40. Memorandum submitted by
SmartJustice
1. SmartJustice was launched in 2002 and
is run under the auspices of the Prison Reform Trust. It is funded
by the Network for Social Change, the group behind the successful
Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt Campaign and the Big Lottery Fund.
Our head office is in London and we have a regional office in
Durham, funded by The Millfield House Foundation and the Northern
Rock Foundation which covers the North East of England. We campaign
for and promote community solutions to crime. Our target audience
is the general public via the populist media.
Our work includes public events and regional
work, extensive media coverage, talks to a wide variety of groups
and regular briefings on criminal justice. Our alliance of supporters
include the National Union of Students, Business in the Community,
the Prison Officers Association, The National Council of Women
and Barnado's. Current activities include SmartJustice for Women
which is campaigning for more alternatives to prison and projects
that tackle the causes of women's offending and SmartJustice for
Young People which is focusing on why young people commit crime
and what are the solutions.
INTRODUCTION
1. SmartJustice is pleased to have the opportunity
to input into this timely and much needed inquiry. Our response
focuses on community based solutions and the evidence that they
work and promoting/highlighting public confidence in this area.
Kimmett Edgar, Head of Research at the Prison Reform Trust has
also submitted a section on Restorative Justice in this report.
RESPONSES TO
QUESTIONS
Q1. Community based solutions with evidence
they work
Please see attached document. [Not printed]
Q2. Increasing public confidence in alternatives
to custody
1. There are two issues that are important
to this area, as a starting point it is important to obtain a
realistic picture of public support for alternatives to custody
(not gleaning it from what the tabloids would have us believe
about what the public think) and from there focusing on promoting
these programmes as a viable alternative to prison.
2. Crime produces a range of emotions. Sympathy
for offenders generally isn't one of them. Victims of crime can
feel angry, fearful, hurt and frustrated with a criminal justice
system they believe is letting them down. These emotions are fuelled
by tabloid rhetoric and politicians who vie with each other to
talk ever tougher on crime.
3. Meeting this emotional response with
a rational discussion about reducing the prison population was
always going to be fraught with difficulties. But surveys have
shown that the public does not necessarily equate tough on crime
with more people in prison. The recent SmartJustice and Victim
Support survey Crime Victims Say Jail Doesn't Work, published
in 2006, showed that almost two thirds of victims of crime do
not believe that prison works to reduce non-violent crime and
offences such as shoplifting, stealing cars and vandalism. The
survey revealed overwhelming support for programmes that focus
on prevention and in particular more support for parents, more
constructive activities for young people and more drug treatment
and mental health provision in the community. It also found that
more opportunities for the public to nominate schemes for Community
Payback would increase community involvement and confidence in
the benefits of community service.
Our survey on women in prison, the first to
be conducted on this subject, published on March 6th exclusively
in Best magazine and the Mirror newspaper shows similar results.
The survey also by ICM shows that over two in three (67%) said
prison was not likely to reduce offending amongst women and almost
three quarters (73%) did not think mothers of young children who
commit non violent crime should be locked up.
Instead there was overwhelming support (86%)
for community alternatives to prison—for example, centres
where women are sent to address the causes of their crimes whilst
also having to do compulsory work in the community.
The majority (77%) also thought it would be
more effective for female drug addicts who commit non violent
crimes like shoplifting to undergo drug rehabilitation treatment
as well as doing compulsory work rather than being sent to jail.
And a MORI poll for Rethinking Crime and Punishment,
completed in 2004 showed that the public thought that better parenting
(57%) better discipline in schools (46%) and more constructive
activities for young people (41%) were more effective than putting
more offenders in prison (11%).
4. Therefore, starting from this point,
a well worked up strategy for promoting alternatives to custody
needs to be adopted. The first hurdle one encounters is the language
used. The very term "alternatives to custody" places
prison as the central concept in the debate about criminal justice,
"alternatives" makes it sound like anything other than
prison is almost secondary. We need to find, new, more positive
terms for "alternatives to custody". Another example
is "Restorative Justice". This term means nothing to
most of the population, those that know the meaning of the term
mostly think it means just saying sorry. "Reparation"
is another obscure word. The Oxfordshire Youth Offending Team
call reparation work "doing sorry" which at least says
more about what reparation involves.
Promoting alternatives must also begin with
the premise that it is very important to start from where people
are not from where we want them to be and that the more information
people have about programmes in the community the more their confidence
increases. Knowledge about these programmes is vague, often influenced
by the last tabloid article read about community service being
about painting fences and skiving off early. Prison is a singular,
easily understood concept; the alternatives are broad, wide ranging
and complex, giving information about the range of community orders
is therefore vital.
5. We suggest adopting an approach similar
to that of SmartJustice. We use pragmatic, common sense arguments
that appeal to people's self interest about living in a safer
society. Promoting alternatives to custody is not about "out
toughing" prison, this strategy will never work because the
restriction of liberty is the ultimate sanction, the key argument
is about effectiveness-community penalties for non violent offenders
are more effective than prison, punishment alone does not change
people, in fact most of the time it makes them worse. Our branding
emphasises public safety as the key reason for effective community
sentencing rather than "being nice" to offenders. This
needs to include a press strategy that focuses on getting stories
about the effectiveness of community sentences into the tabloid
media highlighting how community service is forcing offenders
to pay back to society for the harm they have done. The Community
Payback scheme is a good example of this because it is focussed
on making high crime areas safer places to live as a result of
the work done by offenders and involves the local community in
deciding what work needs to be done. This work needs to be recognised
and promoted through the use of plaques, local press etc. We also
need positive, abiding images of community service to match those
of prison. If the word prison is mentioned the public will think-bars,
walls etc, corresponding images for community service are vague
and scant. We need a proactive not reactive Home Office Press
Office, with a well worked up communication strategy to promote
community sentences focusing on best practice examples which include
strong images. These schemes need to be evidence based, with short
headlines giving figures about how these projects have reduced
crime and involving first person stories of offenders on these
schemes who have turned their lives around.
6. We also need a really creative communications
strategy that shows how early intervention and working with young
people at risk of offending is vital to crime reduction and also
a PR strategy showing how providing offenders with homes, training
and jobs is not about rewarding bad behaviour but providing the
tools that will decrease the likelihood of offenders committing
more crime. Above all we need to emphasize that the role of the
criminal justice system must be about preventing further victims
and not just punishing people.
Lucie Russell
Director
7 March 2007
| 
