Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke's, reversal of Tory election promises is the result of surrendering to Lib-Dem policies. The two manifestos were based on diametrically opposed assumptions and the haggling has been won by the Lib-Dems.
The Liberal-Democrats said they would cancel Labour's prison building programme and replace many prison sentences with what they call 'rigorously enforced community sentences'. Penalties, they said, do not deter criminals. The Conservatives criticised Labour for failing to build enough prison places and promised to stop the early release of criminals and to increase prison capacity as necessary.
The Lib-Dems are not liberals but Fabian social therapists
The Conservatives have long been the main home of British liberalism and some Tory MPs are looking hopefully to the 'Orange Book', published in 2004 by a group of liberals including Nick Clegg, David Laws and Vince Cable to 'reclaim' liberalism for the Lib-Dems. The Tories will look in vain. The crime chapter says that 'simply incarcerating ever-increasing numbers of prisoners is not working'. It is 'the job of government to remove, then rehabilitate, that element in society that is restricting other people's liberty - the criminals.' What is completely missing from the Orange Book and the Lib-Dem manifesto is any recognition that crime is a personal responsibility. It is not the 'job of the government' to rehabilitate people as if it were a kind of therapist dealing with a helpless patient. Offenders should rehabilitate themselves and make the right choice next time round. Of course, everything should be done to help individuals to make the right choice, including the provision of educational opportunities, but we should never forget that crime is a personal choice.
The Lib-Dems might find it worthwhile to go back to their roots and read one of the greatest interpreters of modern liberalism, Leonard Hobhouse. He identified two ideas with which liberalism should have nothing in common. One he called 'mechanical socialism', by which he meant Marxism. The second he called 'official socialism', which conceived 'mankind as in the mass a helpless and feeble race, which it is its duty to treat kindly'. And true kindness, he told his readers, required 'firmness' such that 'the life of the average man must be organised for his own good'. Writing in 1911, he was thinking of the Fabian elitists of his day, but he could just as well have been describing the thinking behind the 2010 Lib-Demo manifesto.
We are a high-crime society
The simple fact is that crime is historically high. In 1950 there were just over 1,000 crimes per 100,000 population; in 1992, the post-war peak, there were nearly 11,000; and in 2008-09 about 8,500. Even after significant falls, crime is well over eight times what it was in 1950. Crime in England and Wales is also high compared with other European countries. In 2004 the European Union's Crime and Safety Survey looked at 18 countries and found that the UK was a 'crime hotspot', along with Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark. And in 2007 the latest Eurostat figures for the 27 EU members, England and Wales had the third worst crime rate.
Kenneth Clarke has fallen under the influence of 'the crime policy intelligentsia' who until recently dominated the Justice Committee of the House of Commons. It published a major report in January 2010 that claimed the 'root causes' of the prison population included: 'a toxic cocktail of sensationalised or inaccurate reporting of difficult cases by the media; and relatively punitive public opinion.'
Contrary to elite claims, we are not a punitive society
The claim that the British people are punitive is usually supported by showing that we have more offenders in prison per 100,000 population than other developed countries. The EU average is 122 and the figure for England and Wales is 147. However, the more significant comparison is between the prison population and the number of crimes. If a nation has a large amount of crime it should have a higher proportion of people in jail, if its criminal justice system is working effectively. The EU average (27 countries) in 2007 was 21 prisoners per 1,000 crimes. The figure for England and Wales was lower at 16. In fact 18 out of the 27 countries had higher rates of imprisonment.
Far from being vindictive, Government figures show that the most persistent offenders are not jailed. In 2008 criminals who had 15 or more previous convictions or cautions were given custody in only 40% of cases when they were convicted of a serious (indictable) crime. Robbery is one of the most serious violent crimes and includes street mugging. The custody rate has fallen since 1997, when it was 72%. In 2008 it was only 60%. A Civitas Briefing provides some more counter-arguments.
Increasing the prison population has reduced crime - prison works
Kenneth Clarke ignores the evidence that crime has fallen because of the increased use of prison since 1993, when the prison population was 45,600. By 1997 the Conservatives had increased it to 62,000 - up 36%. Labour continued the policy and when Lord Carter reviewed Blair's policy in 2003 he concluded that crime would 'fall dramatically' if persistent offenders were jailed. Labour continued to increase the prison population to nearly 85,000 when it left office. A Home Office survey in 2000 found that the average prisoner admitted committing 140 crimes in the year before capture. If so, the incarceration of an additional 23,000 offenders since 1997 would have saved over 3.2m crimes. Prison works as a method of incapacitation or public protection for the simple reason that, while they are inside, prisoners can't break into your house or attack you in the street.
Short sentences don't reduce offending because they should be long sentences
The Lib-Dems also disapprove of short sentences and want them replaced by community sentences. They disregard the fact that short sentence do not reduce crime because criminals who deserve long sentences are only being given short ones. Even when Parliament has stipulated a minimum sentence, shorter terms are given. Since 2000 the law has required that on a third or subsequent conviction for household burglary an offender should receive a minimum of three years. In 2008, under 20% were given that sentence. The others were given shorter custodial sentences and over 16% were not given custody at all.
The most rigorous community sentences have failed to reduce offending
The most rigorous community sentence has been the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP). In October 2005 the final report was published and found that 91% of offenders who had taken part in ISSP were reconvicted within the two-year follow up. The failure of the scheme has been confirmed by an independent study carried out by a team from the University of Portsmouth, which included a former senior Home Office official. The authors concluded that ISSP had not provided adequate surveillance to ensure public protection; not been rigorously enforced; not had a positive effect on offenders' attitudes; not provided supervision appropriate to offenders' ages; not improved offenders' life chances; not provided strong boundaries; not brought structure into young offenders' lives; and not separated offenders from damaging environments or peers. Between 2001 and 2007 ISSP cost £77m, which means it was more costly than other community sentences and less effective.
The therapeutic state
Kenneth Clarke seems to be in denial about the simplest of facts. If you lock up a criminal who would otherwise be thieving, you cut crime. If you lock up the most prolific offenders, namely the 100,000 who are thought to commit half of all crime, you cut crime dramatically. Above all, the Coalition does not accept the fundamental liberal precept that we should be seen as free individuals, each responsible for our own actions. Criminals are not patients being treated by the 'therapeutic state', they are free people who made the wrong choice. Ironically the Lib-Dems are the main obstacle to a genuinely liberal approach based on personal responsibility, an approach that should be the heart of policy on crime as well as the renewal of civil society implied by the Big-Society agenda. The big danger for the Coalition Government is that adopting Lib-Dem policies will lead to an increase in crime when we already have enough problems to cope with.
