A new book from Civitas: the Institute for the Study of Civil Society.
An 18-month study of the British Government’s policies for crime reduction has found that it has failed to learn even the simplest lessons from overseas experience. Crime and Civil Society, published by think-tank Civitas, is a companion study to Cultures and Crimes, an investigation of policing in four nations which found that Britain’s police were ineffective. Crime and Civil Society looks at other elements of the criminal justice system and found that the prison and probation services and the Youth Justice Board are also failing.
Government failing to get even the simple things right
The most basic measures necessary to encourage a law-abiding life on release are not being taken: particularly getting prisoners off drugs and providing basic and vocational skills. Efforts to reform young offenders (the responsibility of the Youth Justice Board), where hopes for reform must be the highest, are particularly inadequate, as the National Audit Office found (p.252). Drug treatment was often not available when needed and training courses begun during the custodial part of Detention and Training Orders were often not continued in the community. Prisoners continue to be discharged without any sustained supervision to discourage them from resuming old habits.
Failed Programmes
Offending Behaviour Programmes (such as thinking skills and anger management courses), costing at least £2,000 each, have been found not to reduce crime. Recent Home Office studies found that reconviction rates did not fall (pp.59-64). (Home Office Research Study No. 206; Home Office Research Findings No. 161.) In 2002-03 over 12,000 courses were completed at a cost of over £25m.
The Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP) has cost at least £45m since 2001. With typical hype, a press release headed ‘New report shows positive start for bold and imaginative scheme to reform the worst young offenders’ admitted that 84% of participants were reconvicted within 12 months of the start of the programme. Over half of offenders (53%) did not even complete the six-month programme. In other words, ISSP was more costly than other community sentences and was less effective. Similar schemes had been tried out in America and rigorously evaluated. They did not reduce offending, but the British Government disregarded this evidence (pp.246-49).
Drug treatment in the community. Millions have also been put into Drug Treatment and Testing Orders. They too have not worked. About 70% of offenders did not even complete their order and 80% were reconvicted of a crime within two years (p.142). (Home Office Research Findings 184)
Worse than when they started
The Government has placed great emphasis on its Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets. According to the Treasury, they are now supported by ‘rigorous performance information’. (Spending Review 2004.) However, in two cases performance has got worse: (1) fewer offenders are being brought to justice and (2) the number of robberies has gone up.
The baseline for robbery is police-recorded offences in 1999-2000: 68,782 crimes in the ten street crime initiative areas. The target is a reduction in those areas of 14% to 59,153 crimes. The Autumn Performance Report 2004 shows that there were 76,776 robberies, an increase of 12% and still 30% adrift of the target. In addition, there is evidence of a displacement effect from the ten street crime areas. Robberies increased 12% in those areas, but rose 20% in the whole country. (Crime in England and Wales 2003/04, Table 2.04.)
The original intention of the Home Office was to narrow the ‘justice gap’ by increasing the number of offenders brought to justice to 1.2 million by 2005-06. The target was amended in July 2004 and the deadline extended to 1.25 million offenders by 2007 08. The most recent Autumn Performance Report (December 2004) shows that 1.084m offenders were brought to justice by June 2004, still 20,000 below the starting point.
Crime surge in the early 1990s gives a false impression of later success
For the Government the problem is not too much crime, but exaggerated public fear of crime, whipped up by tabloids. In truth, the tabloid editors have to persuade people to go out and buy their newspaper every day and can’t afford to ignore the daily reality that their readers’ experience.
The Government’s short-term political horizon means that they focus on the fall in crime since the mid-1990s and ignore the huge increase before that. The reality is that the Government is taking comfort from a fall in crime from an artificially high peak in the mid-1990s that resulted from a surge in criminal activity because of some exceptionally counter-productive measures taken in the 1980s and early 1990s. The 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act weakened the police, and the introduction of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1986 increased the tendency for cases to be dropped, thus encouraging criminals to believe they could get away with it. The police increased the use of cautions and unrecorded warnings. The deterrent effect of sentencing was reduced for some of the most common crimes, notably car theft in 1988. The 1991 Criminal Justice Act prevented judges from taking previous convictions into account in most cases. Many academics undermined public confidence by continually claiming that crime was not really rising, as the figures suggested, but rather that there was a ‘moral panic’. The handling of young offenders was weakened by the assumption that, if they were labelled bad they would become criminals, and so crime had to be treated as a welfare problem not a police matter. The prison population was deliberately reduced, thus diminishing both the incapacitation and deterrent effects of jail (pp.8-9). The surge in crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s is captured by both the police records and the BCS.
Mr Blair’s personal responsibility
Ultimately the responsibility for the Government’s failures lies with the ambiguous strategy devised by Tony Blair in opposition, summed up by one of the most famous political slogans ever: ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. Characteristically, he focused on overcoming an electoral obstacle rather than solving a social problem. His difficulty was that, on the one hand, most Labour activists had utopian beliefs about the human condition and believed that criminals were victims of circumstance; whereas, on the other, most Labour voters thought that criminals were people who had done wrong and should be stopped. Mr Blair’s tendency to opt for the clever use of words, instead of confronting the substantive problem, has saddled his Government with self-contradictory policies. Ministers know that they need to sound ‘tough’, and for that sort of talk to be plausible, at least some of their policies have got to ‘look the part’.
Home Office in thrall to a utopian anti-prison mentality
Despite the blunt rhetoric of the Blunkett era, the dominant influence at every stage has remained a utopian dislike of prison, a naive view about how hardened offenders can be rehabilitated, and an underlying lack of respect for the mass of people. Previously denounced for being in a ‘moral panic’, they are now accused of the milder fault of excessive fear of crime. The Home Office also distorts evidence of reoffending. When prisoners are released and ineffectively supervised in the community by the Probation Service, their reoffending is blamed on prison. Perversely, the failed community supervision is then used as an argument for more community sentences instead of prison. Worse still, despite criticism by the Office for National Statistics, the Home Office continues to measure the impact of sentences misleadingly. The usual measure is reconviction after two years, but the two-year clock starts ticking at different stages: for those in prison it starts when they leave, but for community sentences it starts at the beginning of the sentence. This counts the incapacitation effect of community supervision but ignores it in the case of prison, where it is much greater. The Home Office then puts out misleading statements saying that reconviction rates are broadly similar.
Use of official statistics
What kind of crime problem have we got? The British Crime Survey (BCS) captures slightly under half of the crimes covered by police records. In 2003-04 only 2.844m crimes out of 5.935m were included. (Crime in England and Wales 2003/04, Tables 2.05, 3.01.) Moreover, the BCS starts in 1981 and cannot tell us about the long-term trend. To look beyond 1981 we have to use police records and they show that, by 1981, crime was over ten times what it had been in the 1950s. During the late 1980s and early 1990s there was an acceleration of the crime rate, which began to fall from 1993 (according to police records) and 1995 (according to the BCS).
The main problem with the present government is that, so long as crime is coming down or stable according to the BCS (not police records), they are content. But this means that we are in danger of settling down to being a high-crime society, compared with our own recent history and compared with other countries.
Fourth worst out of 39 European countries
There are two main sources of international crime figures. The International Crime Victim Survey of 17 countries found that we had the second highest crime victimisation rate, and the worst in Europe (p.4). Police records of crime are collated by the Council of Europe in the European Sourcebook of Crime. The 2003 edition found that England and Wales had the fourth highest rate out of 39 countries, with 9,817 crimes per 100,000 population, more than double the average of 4,333.
An Alternative Crime-Reduction Strategy
An alternative strategy should be conducted on four main fronts:
*social investment (both public and private) in institutions that encourage a law-abiding lifestyle, especially the family;
*reducing the net benefits of crime by increasing the risk of detection and punishment;
*personalised programmes to reduce reoffending by convicted criminals;
*reducing the net advantages of crime through ‘situational’ change (including CCTV).
Social Investment
We need to increase social investment in early socialisation and combating disorder in schools. Most people do not commit crimes because they have been brought up to share the community’s standards. No crime policy will be able to alter beliefs and attitudes if the institutions for encouraging social cohesion – especially the family, schools and churches – are in a weakened state. Home Office studies have found a link between family breakdown and crime, but the Government has done nothing to strengthen the family based on marriage.
Reduce the Net Advantages of Crime
*Increase police numbers and switch police effort to primary prevention (broken windows policing as discussed in Cultures and Crimes). In England and Wales in 2000 we had 237 police officers for every 100,000 population. The French had 396 police officers for every 100,000 population, 67% more. But they had a much lower crime rate, 6,405 crimes for every 100,000 population, 35% lower than ours.
*Increase prison capacity. On the Government’s own admission, there are about 100,000 offenders who commit half of all crime. It thinks that only 15-20,000 are in jail at any one time. Instead of a crash programme to lock up the other 80,000, its recent national action plan announced a puny effort to focus on only 5,000 ultra-serious offenders. The Home Office’s own projections suggest that over 87,000 prison places will be needed by 2011, but provision is not being made. Instead, the Government is letting prisoners out early under Home Detention Curfew. The Home Office thinks that the average prisoner would carry out 140 crimes if he were not inside. Thus, for every 1,000 additional prison inmates we could prevent 140,000 crimes. Yet, it has a policy of not allowing the prison population to exceed 80,000, despite strong criticism by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee (January 2005).
*Do not put any more public funds into intensive supervision programmes as an alternative to prison.
*Reform parole so that the release date depends on demonstrated good behaviour. At present release at the half-way stage is automatic for prisoners serving under four years, and can be even earlier under Home Detention Curfew. The normal rule should be that the whole sentence is served unless offenders earn up to one-third off for good behaviour, subject to their agreement to be supervised in the community for the remainder of the original sentence, plus at least six months afterwards.
Crime Reduction Through Rehabilitation
*Scrap Offending Behaviour Programmes based on cognitive-behavioural therapy and transfer the money to basic and vocational education. There is good evidence that vocational and work-related skills are beneficial and a significant increase in investment would be justified. (Chapter 6)
*Extend the use of prison-based therapeutic communities for drug users combined with intensive aftercare. (Chapter 5)
*Improve prison régimes by assessing prisoners immediately on arrival and treat their stay in jail as a preparation for release. Get them off alcohol and drugs (a problem affecting the majority) and impose mandatory drug testing for all prisoners on admission to jail.
*Provide educational and vocational skills for all prisoners. There is already a large educational programme but it only touches the surface. The fundamental aim of custody for under-18s is to ensure that they keep up their education, with half the time in custody and half in the community. The National Audit Office found in January 2004 that only 6 per cent of Youth Offending Teams were providing young offenders with the opportunity to continue the education they had started while in custody.
*Increase the supervision of prisoners on release from jail.
Juvenile Offenders – Borstal with a human touch
We should introduce a graduated approach to juvenile offending. A ‘welfare’ approach should be attempted initially. However, if offences continue to be committed, the level of intervention by the authorities should escalate. The more recalcitrant the offender, the more determined the response should be. Our system fails to react with sufficient resilience when dealing with persistent offenders. After providing every opportunity to change, an effective system must be willing to punish individuals who continue to commit crimes. We suggest that once offenders have been convicted three times for an indictable offence, there is such overwhelming evidence that they are likely to spend the next several years committing offences that they should be sent to secure institutions for a significant period which could be varied as under the former Borstal sentence. The detention and training order, the main custodial sentence that is applied after three convictions (fewer for serious offences) should be a minimum of 12 months and a maximum of four years, followed by intensive supervision for 12 months or more after release. Release after 12 months should depend on a prolonged period of demonstrated good behaviour.
Book title
Crime and Civil Society: Can We Become a More Law-Abiding People?’ By David G. Green, Emma Grove and Nadia A. Martin, is published by Civitas at 77 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2EZ. £15.50 including postage and packing. ISBN 1 903386 36 5.
