Examination of Witnesses (Questions 334
- 359)
TUESDAY 3 FEBRUARY 1998
MR PAUL
CAVADINO, PROFESSOR
ANDREW RUTHERFORD
AND MR
ROB ALLEN
Chairman
Good morning, gentlemen. Welcome to the third
oral evidence session of our inquiry into alternatives to prison.
I apologise for keeping you waiting. I gather that a further submission
from Mr Cavadino arrived in the post this morning. You are welcome
to refer to it but we have not seen it yet. We will take it into
account when we are drawing up our report but Members here will
not be aware of it. May we start by putting to you some general
questions on the use of custodial and non-custodial sentences,
and the relationship between the probation and prison services.
Mr Winnick.
Mr Winnick
334. I know about the Howard League, which
has been around for a long time, and many of us have the greatest
respect for it. I know about NACRO, but I do not know much about
the Penal Affairs Consortium. Since that organisation was very
much to the fore in questions last week, perhaps you will be good
enough to give the Committee some information on what the Penal
Affairs Consortium really is and who makes up the organisation.
(Mr Cavadino) The Penal Affairs Consortium was formed
in 1989. The purpose of it was to co-ordinate work of organisations
involved in the penal system, in pressing for reform of the penal
system on issues where those organisations had a consensus. The
membership is now 34 organisations. It ranges from organisations
representing prison governors, prison officers, prison chaplains
and other groups who work in prison. It also includes probation
service representative organisations. It includes organisations
of a charitable nature working with offenders, such as NACRO,
the Apex Trust and New Bridge. It includes organisations working
with prisoners' families and it also includes penal reform organisations.
So it is a wide-ranging alliance of groups involved in the penal
system for the purposes of issues where those organisations agree
to co-ordinate work in favour of reform.
335. The two organisations here, apart from
your own, are members of your consortium?
(Mr Cavadino) Yes. NACRO and the Howard League are
among them.
336. I am going to ask you about prisons,
etcetera, but having had witnesses last week, I must bring to
your attention the fact that when your organisation was mentioned,
and presumably you know of the evidence that was given last week—if
you do not, you will ask me or the Chair—I asked the witnesses
whether they considered that your organisation, the Penal Affairs
Consortium, was an anti-prison conspiracy. One of the replies
from one of the witnesses before us last week said, "yes".
Then he said he would ask another of the witnesses to give comments
to us. Basically, the answer was that your organisation, in particular,
is one which is anti-prison, more-or-less subversive of the rule
of law. In fact, I believe when I asked him that, that his reply
was "yes"; that, in effect, anything that could be done
by your organisation to undermine any confidence in prisons you
are only willing to do. What would be your comments on those sorts
of matters?
(Mr Cavadino) The suggestion would imply
that our member organisations, which include the Prison Governors'
Association, Prison Officers' Association and the organisation
representing prison chaplains, the organisation representing doctors
and pharmacists who work in the health care service in prisons,
together with organisations like the Association of Chief Officers
of Probation, whose members work in prison and seek better co-operation
with the prison service in their work, were anti-prison. It is
clearly a nonsensical suggestion. If you look at the proposals
which we have made for the reform of the penal system, our broad
view is that prison should be used sparingly for two reasons.
First, that most offenders can best be dealt with by forms of
community supervision. Secondly, if prison is not used sparingly,
if the prison system becomes overcrowded and over-stretched, it
is more difficult for the prison service to carry out the job
which those working in the service want to do; namely, a job of
providing constructive regimes which stand a real chance of preventing
reoffending on release. So our view is that we want to see a more
effective prison system, as well as a more effective system of
community punishment. The arguments we are putting are in favour
of both those things.
337. The prison population stands somewhere
in the region of 65,000. It is pretty obvious from your papers
that you are very much opposed to such a large prison population.
Could you give us any estimate at all of the sort of numbers who
should now be in prison. If the figure is so high in your view,
and in the views of your colleagues, how many of the present prison
population do you think should be there—a quarter, one-half?
Can you give us some sort of indication.
(Mr Cavadino) Clearly the views on this will vary
among members of the consortium, so I cannot express a consensus
view on a precise figure. What we can say is that at the end of
1992, when the prison population was just over 40,000, there had
been a real effort to reduce the unnecessary use of imprisonment.
The then Conservative Government, the successive Home Secretaries,
including Douglas Hurd, David Waddington and others, had carried
on a policy which was designed to try to increase confidence of
the courts in intensive non-custodial measures, as a better option
for some of the people who might otherwise be imprisoned. Since
that time, the prison population has risen. Last Friday it stood
at 63,604, so it has risen by over 50 per cent. Our view, which
I think I can express as a consensus, is that this increase is
undesirable, that a prison population more in line with what existed
in 1992 is appropriate. In order to get there, we would have to
ensure that all areas of the country have the sorts of supervision
programmes which would enable the courts to have confidence in
using them for many of the less serious offenders who are now
going to prison, with some real expectation that they would be
likely to reduce reoffending.
338. Do you take the view that where violence
has been involved and the court has found the defendant guilty
that it would be very exceptional indeed for the court not to
pass a custodial sentence?
(Mr Cavadino) If by that you mean serious violence,
then yes. As you will know, violent offences vary a great deal.
Some common assaults are relatively minor and technical, so it
depends on what sort of violence we are talking about. If you
had somebody who is before the court for an offence of violence
which is of the least serious kind, particularly if they are of
previous good character, then a probation order or a community
service order may be entirely appropriate.
339. If a pensioner has been slapped around,
would you consider that a serious matter of violence?
(Mr Cavadino) Yes.
340. You would?
(Mr Cavadino) Yes.
341. And where a person has been slapped
around who is not a pensioner? When no knife has been used or
anything of that kind, but there has been a beating up of a kind,
would you consider that sufficient for a custodial sentence if
the person is found guilty?
(Mr Cavadino) It would be sufficient. As you know,
the criteria in law require the courts to decide, before they
pass a custodial sentence, whether the offence is so serious that
only a custodial sentence could be justified. In certain circumstances,
although the offence itself may pass the seriousness threshold,
they may find for other reasons—reasons of personal mitigation—that
there is a good reason for passing a non-custodial sentence in
a particular case. Some court of appeal cases have given the courts
guidance to the effect that in certain cases, the fact that the
offender is of previous good character or has not got a long previous
record, or there is a non-custodial option which stands a real
chance of less reoffending by the offender—more so than
a custodial sentence—may be a reason for giving a non-custodial
sentence, but certainly the sorts of cases you have mentioned
could justify custody.
342. Do you think the Home Secretary should
state a figure above which the prison population should not rise?
(Professor Rutherford) I do not think it is a bad
idea. It has been done in the past. We refer in our evidence to
Roy Jenkins in the mid 1970s who did just that. Mr Whitelaw in
1981 came very close to doing just that in a speech to some magistrates
in Leicestershire. He warned about the dire consequences of passing
a figure, and that legislation might be needed to deal with it.
The clearest example in the sense of approaching it in that rather
coherent way was Douglas Hurd in the third Thatcher administration
which, as you know, Lord Windlesham has described as "Mr
Hurd's Indian summer". It was a period of quiet, reflective,
sensible approach to these issues, which disappeared out of the
window a few years later. The Hurd period, which Paul Cavadino
has referred to, the prison population coming down to round about
40,000—which is still twice as high as it was at the close
of the Second World War—is a figure that would make sense.
It puts England and Wales in the mid European league and not somewhere
up at the top of it where it is at the present time. It would
be a welcome gesture on the part of the Labour Government at the
present time to say it was aiming for something of that sort.
I take some encouragement from the Home Office prison population
projections which were published just a few days ago. This is
because for the first time they set out some clear policy scenarios.
They do not convey the prison population of the future as something
which is predetermined. The prison population is set in the context
of three quite distinct policy scenarios. We could cover more
than three but the Home Office statisticians have three. That
implies there are choices. This is why the timing of this Committee
is so important at the present time. You do not have to wait for
the prison population to be delivered by some providential storm
blowing across the Atlantic. The policy makers have a clear role
to try to decide what it should be. I hope the Committee will
fill some of the vacuum which has been created by politicians
over the last year, in showing some sort of leadership in an issue
which requires cool, collected, calm, rational discussion.
343. We always try to provide leadership
in our respective fields and we shall see what happens when we
try to come to a conclusion. Do I take it from your answer, and
from those of your two colleagues, that you are opposed to the
building of new prisons?
(Professor Rutherford) Not necessarily. There may
be a case for replacing some of the prison stock; some of which
is pretty ancient and some of which is very inconveniently located.
Certainly the Howard League has thought, for a long period of
time, that in terms of total capacity in England and Wales we
actually have more than enough. This is why the recent projections
are rather helpful. There is a danger of "predict and provide"
as a model for penal policy. What perhaps is becoming clear is
that there are choices. So to get involved in some major prison
building programme at the present time, simply because one accepts
a particular policy scenario for the future, is probably not the
most productive thing to do.
(Mr Cavadino) May I simply say that the consensus
view of the Penal Affairs Consortium is not opposed to the building
of new prisons. What we are concerned about is that the prison
system should not be expanded to the extent that resources are
devoted to making a much bigger system, but one which is very
over-stretched and cannot do its job of rehabilitating prisoners
properly. We would like to see fewer people in prison, so that
the prison service can use its resources to do a better job, but
that is not the same as being opposed to building new prisons.
344. Clearly you are very keen to see less
people in prison. But what do you say to the argument that, although
the prison population is far too high, at least society itself
is being protected while the criminal is actually behind bars.
What would be your comment on that?
(Mr Cavadino) It is clearly true as far as it goes.
It is clearly true that while somebody is in custody they cannot
commit offences in the community. That, of course, has to be taken
into account in any discussion of the comparative merits of the
two different types of penalty. The long-term view is important.
We have to look at how far in the future particular methods of
dealing with offenders are likely to prevent reoffending in due
course, because many of the people who are now going to prison
go for relatively short periods. They go for a period of under
12 months, half of which is served in custody and half is effectively
suspended. So the period of confinement is relatively short for
a lot of people who are going to prison, in increasing numbers,
for the less serious offences. Therefore, the difference which
that makes is relatively small. However, rather than engage in
some kind of dialogue about whether custody or community sentences
are more or less effective than each other, because the honest
truth is that the reconviction rates of both are disappointingly
high, it makes more sense to look at how we can improve the position.
That is why we support the proposal, made in NACRO's paper, for
a national curriculum of community sentences. That means, in other
words, looking at the evidence of what types of supervision of
offenders work better than other types. There is increasing evidence
about that now. However, the types that work best, according to
the research, are types of supervision programmes which are applied
only to a minority of the people who are getting non-custodial
sentences from the courts at the moment. We favour, therefore,
a move towards pushing more of the resources of the probation
service, and the other organisations which work with it, to deliver
non-custodial sentences into the types of supervision which the
research evidence shows works best; both for some of the people
who now get non-custodial sentences, and for some of the less
serious offenders who are now going to prison. If we do that,
it would mean that we could then put resources realistically into
improving prison regimes along very much the same kinds of principles.
This is because the evidence about the types of approach that
work best in reducing reoffending by people under supervision
in the community, is very similar to the evidence about the kind
of regimes in prison which are likely to reduce the likelihood
of reoffending. So if we could push more people into the direction
of the most effective types of non-custodial supervision, it would
help both to improve the effectiveness of the community supervision
and also to improve the likelihood that prisons could provide
regimes for more prisoners, which would reduce reoffending on
release.
345. You are arguing, in effect, for more
effective co-ordination between prison and probation services
in dealing with offenders?
(Mr Cavadino) We certainly favour that. For example,
the methods which are used for, let us say, the treatment and
therapy of sex offenders, designed to control their deviant sexual
tendencies, the methods which are used in prison are not always
the same methods which are used under community supervision. It
is very important that there should be a marriage of types of
treatment for offenders, so that the most effective approaches
are used by both services. Also, that there can be continuity,
so that people who have been going through some kind of offending
behaviour programme in prison can have this continued when they
are under supervision on release. This, therefore, is crucial.
The whole question of co-operation between the prison and probation
services is crucial for the prospects of reducing reoffending
by getting continuity between methods of work.
Mr Cranston
346. You expressed disquiet at the extent
to which the prison population has gone up over recent years.
The critics put to us last week this proposition: if you take
the amount of wrong-doing in the community, (or at least the amount
of detected wrong-doing in the community), and you applied exactly
the same sentencing practices of the 1950s, there would be many
more people in prison than there are at present. How do you meet
that particular point?
(Mr Cavadino) That may be true. I would have to look
at the statistics to see precisely what the figures would show.
What is the point of the question? If it is true that a higher
proportion of people would be in custody—
347. I think a more general point is that
the critics do put fairly compelling empirical points against
the approach that you are advancing. I personally find it very
difficult to refute some of the points that the critics are putting
to support your particular line.
(Professor Rutherford) It is an argument that we have
seen in the United States developed by some supporters of the
massive prison construction programmes that have been going on
there. America, as you know, has quadrupled its prison population
since the early 1970s. There are academics—Professor James
Q Wilson, for example, recently of Harvard, and John J Dilulio
of Princeton, among others—who say America is getting softer,
not tougher. They say: "Come to America to see a country
that is soft on crime," because the proportion of offenders
compared with various crime measures is going down. In Dilulio's
attack on American softness, he attacks the Clinton administration
as being soft on crime. We can make the same sort of point. It
is not surprising that after a while you see the same arguments
coming to these shores. One of the problems is that it assumes
there is some standard measure of a level of crime in the community.
Where do crime figures come from? What do they mean and how do
we interpret them? If you recall, this Committee some years ago,
around 1990/1991, was asking the quite straightforward question:
is juvenile crime going up or down? You will see Home Office evidence
to the effect that it was going down. A fair bit of that Committee's
report at that time was just on this sort of issue. I think that
the measure of prison populations, which has been generally accepted
as at least providing a useful starting point—looking at
the numbers of prisoners per population of the country at any
one time—is quite a useful standard. The minute you start
trying to replace that, as some people have—and one of your
witnesses last week has done some work on this—you do run
into enormous problems of trying to get some sort of real evidence
as to what the common denominator is and how do we measure crime.
What measure of crime are we going to use? To some extent it is
a red herring going down this road, but it is one which tends
to be associated with proponents of even tougher measures.
348. This leads me to think, myself, that
perhaps one has to address these issues and not at an empirical
level. One has really to talk about the sort of society we want
to be and the way we want to treat people. Mr Cavadino touched
on prison rates across different countries in Europe. Now again,
the Home Secretary put to us very strongly a couple of months
ago, and produced evidence to the effect that we are not worse
in terms of the number of people we send to prison. In fact, we
are middle ranking across European countries. Again, I have not
actually grappled with the statistics, but certainly that argument
was put very strongly and he produced Home Office statistics to
support that.
(Professor Rutherford) On that question, if I am right,
Mr Straw was again trying to look at the use of prison with reference
to particular offence categories, as measured by total numbers
of recorded offences and so on. If you are looking at it in terms
of proportion of the population, there is no argument at all that
England and Wales and other parts of the United Kingdom are at
the top of the total. There may be other countries as well. They
are among the leaders in any measure of European prison populations.
(Mr Cavadino) I think I have got the point of the
initial question which I had not quite grasped at first. If there
had been a reduction in the proportionate use of imprisonment
since 20 or 30 years ago, does that explain increased crime rates
over that period? If that is the point which is being put, then
I do not think it does because so much else has changed, and the
impact of sentencing and punishment is only going to be a relatively
limited aid in reducing crime. Crime is more likely to be at a
higher level if you have weaker family and community structures.
We have seen considerable disintegration of both. Crime levels
are likely to be lower if there are strong controls in society.
By that I do not mean the repressive controls of the police state.
I mean the natural control over people's behaviour which comes
from strong families, strong communities, people looking out for
each other. The principal determinants of crime rates are not
related to sentencing, although sentencing has some limited effect.
That is reinforced by looking at what has happened over the last
few years in different countries. Prison populations have risen
at very differing rates in different countries. The changes in
crime rates across those different countries bear no obvious relation
to the increase in the prison population. I can provide a note
subsequently illustrating that with examples.[1]
Chairman
349. The quiet reflective period under Douglas
Hurd which you were talking about, did it coincide with the big
increase in crime?
(Mr Cavadino) No. The increase in recorded crime has
been fairly steady over the last 20 or 30 years. It has varied
and there is some evidence, for instance, that property crime
goes up in times of recession. Violent crime does not necessarily
follow that pattern. In times of more employment, when more people
have money in their pocket, they can go out drinking more; so
alcohol related crimes may increase.
350. Did crime go up or down when Douglas
Hurd was Home Secretary and when the prison population was relatively
low?
(Mr Cavadino) Recorded crime rates, as I recall, went
up over a considerable period of time, including that period but
long before that period as well. The change was not steady because
it did vary according to such things as the economic circumstances,
which I have referred to, as well as the longer term problem of
the disintegration of communities.
Mr Corbett
351. You were agreeing with my colleague
earlier about the usefulness of the Home Secretary setting some
kind of figure above which he would not want to see the prison
population rise. I cannot see the point of that, frankly: the
usefulness of it. Surely what the public want are to be convinced
that whether it is on the custodial side or the community side,
that courts are making sentences which are effective in trying
to prevent reoffence and reconviction. I came across this weekend
a lad in the Wootton Lakes of my constituency, now aged 18, who
has been convicted of 34 offences over the last four years, and
has been awarded a total of 38 and a half years' supervision orders,
some of them running concurrently. He is up visiting the courts
again within the next week for breach of the latest order. So
that community, looking at that, is going to take a great deal
of convincing that somebody sitting up here, inventing a figure,
is going to get a handle on this one. How do you respond to this?
(Mr Cavadino) I agree with you. I do not suggest that
there should be an overall cap on the prison population. We obviously
do not want to get into a situation where there is an arbitrary
limit on the prison population, and if the next offender who comes
before the court is a very serious or persistent offender, the
court is not allowed to send that individual to prison because
they have reached an arbitrary limit. What I do think makes some
sense, personally, is the proposal which Lord Woolf made in his
report on prison disturbances, published in 1991, in which he
argued that each individual prison should have a limit on its
numbers in order to prevent prison overcrowding. If the Home Secretary
wished, for reasons which were unforeseen or temporary, to overcrowd
the prisons above those limits, then he would need to get the
permission of Parliament to do so, which is not quite the same
proposition.
352. Let us talk about success in the service
at the moment. It was a point you made. There was experience to
show that some regimes in both custodial and in community sentences,
but applied only to small numbers of people, did have good rates
of success. It is the first time we have heard the word "success"
in relation to this inquiry, so I welcome it very much. If that
is the case—and let us now talk crudely about best practice—why
do not more people know about that and do it in both parts of
the system?
(Mr Cavadino) Part of the reason is that the research
has been accumulating steadily over the years. It has recently
been brought together in a number of places. Two of them are:
a book which was published in 1995 called "What Works?",
edited by James McGuire at the University of Liverpool, and more
recently last year the Home Office published a survey of all the
literature on this which was called `Changing offenders' attitudes
and behaviour: what works?'. The evidence, although it is widespread
(it is drawn from both sides of the Atlantic and covers a wide
range of programmes working with offenders) has not I think been
accessible enough for people to act on it. The second reason is
organisational. Given that we do know a great deal about what
reduces offending as compared with other methods of dealing with
offenders it is important to have an organisational structure
which shifts resources into those more effective ways of supervising
offenders. One way of doing that would be what we have referred
to as a national curriculum, in other words something laid down
from the centre about the sorts of supervision programmes which
should be available to courts in all areas based on research on
what works best in reducing offending. I would, in addition to
that, want to see other measures: monitoring and inspections by
the Probation Inspectorate clearly are important, but we could
move for instance towards some sort of system of accreditation
at a national level whereby programmes in local areas would be
accredited as meeting the required standards and doing the sorts
of things that we know are likely to lead to a reduction in re-offending.
There could be targets for increasing the proportion of work which
is done in each area which meets those standards over time. The
answer to your question about why it has not been done more widely
has been, until the recent past, lack of accessibility of research.
That is no longer the case and I think now it is an organisational
issue.
Mr Malins
353. You said a little while ago that we
should divert resources into the types of sentence that work best.
Is there any evidence upon which I could rely to the effect that
any particular form of sentence does work best in terms of reduction
or removal of the chances of re-offending?
(Mr Cavadino) The evidence to which I have referred
is not so much about different types of sentence because, as you
know, if you look at the re-conviction rates following custodial
sentences, community service orders, probation orders and so on,
the rates for each of them are disappointingly high.
Mr Corbett
354. And similar.
(Mr Cavadino) And not very different from each other.
There are some differences but they are not great. The point I
am making is that if for example you give somebody a probation
order there are different ways of working under probation supervision
and some of those ways of working, on the evidence, seem much
more effective in reducing re-offending than other ways. As for
what the evidence of that is, you will find when you have a chance
to read the paper that I have summarised much of it in a long
paragraph, paragraph 25, which highlights a series of research
studies. The most effective programmes of work on supervision
with offenders have been found to concentrate on offending behaviour
rather than being general counselling approaches. They concentrate
very specifically on the attitudes of the offender which have
led him or her into offending, and also on the ways in which they
act. You will be familiar with the jargon (which I do not like)
of cognitive behavioural skills. What that means, translated into
plain English, is the sort of approach which teaches offenders
to think through the consequences of their action, to restrain
impulsive behaviour, to restrain aggressive behaviour and to acknowledge
and face up to the impact of their offences on other people. That
clearly means the impact on the victims of their crimes. It also
means bringing home to them the impact of what they are doing
on their own families who often suffer a great deal as a result
of their offending. It also means bringing home to them the impact
on their own prospects in life. When you work with young offenders
it is interesting that when you ask them what their long term
aims are they are encouragingly conventional: they say that they
want a job, a home and a family. Bringing home to them the fact
that they are wrecking the prospects of that kind of stable life
is an important part of changing attitudes. That kind of work,
which involves training in self-control, helping people to deal
with the sorts of situations that lead them into offending without
going off the handle, without responding to peer group pressure
(but without losing face), is very important in stopping them
from offending. In addition of course it involves training in
moral reasoning and that is where facing up to the impact of what
you have done on other people is very important. The detail is
summarised in my paper.
(Mr Allen) In NACRO's experience these sorts of approaches
are more successful if they are combined with efforts to provide
what again in the jargon is called vocational or pre-vocational
training and real efforts to find work. If there was a single
thing we would say that gives people the best prospect of staying
out of trouble it is a stable job paying a reasonable wage that
they have a reasonable prospect of being able to do for a period
of time. A lot of NACRO's work is involved in doing that, as well
as what can be quite technical programmes which aim to change
attitudes and behaviour, with quite a teaching element—and
the research suggests that the more didactic the element the better—and
partnership arrangements between probation services and agencies
such as ours and a range of other voluntary organisations to get
people jobs is an essential additional component.
Mr Singh
355. We are talking about rehabilitation,
comparing re-conviction rates, as though they are the primary
objectives of sentencing. Would you not agree with me that the
primary objective of sentencing as far as the public is concerned
is punishment and that the public sees prison as the appropriate
punishment in most cases of crime, and it sees prison as a deterrent
to those in the norm of society, that prison would stop somebody
like me or you from committing a crime because of the consequences
of imprisonment? Would you agree with me that if we reduce the
use of prison as a punishment then deterrence will go down in
terms of average public thinking, and public confidence in punishment
in terms of sentencing will go out of the window?
(Professor Rutherford) Let me pick up on the deterrence
issue. The research simply is not there to suggest that that is
the case. The thing about prison and crime rates is that there
is no predictable relationship between the two.
356. What is it that stops maybe you or
me from committing a crime?
(Professor Rutherford) I think it is probably getting
caught. People have their own moral standards about what is important,
but if people are asking themselves a question, "Should I
now commit a crime? I am standing in a bank. Should I rob the
bank or not?", if they have got to that point I suppose the
question of actually getting caught is going to be a pretty big
issue.
357. But the fact that you generally know
that if you go and commit a crime you are going to go to prison,
it is in your upbringing, your education system, that is why you
do not get to that point.
(Professor Rutherford) The public disgrace, the personal
humiliation, of being caught: as to what happens at that point,
a sensible society provides a lot of choices. Vast numbers of
people who get caught for quite serious offences are indeed cautioned
by the police or on the recommendation of the Crown Prosecution
Service and the caution is an extremely important filter at that
early stage. For many people cautioned by the police the re-offending
figures are remarkably encouraging. I am talking about 70 or 80
per cent of people cautioned by the police not coming to the attention
of the police again. There is a strong indication of simply that
process of being confronted with your behaviour, in the case of
a juvenile with your parents before a uniformed inspector, providing
a very salutary lesson. There are countries in the world where
people would go straight to prison. As you say, there are simply
not those options. At least our society has developed over this
century towards providing a range of options at every stage in
the process, including the sentencing stage, so that the idea
which we have grown up with over this century of prison being
the last resort seems to be a very useful policy guideline. That
does not mean to say that crime is not being dealt with seriously
if other alternatives are exercised at whatever stage in the process.
(Mr Allen) What we do know about the characteristics
of people who offend persistently and end up in prison or indeed
on community penalties is that they often have a range of personal
and educational deficits such as low literacy levels. For example,
40 or 50 per cent of people in prison have difficulty reading
according to a recent parliamentary answer. As well as deterrence,
which I think may have a limited impact in certain circumstances,
we need to concentrate on building up the stake which people have
in conformity; that has got to be an important part of an approach
to crime and that is what a lot of community supervision attempts
to do. It is an element of carrot and stick I suppose.
358. That may be so, but I am saying to
you quite bluntly as an ordinary member of the public that I am
not bothered whether people are badly educated or well educated,
whether they come from a broken home or not. They have committed
a crime and I want them to be punished. As a member of society
I want them to be punished and the best form of punishment is
prison.
(Mr Allen) If you look at what some of the research,
including some recent research, shows about what people want,
it is not quite as straightforward as that. What people want clearly
is that offenders do not offend in the future and that they are
protected from crime in the future. They want people to pay back
for the damage or harm or loss that has been sustained to the
victim, and this is where there is a lot of interest in so-called
restorative justice, which emphasises much more the offender making
amends either to the victim specifically or to the community in
general rather than punishment. There is a lot of evidence that
people find that sort of approach satisfactory when it is discussed
in detail. Clearly a survey that just says, "Do you think
offenders should be punished? Yes or No", will allow headline
writers to say that that is what people want. But a more full
and detailed questioning of what people want reveals something
more interesting ultimately because it is not just about punishment.
It is about success, what works, and it is also about victim satisfaction
and the sorts of things that restorative justice can provide.
359. Are you saying that because you may
be looking for the fact that people may say other things in more
complicated surveys to back up your arguments against prison?
(Mr Allen) I am not saying it. The recent research
that was done by Professor Hough at the South Bank University
found that people did not think that more prisons should be built
as a way of dealing with the crime problem. The key finding was
that people are quite seriously misinformed about sentencing practice
in particular. They routinely underestimate the severity of our
existing system for dealing with offenders. What he is suggesting
is that rather than a policy of greater and greater use of imprisonment
we need to find ways of communicating effectively to members of
the public the real picture, and again I would think that as well
as doing that we need to find ways of involving members of the
community rather more in the way the system works. I do not think
public confidence is to be gained by making community sentences
tougher and tougher with greater and greater measures of enforcement,
although there may be some element of that. Alongside that one
needs to open up the system so that people have a better understanding
and perhaps are involved in decision making. There are some pilot
programmes, certainly in the United States, on reparative probation
and diversion programmes which seek to do this, to give the public
a real say in what offenders should actually by way of community
reparation.
Chairman:We will explore that later if we may.
1 Note by witness: For example, England and
Wales, which increased its prison population by 18 per cent between
1987-96, had a 29 per cent increase in recorded crime while Scotland,
with a much smaller increase in the prison population (eight per
cent) saw recorded crime rise by eight per cent. Italy, which
had a much sharper increase in the prison population than France
(42 per cent compared with 7 per cent) also had a larger increase
in recorded crime (30 per cent in Italy, 12 per cent in France).
However, France's rise in recorded crime was higher than that
of Switzerland (6 per cent), which increased its prison population
by 17 per cent. Sweden, which increased its prison population
by 21 per cent, had an 11 per cent increase in recorded crime-an
identical increase to Northern Ireland, which reduced its prison
population by 12 per cent over the period. Full details can be
found in Tables 1A and 1B of "Home Office Criminal Statistics,
England and Wales 1996, Cm 3764. Back
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