Crime rates have fallen since a larger number of repeat offenders have been jailed but imprisonment has produced few rehabilitative benefits.
Britain’s legal establishment has long fretted over Britain’s relatively high prison population.
Michael Howard, however, as Home Secretary from 1993 to 1997, was more concerned that the prison population was low relative to the level of crime in Britain. In October 1993 he declared:
"Prison Works. It Ensures That We Are Protected From Murderers, Muggers And Rapists... We Shall No Longer Judge The Success Of Our System Of Justice By A Fall In Our Prison Population."
Since the advent of Michael Howard’s ‘prison works’ policy the number of Britons jailed has risen by more than half – standing at about 75,000 in 2004. Prison numbers may rise above 100,000 by 2010 because of the more prescriptive sentencing guidelines enacted by Labour’s David Blunkett.
Because of the ‘incapacitation effect’ Britain’s rising prison numbers have cut crime...
Dr David Green, of Civitas, writing for The Observer, has drawn a link between falling prison numbers and rising crime from 1988 to 1993 and then rising prison numbers and falling crime since Michael Howard introduced his ‘prison works’ policy.
If there is a causal relationship between rising prison numbers and falling crime it is because of the ‘incapacitation effect’. The ‘incapacitation effect’ is based on the empirical observation that a small number of people commit a very high proportion of offences and when they’re in jail they can’t commit offences. Whilst this effect is inarguable researchers are divided about whether imprisonment has any deterrent or rehabilitative effects.
...but prisons are full of the poorest and most vulnerable of people
Roger Shaw (1994) notes that the inmates of Britain’s prisons are extraordinarily disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals.
They are:
- Thirteen times more likely than the population at large to have been in care as a child;
- Ten times more likely to have run away from school;
- Ten times more likely to have been unemployed.
Shaw, alluding to the hardening effect that prison has on many inmates, writes:
"If an Intelligence with no knowledge of earthly things came down from outer-space and viewed the justice systems of the developed nations and saw how we gathered the vulnerable, those with poor social skills and little education but with some experience of delinquency and herded them together in institutions with other disadvantaged people and a sprinkling of serious criminals, then to release them at a later date, possibly to no home, probably to no job and definitely to be labeled by the outside world as jailbirds and criminals, the Intelligence might be forgiven for thinking we were actually trying to increase crime, rather than reduce it. He, she or it would not have to engage in very much serious research to demonstrate that this is exactly what we are doing."
Few people would disagree with Shaw’s basic contention that few prisoners are being rehabilitated. Reoffending rates for ex-prisoners are uniformly discouraging. America – which has been imprisoning more people over a longer time period than Britain – is experimenting with alternative prison management regimes. Faith-based ministries – like InnerChange - have been invited to run wings of prison and are producing some encouraging early signs of reduced rates of recidivism.
America is also tackling the side-effects of large-scale incarceration on the children of the imprisoned. Inspired by the Philadelphia-based Amachi programme, President Bush has promised to find a mentor for every child with an incarcerated parent. 5-10% of British children experience the imprisonment of a parent. Some of these children will be better off without the example of a particularly badly-offending father or mother. Many, however, will suffer the usual negative effects of parent absence and may soon begin their own conveyor belt to crime journey.
Zero tolerance policing is America's other main weapon in its war on crime.
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