Justice reinvestment and cutting crime

Get out of jail: the prisons arms race and justice reinvestment

Last weekend's bizarre row over David Cameron's proposal to introduce prison ships ‘to ease Britain's overcrowded jails' revolved largely around who told what to whom and when, and whether Cameron just made the policy up on the spot without telling anyone else. What was missed in the brouhaha were two important points: firstly that a prison ship or two would not do much to ease prison overcrowding, but would simply accommodate a few more of Britain's spiralling prison population for a period; and secondly, that a policy that assumes exponential increases in prison numbers and then works out how to accommodate them is bound to fail in the end.

But perhaps these points were lost because we seem to be in a prisons arms race now, and have been one way or another, since the early 1990s. Prison numbers have risen inexorably, from less than 50,000 in 1990, to 66,000 in 2000 to the latest figures - over 83,000 in January 2010. And present projections suggest that figure could be almost 100,000 by 2015. Not to put too fine a point on it, we bang up more people in England and Wales (169 per 100,000) than anywhere else in western Europe.

Yet at the same time, crime is falling substantially: household crime such as burglaries is down 43 per cent since 1995 and violent crime by 43 per cent: one might expect to see fewer prisoners as a result: but the truth is that more people are being sentenced to more prison terms for fewer crimes.

There are small signs that the ‘bang-em up' race is abating, at least as far as Labour is concerned. The government is no longer planning to build a range of so-called ‘Titan' prisons and is pursuing initiatives such as ‘custody-plus' and rehabilitation pilots in prisons. The Tories, though, still seem to want simply to lock lots of people up now and in the future. The whole debate on sentencing and imprisonment in any event takes place against a fairly toxic media stew of denouncing as weak any proposal that doesn't involve sending more people to jail for longer, harsher sentences.

But of course we all know that prison simply doesn't work as a rehabilitative tool: it does not, we know, do much to stop or reduce reoffending and, except for the necessary protection of society from its most serious offenders, it serves more to perpetuate its own population than anything else. It works only if we believe that punishment, regardless of the long term consequences for society of such a stance, is the be-all and end-all of the criminal justice system.

Of course the increasing prison population figures are not a ‘free good': the resources provided in building and maintaining ever-expanding prisons are a hefty forward commitment of budgets. In a period of sharp financial restraint, now might be the time to look at more radical routes forward than building more jails. The key lies in taking a much wider view on what leads to offending in the first place, and what role a whole range of institutions other than prison might play in reducing reoffending. This is the subject of an ambitious but well researched report recently by the House Of Commons Justice Committee, ‘Cutting Crime: The Case for Justice Reinvestment'. The report looks at how the concept of ‘justice reinvestment' works: from justice mapping, to the operation of community courts, to probation and youth courts; bringing a variety of agencies together to work on keeping people out of prison over the longer term. One clear message is that agencies offering a range of inputs other than the courts and prison services need to be involved in co-ordinating responses. It takes planning to keep people out of prison. The report suggests, among other measures, redirecting proposed investment in prison building into ‘justice reinvestment' measures over a prolonged time scale: it is necessary to sustain such a move over decades rather than for the odd year or two. Where similar long-term planning has been undertaken it clearly works: Finland, for example, had incarceration rates approaching those of England and Wales currently in 1960: but a prolonged programme featuring many of the initiatives suggested by ‘justice reinvestment' has reduced the rate to just over 60 per 100,000 today AND crime held steady or decreased during a period of substantial crime increases elsewhere in Europe.

Finland's experience is perhaps instructive: they faced a watershed of moving inexorably upwards in prison numbers until they reached US levels - and by that point it is virtually impossible to break the self-perpetuating institutional population that it engenders. They chose another route. We're at that point now, and we need to make the hard and long-term choices that will cap and reduce numbers - and in all probability keep crime rates down as well.

Alan Whitehead

03 Feb 2010 15:21

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