal of
evidence of a close link between alcohol and violent crime. Yet
measures to reduce the dangers of excessive consumption of alcohol are
often opposed by a powerful lobby of all the vested interests in
alcohol manufacture and selling. What are our society's real
priorities---profits from the alcohol industry or less crime on our
streets?

There are even wider issues. Our whole consumer society vaunting
success in material terms through the advertising industry may be
placing far too much temptation before people who have no hope of
achieving material success. Consider too the impact of the vast growth
in material possessions upon these people. Car crime was not a problem
sixty years ago. Stand in any city centre on any working day and count
the value of the motor vehicles around you. The temptation to steal
cars has increased to a degree our ancestors could not have conceived.
Unless we are prepared to question our preoccupation with materialism
and consumerism we will not make much headway in reducing crime.

There is much we can do to reintroduce to the world the old virtues
of frugality, simplicity and moderation. The need is for us all to
reorder our priorities, to dethrone the false gods of material success
and the selfishness bound up in this creed. A change of this order is
required to give sensible policies for tackling crime and disorder
some chance of success. Can we rise to the challenge of making such
difficult changes within our society?

Brendan O'Friel is the forrner chairman of the Prison Governors
Association.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry