Michael Howard's criminal record

The last few days have seen much discussion of Tory policy on imprisonment.  Michael Howard was on last night's Newsnight (available to view again until 2230 tonight) to defend his famous 'prison works' policy.

I was not an admirer of Michael Howard's brief time as Tory leader but I believe that he was a truly great Home Secretary.  The fact that he reversed decades-long increases in crime puts him in my premier division of post-war cabinet ministers.  He was certainly the outstanding success of the Major years.  On last night's Newsnight he fronted a film that spotlighted his four policy changes that produced four years of falling crime rates:

1. The widespread introduction of CCTV into urban centres - former Met Chief John Stevens appeared in the Newsnight package to agree that the funding of CCTV had had important deterrent and detection effects.
2. The introduction of the DNA database - former Cabinet Secretary Richard Wilson noted that this was a far-reaching reform.  Britain currently leads the world in DNA records and where DNA tests are available conviction rates rise from 26% to 40%.
3. The withdrawal of the right to silence - since it was possible for juries to make inferences from a defendant's refusal to co-operate with police and prosecutors there has been a 50% fall in people staying silent.
4. Greater imprisonment - Dr David G Green of Civitas agreed that the incapacitation of habitual and serious offenders had made a major difference in the war on crime.  There is a wealth of evidence on the Civitas site to support Dr Green and Michael Howard's belief in imprisonment.

Michael Howard was on good form on Newsnight.  The great mystery for me is why he made so little use of his crime-fighting credentials during the General Election campaign and concentrated so much on dog-whistle campaigning on immigration...?

Comments

[Jaz]

I wasn't a massive fan of Howard, but now, I do believe he was a good leader, he balanced and disclipled the party with great effect, he had effeciency and you knew what you were going to get with him. None of this fuzzy stuff with Cameron, simply put, Conservatives like simple straight talking people.

Prison DOES work! Cameron has to come out load and clear, more prisons for Britain, more retraining for those heading out of prison.

[MattSimpson]

A good showing by Howard, but massive BBC bias again in wheeling out 3 liberals to rubbish everything he was saying.

[Giffin Lorimer]

Howard had huge credibility as the best post-war home secretary and someone who was on the side of ordinary people by helping stop the crime that prevented them and their children from improving their lot.

The election campaign made a mistake by starting off with immigration instead of that. Immigration was too easily traduced by the media who changed it from 'control and regulation' to 'banning and deportation' - it ended up allowing Labour and the LibDems to portray the Tories as racists. It's the voters who were willing to listen to those lies who are now the focus of Cameron's campaign.

Worse, it took up valuable presentation time when we were announcing the rest of the policies so they were simply overlooked. A poor decision badly executed and a great shame because the rest of the dog whistles were pretty good.

If you want to focus on immigration, talk about it in human-friendly terms that show Blair, Brown, Blunkette and Straw for what they are: abetters of international trafficing in drugs and human beings and condoners of indentured slavery. Use examples such as the dead Chinese cockle pickers and the kidnapped teenage girls forced into prostitution. And ask what Wilderforce would have thought of a UK government that turned a blind eye to such abuse.

[Wat Tyler]

Yes, interesting report by Howard, and his case is is strongly supported by the stats.

As for NN's 3 libs to oppose him (not forgetting Kirsty herself of course), it was more of the same.

But you know, I think the debate is moving on. Most of the opponents of "prison works" now seem to accept it reduces the crime rate- how could they do otherwise given the massive evidence (not quite sure where NN's studio criminologist was coming from). They are now falling back on 2 arguments- a)prison doesn't reform, and reoffending is rife; b)prison costs too much and community sentences are cheaper.

But of course, reoffending could be reduced by more prison, and even 100,000 extra prison places would "only" cost c£4bn pa. That's a chunk of cash, but must be set against the c£100bn pa cost of crime as things stand now (see http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2006/04/cost-of-crime.html )

[Stephen B]

Actually, I thought Howard aquitted himself very well against the panel arranged against him and easily outclassed them.

[True Blue]

Civitas are very, very bad when it comes to selective statistics. Where they want to suggest crime is going up, they use the police figures, which have changed a number of times and are about detection; when they want to show them going down, they use the BCS figures which are more accurate - they use the same questions each time and ask people about their experience of crime.

That isn't to say that their conclusion is wrong, though.

I do have a suggestion.

In many prisons, the rate of reoffending is much higher than it is in others. Time for the private sector to step in. Pay private prisons a bonus according to their rate of reoffending by prisoner category, and they would have a big incentive to invest in the most efficient programs to deal with recidivism. If third-party organisations such as charities can provide this service - all the better.

[Serf]

In many prisons, the rate of reoffending is much higher than it is in others. Time for the private sector to step in. Pay private prisons a bonus according to their rate of reoffending by prisoner category, and they would have a big incentive to invest in the most efficient programs to deal with recidivism. If third-party organisations such as charities can provide this service - all the better.

True Blue is a person of rare intellect.

This is such a great idea, especially the bonus idea, that I can't believe we have not already decided to use it.

It is a perfect "and" solution, truly tough on both crime and the causes thereof.

[Editor]

I like TrueBlue's idea, too.

I think the criticism of the BBC is unfair on this occasion. Newsnight gave Michael Howard a camera crew and about 10mins to justify his record as Home Secretary. MH was able to invite John Stevens, Richard Wilson and David Green to back him up. It was only fair then for people to cross-examine him. MH more than held his own in that part of the programme. The black lady from a community project was only given airtime to make one (two?) comment(s). I think she was the hard done by one.

[Chad]

Well done True Blue, that is just the kind of blue skies thinking I was thinking of in proposing a category for the con awards.

[Richard]

"The withdrawal of the right to silence - since it was possible for juries to make inferences from a defendant's refusal to co-operate with police and prosecutors there has been a 50% fall in people staying silent."

I confess that I am uneasy about this because it was one of our traditional liberties and is even protected in the American Bill of Rights.

That said I accept that Howard was undoubtedly successful at reversing the fall in crime.

True Blue, the police records used by Civitas do show a downturn in crime during the 1990s as well as a steep rise before then.

As for the BCS figures, Civitas have pointed out that a lot of crimes are missed out (in which case I admit it looks a bit devious of Civitas to use them anyway).

The big problem with the BCS figures is they only go back to the early 1980s. The only evidence that crime was significantly lower decades ago are the police figures (that many on the Left just don't want to believe) and claims from the elderly that there was less crime when they were younger (which is usually sneered at as nostalgia).

The question is, regardless of whether or not crime was as low in the 1950s as is often made out, could we ever get it as low as the police figures suggest in the 21st century?

[Richard]

Sorry, "reversing the rise in crime"!

[Voice from the South West]

I agree with what everyone else who has said that it was a good performance by Howard. I wonder now that he's not leader whether the lack of pressure to put in a good performance lead him to be more relaxed, and thus more comfortable throughout the interview. If he had done this whilst he was leader I could well imagine he would have been far more uptight and anxious.

It was interesting though to compare and contrast his general demeanour and image from now and ten years ago. When he was Home Secretary he always came over as the "hard man" where as now, presumably done for when he became leader, he has a more "softer" and more rounded, friendlier image (compared with his rather hectoring, finger-waving style he had ten years ago).

[Chris Palmer]

Another Newsnight special! 4vs1. Brilliant. Always the fair, honest, neutral BBC.

It's incredible really that the three liberals made so much of the fact that more people were being put in prison - as if it were a BAD thing... Complete morons. Where do they find these people?

[Andrew M]

The reason the Tories did not use crime more prominently was that labour was very successful in muddying the waters about Howard's success in the mid 90s stating that he had cut the number of policeman and also because it would have raised the issue of ID cards.

[True Blue]

**Blush**

I think that worrying about whether crime was higher or lower in the fifties gets us nowhere.

The BCS is a decent source of consistent, reliable figures. The crimes it doesn't deal with aren't that hard to analyse. Police figures are very unreliable - if you believe them, then detection rates fell under the Conservatives and have improved under Labour.

To show how complex the issues are if you look at raw data, take a look at homicide rates:

Year Homicides
1950 7.9
1955 6.3
1960 6.2
1965 6.8
1970 8.1
1975 10.3
1980 12.5
1985 12.5
1990 13.1
1995 14.5

You'd think that most people are more likely to be murdered. In fact, that's not true. For all but young men in the lowest decile, murder rates have gone down (1981-2000, anyway). In other words, there has been a large increase in the death rate of young, very poor men. These men are disproportionately likely to die by being cut in fights. Contrary to intuition, the more wealthly you are, the more likely you are to die by being shot or poisoned. The murder rates are linked to unemployment in their demographic.

This is a prime case for joined-up thinking. Job creation, aimed at young men in the lowest decile is likely to have a disproportionately good effect on the murder rate (and I bet on many other crimes.) So when we talk about poverty, we shouldn't just be talking about headline-grabbing child poverty, but all povery in the lowest decile if we want to fight crime.

So we could just lock up an additional 100,000 people for $4bn a year, or maybe we could think how some of that money could be spent dealing with the causes of violent crime - unemployment and poverty. From a purely economic point of view - what is the most efficient way we can use our budget to lower the number of criminal incidents?

Don't get me wrong, if someone's done something bad, they need to take responsibility for it and be locked up, but that doesn't stop us from dealing with the causes of crime.

[Wat Tyler]

True Blue- yes, I too like your payment by results idea for private sector prisons. As you probably know, the existing private prisons already have PBR covering things like escapes and prisoner suicides- it's done in terms of penalty reductions from the agreed hotel tariff. So the framework already exists.

As for your homicide stats, and your contention that lowest decile blokes are both the main victims and perpetrators...very interesting, but whereas we've loads of evidence that deterrence works- and I mean both prison and capital punishment- we've no real understanding of how to solve the problem with job creation. £4bn worth of prison would deliver some results. £4bn more on government job schemes (on top of say the £9bn pa we already spend on "skills training") would just be...well, another 1p on income tax.

[Michael McGowan]

I would have thought that True Blue's figures bear out what a lot of us would have thought already: a much more vigorous campaign against violent crime is of disproportionate benefit to those at the bottom of the pile, who are especialyl exposed to such crimes. People like Maryann Sieghart will of course die in a ditch arguing the opposite.....

[Matthew Oxley]

The title of the article made me wonder whether I was about to find about some past crimes Michael had commited himself.

[Esbonio]

I lookjed at the homicide figures a few years ago but do not have my sources to hand. I found the Home Office website rather unhelpful. I seem to recall that murder has been on the increase since the early 1960s which roughly coincides with the end of the death penalty.

True Blue's figures for homicide will include murder, manslaughter and infanticide.

Whichever way one looks at it we have a serious problem with violent crime.

[True Blue]

4bn worth of prison would deliver some results. £4bn more on government job schemes (on top of say the £9bn pa we already spend on "skills training") would just be...well, another 1p on income tax.

I certainly don't want to spend it on government job schemes. This is another results-driven scheme which the private sector and charities has already demonstrated will work. I'm just asying if you suddenly come up with another $4bn to fight crime, spending it all on prisons is an expensive way to go, if you can use the money to reduce the crime rate.

If you think, the budget for locking up each criminal is £25,000 a year, is there any other way we could spend the same amount of money to stop people commiting crime? Is there anything else worth trying as well? (This is not a rhetorical question - I don't know the answer.) For example, Michael Howard decided that CCTV and a DNA database was worth the money.

Perhaps a special unit targetting older boys who are turning difficult at school would help - a mentoring scheme.

[Account Deleted]

True Blue - your idea about payment by results is a great one.

On the Michael Howard interview - my God, he was good. If he had been half as good in 2005 I think we would have had a much smaller Labour majority and a much better platform to build on. He sounded fair but firm and reasonable - it was great!

I have to note that at least the first three of the four methods Howard introduced would be the kind of things a lot of the people who visit this website would probably scream if they were being introduced under a New Labour minister. What's that hallowed phrase -something liberties- and would probably prompt equally loud squeals about traditional liberties from some of the commentariat (on our side, let alone the Guardian reading classes). The DNA point is one reason why I don't see what is wrong with having some kind of national ID system set up (though not the cards).

To be fair to the liberals, that said we do need to talk about rehabilitation to get reoffending rates down. However, given that I'm guessing that the rate of reoffending criminals who don't get caught is probably around 99% or so I think we need to remind people that this is a world of alternatives not some perfect liberal textbook... But True Blue has shown how we can claim we will get reoffending rates down. (As well as strengthening the family eh True Blue ;-P)

Though I had an argument with a liberal and they dismissed crime statistics as flawed (which to a point they are, but there has been such a clear rise in ALL types of crime and people's belief there was less crime in the past as 'flawed nostalgia'. When I asked what evidence they had for claiming crime hadn't risen they just said, 'everyone knows crime has always been this high'...

The only point he had in his favour was that the US (still) has the highest murder and crime rates in the developed world. But I despise the libertarian obsession with freedom and lack of social cohesion in the US so we were both happy.

NB True Blue - one reason murder rates have slowed is that medical technology has improved almost beyond imagination since 1950. This should have led to a fall in homicide as less victims of attacks should have died. The fact it has not is indicative of the fact the number of attacks continues to rise.

It is quite shocking just how much crime has risen - as the following graph on the page below shows.

PAGE 14
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf

[True Blue]

I would have thought that True Blue's figures bear out what a lot of us would have thought already: a much more vigorous campaign against violent crime is of disproportionate benefit to those at the bottom of the pile, who are especialyl exposed to such crimes.

Absolutely. Effective crime fighting measures, combined with help directed at "strivers" is a big potential vote winner amongst the pro-Thatcher masses with which we have lost the way.

The other beneficiaries are refugees and asylum seekers, who as you may imagine, are disproportionately the victims of crime, and are particularly hard-working and driven. That's something I consider important, although I'm not sure how many here would share this view.

[Michael McGowan]

I agree with you re refugees and asylum seekers too. A tough on crime message is entirely compatible with "compassionate conservatism". Indeed you cannot have one without the other. Ditto a message which seeks to restore order to the classroom and authority to teachers. Only the Conservative Party's abysmal propaganda machine has managed to project the opposite message. What is it about this country that prevents us having centre-right politicians of vision and ability like Mitt Romney whose article in the Washington Times is linked elsewhere on this site?

[Sean Fear]

Interesting stats True Blue. One thing I've noticed from the Home Office website is a marked increase in "Most Serious Woundings" and attempted murders over the past 12 years (even allowing for changes in the way crime is reported).

Were it not for the improving skills of our medical staff (no doubt due to plenty of practice), the number of homicides would be a good deal worse.

[Sean Fear]

I think a "tough on crime" message is not just compatible with compassionate Conservatism, but actually an essential part of it.

[Richard]

"I think that worrying about whether crime was higher or lower in the fifties gets us nowhere."

The only reason I bring it up is to prove that the current relatively high rate of crime isn't inevitable. We will never have a society 100% free of crime but that doesn't mean we should strive to massively reduce the current crime rate instead of accepting a high minimum level.

[Esbonio]

I do not want to appear lacking in compassion, but a guy was on the radio the other day who had been in the Army and had been a bit of a naughty boy and was sent to the Army correctional facility in Colchester. The gist of his message was it was not nice , you would never want to go there again, and if I recall correctly the residivism rate is 0.5%. In addition a large proportion of ex-Colchester inmates get promoted within 6 months of being there, such wonders does it work.

[Rick]

I think that worrying about whether crime was higher or lower in the fifties gets us nowhere."

It is the nature of offences which has changed: use of guns does not bring a noose.

When Silverman's Bill became Jenkins' Act execution was replaced by Life Sentence of 30 years plus. Now it has been whittled down to 10 years or so.

In the Us where there is a death penalty it takes 20 years to exhaust appeals and they get a longer Life Sentence than in Britain prior to execution.

It is a strange society where people argue for the inalienable right to abort foetuses but claim some right for adults not to be executed for crimes.

In 1920 private possession of a gun was removed as an inalienable right from the Bill of Rights; and subsequently the individual is criminalised for having whatever a policeman deems a "weapon" and handguns are now illegal.

So illegal handguns are used readily by muggers and gangs, and the importation of Somali, Kurdish, Sri Lankan, Nigerian, and Albanian gangs has made them impervious to any English taboos on violence.

The rules by which Britons lived in the 1950s have been systematically undermined by political parties of all complexions and the stability of society itself will be under increasing strain as it progresses.

[True Blue]

So illegal handguns are used readily by muggers and gangs, and the importation of Somali, Kurdish, Sri Lankan, Nigerian, and Albanian gangs has made them impervious to any English taboos on violence.

Bring back capital punishment, tick.
Ban abortion, tick.
Allow people to carry guns, tick.
Crime caused by evil gun-wielding foreigners, tick.

House!

I win at Daily Mail bingo and I claim my prize.

[Mark Fulford]

True Blue, you do indeed win.

[Richard]

"Bring back capital punishment, tick."

To be fair that would be a rather popular policy unlike the other two.

Nevertheless what is wrong with opposing abortion and favouring the repeal of legislation banning handguns? Just because they are traditional "right-wing" policies that doesn't mean people should be mocked for holding them. This is a conservative website after all!

[Richard]

PS

Come to think of it I'd have thought the Mail would have led the anti-handgun campaign.

[True Blue]

Nevertheless what is wrong with opposing abortion and favouring the repeal of legislation banning handguns? Just because they are traditional "right-wing" policies that doesn't mean people should be mocked for holding them. This is a conservative website after all!

I'd be happy to debate them, but I don't think this is the right place for it - if the topic arises through editorial you can be sure I'll jump in (I'm restraining myself now)

I don't think there is anything wrong with gently mocking views that are not Conservative policy, have not been Conservative policy for many years, and are never likely to be Conservative policy in future. I am very pleased that there is a cross-party consensus that abortion should be a free vote, that guns should not be legalized and that capital punishment will not be reintroduced.

You are absolutely right about the hand-gun issue, it did undermine my joke, but not fatally I hope.

[Richard]

"I am very pleased that there is a cross-party consensus that abortion should be a free vote, that guns should not be legalized and that capital punishment will not be reintroduced."

I'm not pleased about a cross party consensus on the latter. Capital punishment still retains a great deal of support in the UK and it seems rather undemocratic that not even one of the three major parties favours its reintroduction.