Memorandum submitted by David Faulkner,
University of Oxford Centre for Criminology
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper considers the directions from which
the effectiveness of spending on criminal justice has been approached
in the past, and the lack of evidence that it has been effective
either in controlling crime or in sustaining public confidence.
It argues that a more promising approach would be to follow the
example of "Justice Reinvestment", to place less emphasis
on central direction and build on ideas of local empowerment and
responsibility. The paper's focus is primarily on the effectiveness
of spending on prisons and probation, and hence on the effectiveness
of the courts' decisions on sentencing, because those are the
areas where spending on criminal justice is most under pressure
and where its effectiveness most in dispute. Spending on policing
and other aspects of criminal justice is greater, but it is less
contentious and different considerations apply.
EFFECTIVENESS—HOW
IT HAS
BEEN JUDGED
1. The effectiveness of spending on prisons
and probation has usually been approached by asking either:
— Are the two services being run efficiently,
or could savings be made while providing the same or an equivalent
standard of service? Or
— Is the capacity of the two services being
used to the best advantage, or could the demands made on them
be reduced without damage to public safety of confidence?
2. Some savings can almost always be made
from greater efficiency, as the National Audit Office found in
its study of community orders,[1]
but both prisons and probation have for several years been subject
to constant demands for savings and to rigorous financial control.
Any savings from greater efficiency which can now be made are
unlikely to be on a scale to make any significant difference to
overall expenditure. It is more likely that the pressures and
constraints on both services have reached a point where they are
operating ineffectively because they do not have the capacity
to do their jobs to an adequate standard. There are several examples—the
use of police and court cells when space cannot be found in local
prisons; the inability of the Prison Service to provide enough
courses for prisoners serving the new indeterminate sentences
for public protection to obtain their release; delays and lack
of facilities for treatment for those starting community orders
(as the NAO found); and the pressure on the Probation Service
to achieve economies of scale in the provision of unpaid work—so
restricting opportunities for work to benefit local communities
or for individualised programmes for offenders.
3. Whether fewer people could be sent to
prison or sentences could be shorter has been debated inconclusively
for 50 years. Arguments for a reduction have never prevailed,
except briefly in the 1980s, and there has since then been an
almost continuous expansion in the use of imprisonment and the
resulting prison population. The demands on probation have also
increased as the courts' use of fines has fallen, with more offenders
receiving community sentences instead; and as the supervision
or management of offenders has become more intense and—it
has to be said—more bureaucratic. There is a useful analysis
of sentencing behaviour and its effect on services in Appendix
2 of the Halliday report.[2]
REALISTIC AIMS
AND PURPOSES
4. A good starting point from which to judge
the effectiveness of spending on prisons and probation is the
aims and purposes of sentencing as set out in section 142 of the
Criminal Justice Act 2003, and the similar purposes for the National
Offender Management Service and for prisons and probation which
the government has set out in various publications. They include
punishment, the reduction of crime, the reform and rehabilitation
of offenders, the protection of the public, and reparation (all
in the Act); together with reducing re-offending, and ensuring
that victims feel that justice has been done. Ministers also,
naturally and rightly, attach importance to maintaining or increasing
public confidence.
5. It is difficult to say how far courts, prisons
and probation are, or could ever be, effective in achieving purposes
expressed in those terms. Studies have shown that some programmes,
or "interventions", can for some offenders and in some
circumstances reduce their rate or likelihood of re-conviction
when compared with the rate to be expected for offenders with
a similar background and history. But they have also shown that
sentencing has only a limited effect on the general level of crime,
whether by deterrence or by "incapacitating" offenders
through more or longer periods of imprisonment, and rehabilitation
also depends on social and economic factors which the criminal
justice system cannot control. Crime has fallen overall since
1996, but most of the reduction has been in burglary and property
crime where can be attributed more to improved security than to
sentencing. The available evidence for the impact of sentencing
on crime is usefully summarised in Appendix 6 of the Halliday
Report, while a more recent study has concluded that in terms
of reducing re-offending, community sentences are always more
cost-effective than custody.[3]
6. It can be seen that the increase in the
demands on prisons and probation, and in the expenditure to meet
them, has taken place with little regard for evidence of the effectiveness
of what they are asked to do. The increase has been driven not
by a rigorous or dispassionate search for effective responses
to crime, but by a more general public demand—a demand for
safety and security, for punishment as the means of achieving
it, and for imprisonment as the only punishment that "counts".
That demand is not universal, but it is the one that is heard.
Evidence of the system's effectiveness or lack of it has been
either disbelieved or disregarded as irrelevant. Ministers and
political parties naturally and rightly felt that they had to
respond to the demand, but the response they have given has had
the effect not of satisfying the demand but of making it more
strident and insistent—if punishment does not work, there
should be more of it, not less. Punishment does have an expressive
or declaratory purpose which government and the courts must also
take into account, but its "effectiveness" is then a
matter of social, political or moral judgement and cannot be measures
in instrumental terms.
7. It has thus become hard for Ministers
and political parties to argue for a reduction in the use of imprisonment,
or for any reduction in the severity of sentencing, without being
criticised for putting the public at risk. Judges and magistrates
are similarly constrained, and seem to have become more than ever
sensitive to any action or statement which might be seen as interference
with their independence. The system is acknowledged to be in crisis,
especially in prisons; no solution is immediately in sight; there
are few arguments that have not been heard before; there is not
much prospect of new evidence which could add substantially to
what is available already; and it would be hard to claim that
public confidence is any higher now than it was 15 years ago.
AN ALTERNATIVE
APPROACH—"JUSTICE
REINVESTMENT"
8. A more promising way forward might be
to see if the debate can be moved on to different ground.
9. Justice Reinvestment provides a promising
foundation from which that movement could take place. As pioneered
in the state of Connecticut and in a pilot scheme in Gateshead
in this country, it shifts some of the power to allocate resources
from central government to local authorities who are then able
to deploy them in ways which provide more effectively for the
safety and wellbeing of their citizens and communities. It also
enables them to adopt a more strategic and integrated approach
to the treatment and rehabilitation of offenders so that criminal
justice is more closely connected with the other services and
resources in the area, for the benefit not only of offenders and
victims but also for communities as a whole. The principles, practical
examples and proposals for carrying the ideas forward are in Justice
Reinvestment—A New Approach to Crime and Justice.[4]
Similar ideas informed the creation of the community justice centre
in North Liverpool and other schemes which are now being developed.
Another example of the approach is the Thames Valley Partnership's
work on "Making Good" (www.thamesvalleypartnership.org.uk),
which shows what can be achieved by engaging citizens and communities
in schemes developed for the government's scheme for "community
payback", especially if they can be involved directly and
not consulted remotely through representatives or websites. Examples
such as those are however mostly at the margins, depending on
the interest and commitment of particular individuals, and with
precarious funding and uncertain official support.
10. From a strategic and political perspective,
a movement such as Justice Reinvestment could form a natural part
of a more general movement towards decentralisation and the empowerment
of local communities and citizens. It would be consistent with
similar approaches and initiatives that are being promoted elsewhere
in government, including neighbourhood policing, and would respond
to calls for revitalising Britain's democracy. In respect of criminal
justice, it could begin to refocus some of the argument away from
central government and towards more local solutions, supported
by a stronger sense of local ownership and responsibility. Such
a movement would reduce the pressure on Ministers to respond to
every serious local event with a government statement or new national
initiative (and the temptation for the opposition parties to use
it as an opportunity to criticise the government). It would encourage
local people to act on their own initiative and to develop their
own resources. It may be significant that the murders of young
women in Ipswich not only helped to promote a national debate
about a comprehensive DNA data base, but also led to a successful
local initiative to deal with prostitution in the town.
11. A change in the balance between central
direction and local empowerment and responsibility raises obvious
questions about the administrative and ultimately legislative
framework within which the change would take place and the adjustments
that might be needed. The questions include the role of local
government and the extent to which local authorities should become
more directly involved or have actual functions transferred to
them. It is now recognised, for example, that the involvement
of local authorities has been one of the successful features of
youth offending teams. No-one is likely to welcome changes to
the Offender Management Act or changes to prisons legislation
at this stage, but a lot could be done administratively within
existing legislation, and especially by creative use of commissioning.
Similar standards need to apply across the country as a whole,
but that should not prevent services from taking advantage of
opportunities at local level and introducing arrangements which
are suitable for the local situation but may not be appropriate
or practicable elsewhere. Services and their partners or potential
partners in other sectors will need the space and the will—and
the encouragement—to create and sustain the relationships
that will be required, and central government will need to allow
them the freedom, the capacity and the trust to do that.
CONCLUSIONS
12. It cannot be assumed that local empowerment
and responsibility will by themselves reduce the public demand
for punishment and imprisonment, but there might be a shift from
public criticism of what are seen as remote national institutions
(government, the judiciary) to sympathy and support for local
efforts to find practical solutions. Locally devised solutions
might be more effective in their area than national schemes which
have to conform to central government's sometimes bureaucratic
requirements. In particular, there might be more interest in finding
ways of dealing with offenders that people can see make a difference
to their local communities, and in avoiding those which are expensive
and ineffective. However that may be, it should be better to make
the attempt than to go on as before.
David Faulkner is a Senior Research Associate at
the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology. He has written
and lectured extensively on criminal justice and government and
was a Fellow of St John's College Oxford from 1992-97. He served
in the Home Office from 1959-92, becoming Director of Operational
Policy in the Prison Department in 1980 and Deputy Secretary in
charge of the Criminal and Research and Statistics Departments
in 1982.
March 2008
1 National Audit Office Value for Money Report (2007):
The supervision of community orders in England and Wales,
available at www.nao.org.uk/publications/nao_reports/07-08/0708203es.htm Back
2
Making Punishments Work: Report of a Review of the Sentencing
Framework for England and Wales (the Halliday Report). London,
Home Office, 2001. Back
3
The Economic Case For and Against Prison, a report commissioned
from Matrix Knowledge Group by the Monument Trust, the Lankelly
Chase Foundation and the Bromley Trust, available at http://www.matrixknowledge.co.uk/prison-economics/,
2007. Back
4
Justice Reinvestment-A New Approach to Crime and Justice,
edited by Rob Allen and Vivien Stern International Centre for
Prison Studies, 2007. Back
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