FORUM: The bottom line? Prison doesn’t work

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Published: 18 August, 2011
by LIZ DAVIES

PURE criminality,” said all the politicians, as if this was some great insight rather than the blindingly obvious.

Yes, of course, it’s a crime to set fire to shops or police cars, to break into shops, and steal their contents.

The people rioting last week didn’t need politicians to remind them that they were breaking the law.

They knew that perfectly well.

They did it anyway, because suddenly they could.

In response courts are handing down tough sentences.  

Two reported by the press as disproportionately punitive are the six-month prison sentence to a 23-year-old for stealing bottles of water worth £3.50 and a five-month prison sentence to a mother for receiving a stolen pair of shorts.

The Guardian has reported that clerks have been told to advise magistrates to disregard normal sentencing guidelines.

In other words, to tear the rule-book up.

These sentences are only the tip of the iceberg.

Only people who pleaded guilty at their very first appearance in the magistrates’ court will have been sentenced.

Indeed most of those who did plead guilty have had their cases remitted to the crown court to impose sentence.

That means that magistrates have decided that a six-month prison sentence would be too lenient and left it to the crown court to impose heavier sentences.

In the coming weeks or months we will see lengthy prison sentences handed down, just as we’ve seen with some of the student demonstrators from last winter.

Additional punitive measures include youth courts lifting reporting restrictions, so that juveniles under 18 are named and have their photographs published in the press.

It’s hard to know how that is going to deter young people from committing crimes, since so many of the rioters were out there openly.

Naming and shaming recipients of anti-social behaviour orders didn’t work.

As I write, the home secretary Theresa May is suggesting curfews, people are signing e-petitions calling on rioters to lose their welfare benefits, and the government is encouraging councils to bring eviction proceedings against any of their tenants who might have had family involved in the riots.

How exactly are any of those measures going to improve things?

The bottom line is that prison doesn’t work.

Britain already has the second highest prison population per head in western Europe and imprisons twice as many people as it did just 20 years ago.

Prisons are overcrowded and not a source of rehabilitation.

The case was made by the Ministry of Justice in a consultation paper in December 2010 when it noted that as many as half of released prisoners reoffended and that investing in rehabilitation would bring considerable economic and social benefits.

Sadly this was seen by Downing Street as being soft on criminals and Ken Clarke’s call for shorter sentences was slapped down.

What about the other ideas? If rioters intent on smashing shop windows weren’t deterred by the prospect of arrest and imprisonment then the loss of their benefit is hardly an additional deterrent.

Nor is the chance of their mum losing her council home.

If the idea is that parents will be encouraged by the big stick of loss of benefits or social housing into restraining their children, well that also seems unlikely.

Perhaps it’s about double punishment, not just through the criminal process but punishment through the welfare state as well.

Or in the case of families evicted because of the actions of one person, collective punishment.

At a time when the government’s actions are going to result in more and more legitimate confrontations – trade unionists striking to save their jobs, communities protesting to save public services – nobody should be welcoming the courts being encouraged to tear up the rule-book.

• Liz Davies is a barrister specialising in legal aid housing law. She is chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers (www.haldane.org). She writes this article in a personal capacity.