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Main points/Arguments Contradictions No evidence Punishment and Justice in England and Wales, Sussex, Book Guild Publishing.) Almost all of the information disseminated to the British public about prisons is highly misleading and frequently incorrect. The media often publishes the propaganda of the well­ organised and vociferous anti-prison lobby. This claims that there are too many people in prison, that the UK sends more people to prison than many other countries, that prisons fail and are colleges of crime, that prisons are ‘human dustbins’ with entirely negative regimes, and that prisons are more expensive than the alternative of placing the offender on some form of community supervision. All of these are contradicted by the facts. Data held in government archives and elsewhere shows overwhelmingly that prisons are more effective than community penalties in their ability to protect the public and to reform criminals. But this is evidence that many officials in the criminal justice system would prefer to ignore. I frequently hear many private individuals, as well as public officials argue vehemently against the use of prison. This lack of normal caution in discussing a subject about which most of them know very little indicates, I believe, that their response is a reflex, a conditioned response brought about by years of exposure to unrelenting anti-prison brainwashing. This unwillingness to give up long held ideas, even in the face of evidence which overwhelmingly contradicts them, is well known to psychologists and to historians. In the sixteenth century, for example, Copernicus produced a mathematical model which demonstrated that the sun, and not the earth was the centre of our universe. But for a long time after this, individuals and organisations with vested ideological and career interests in preserving the old ideas about the cosmos resisted this evidence. Similarly today, I believe, many in the criminal justice system ignore the evidence which undermines their anti-prison ideology, often to protect their careers and reputations. The criminal justice establishment has hitched its wagon firmly to an anti-prison agenda, and I know that at least one official has admitted that even those who may have known, or suspected that they were in error, simply cannot lose face and turn back. 30.5% 24.3% Crimes recorded ‘Too many people are sent to prison’ We are frequently told that the UK imprisons far too many of its offenders and sends more people to prison than most other European countries. Neither statement is true. But even if it were, we should remember that communities are despoiled and blighted by crime and not by the proportion of its population in prison. In fact, only 2.2 per cent of all offences ever result 1 in a conviction and only 0.3 per cent of offences results in a custodial sentence. Thus the statement that we have too many offenders in prison is shown to be meaningless. Crimes not reported 45.2% Crimes reported Figure 5.1 Analysis of a sample of 10.2 million crimes (1998) The analysis, in Figure 5.1, of a sample of just over 10 million crimes taken from the 16.4 million crimes reported by the 1998 British Crime Survey could not make this clearer. A further breakdown of how these 10.2 million crimes were dealt with is also highly revealing (see Table 5.1). On the basis of this table a bookmaker would offer lucrative odds against the chances of an offender ever being caught, let alone being found guilty and sent to prison. What this analysis powerfully demonstrates is that criminals have a clear field of fire as far as committing crime is concerned. The fact that only a tiny fraction of offences are cleared up means that, from the criminal’s point of view, the time and energy spent in committing crime is a safe and worthwhile investment. The inescapable conclusion is that they can, for all intents and purposes, commit crime with impunity. When offenders read in the newspapers that the criminal justice establishment thinks that too many of them are in prison, they must find it hard to believe their luck. Table 5.1: Breakdown of outcomes from a sample 10.2 million crimes (1998) Offences Committed Cleared up Found guilty Cautioned Sentenced to custody Vandalism 2,917,000 84,550 58,475 31,455 1,594 (100%) (2.9%) (0.2%) (1.1%) (0.1%) Domestic burglary 1,639,000 129,830 32,706 3,475 10,113 (100%) (7.9%) (0.2%) (0.2%) (0.6%) Car theft 375,000 62,980 22,417 6,113 4,541 (100%) (16.8%) (6.0%) (1.6%) (1.2%) Bicycle theft 549,000 12,060 2,584 1,411 113 (100%) (2.2%) (0.5%) (0.3%) (0.02%) Wounding 714,000 158,890 80,639 31,714 11,085 (100%) (22.3%) (11.3%) (4.4%) (1.6%) Robbery 897,000 3,541 16,366 1,315 5,828 (100%) (2.6%) (1.8%) (0.2%) (0.7%) Totals of ofences 10,198,000 563,241 223,056 79,915 33,956 (100%) (5.5%) (2.1%) (0.78%) (0.3%) Source: Home Office Research & Statistics Department, Digest 4: Information on the Criminal Justice System in England & Wales, 1999; Home Office Statistical Bulletin, Issue 21/98, The 1998 British Crime Survey, England & Wales Yet, despite these facts, in November 2002, and on the same day that a newspaper reported that crime had reached such dreadful levels that it was driving businesses away from some 2 city centres. the Home Secretary, the Lord Chief Justice, the Attorney-General and the Lord Chancellor joined forces in an unprecedented appeal to the courts to send fewer offenders to 3 prison. Is it likely that the most senior leaders of our criminal justice system are unaware of the evidence which shows that, despite the recent increase in prison numbers, only a tiny minority of offenders are sent to prison, that community based sentences fail utterly to stop the tide of crime which engulfs our communities, and that prison overcrowding is due entirely to a shortage of places' This seems improbable, but if they are aware of these facts, then we can only deduce they choose to ignore them for their own ideological reasons; alternatively, they have been misled by their officials into believing that the courts use jail as a sentencing option far too frequently. Either way, this almost frantic appeal denies the fact that magistrates’ courts, who sentence 95 per cent of all offenders, already allow 86 per cent of all those convicted of a criminal offence to go straight back into the community, many under supervision to the Probation Service. It is a matter of public record that they are frequently persuaded by defence lawyers and 4probation officers to put the freedom of persistent offenders before the protection of the public. As previously pointed out, official statistics make it clear that alternative sentences are 5 already used far more frequently than prison for the majority of offenders. The record of previous convictions of those receiving their first prison sentence shows that the leniency of the courts has allowed these persistent offenders to go round the alternative sentencing tariff several times before a prison sentence is passed. This pattern of sentencing often takes place over a long period of time during which the persistent offender victimises countless innocent members of the public. Thus, the paradox is that prisons, as a sentencing option, are not an overused resource, but underused, and that very few offenders are jailed. This is despite the recent increase in the prison population which has been grossly misinterpreted. For example, in 2002 the breakdown of the prison population of England and Wales was as follows: there were 5,587 foreigners, 13,081 remand prisoners, 4,210 women prisoners, 831 civil prisoners and 5,060 prisoners serving life sentences. Subtracting these from the 71,218 total prison population, we are left with only 42,449 convicted UK-domiciled male persistent 6 offenders behind bars. By 2003, the numbers of foreign prisoners had increased dramatically 7 and made up 13 per cent of the total prison population of 74,000. Taking this figure into account, the numbers of jailed convicted UK-domiciled male persistent offenders – those who cause most harm to the public and from whom they need the maximum protection – was only 39,629. This small minority should be compared with the 155,000 persistent offenders who are allowed to roam free in the community under the supervision of the Probation Service, 8 where they are known to victimise the public at will – a massive 78 per cent of the total. The further significance of this comparison is the enormous harm they cause to the public, which leaves many victims emotionally and physically scarred, with a much-reduced standard of life and peace of mind. Those who claim we have too many in prison conveniently forget that the prison population consists of groups of offenders for whom no other sentence is possible. As shown above, the 74,000 in our jails (2003 figure) consists of thousands of remand prisoners, life-sentenced prisoners and foreign nationals, who together make up almost a third of those in prison. It must also be remembered that those remanded in custody have been judged to pose too great a risk to the public to be allowed their freedom, even in the eyes of a judiciary that is compelled by legislation to allow bail in all but the most extreme circumstances. It cannot be said, therefore, that we have too many remand prisoners in jail. 10 The UK Parliament suspended the death penalty for murder in 1965 and abolished it permanently in 1969, substituting a life sentence. Since then, the homicide rate in the UK has 9 significantly increased, and in 1999 it was almost three times what it was in 1962. As a result, large numbers of people have been jailed for life; between 1987 and 2001, for example, there was a 93 per cent increase in this category of prisoner received into the prison system. But for them there is no alternative, so whatever their numbers it cannot be argued that we have ‘too many’ life-sentenced prisoners in jail. This is particularly so when we remember that large numbers of them only serve a short tariff before they are released into the community. Thousands of foreign nationals, who have swelled our prison population, often serving long sentences, will all go home on release and therefore they cannot be included in the calculations of prison numbers of concern to the British public. These concern only those who will live here when they have completed their sentence. The focus of our attention should be, therefore, on the numbers of UK-domiciled male persistent offenders in our prisons. This is the group which has caused enormous harm to the public by their callous and persistent offending, leaving even our liberal courts no alternative but to jail them. Yet there are less than 45,000 of them (including convicted female offenders) in our prisons. This startlingly small number shows how false the present so-called ‘crisis’ is concerning our prison population. We do have a crisis, but it is brought about by the government’s willingness to let more than 155,000 persistent offenders stay in the community where they commit millions of offences each year, not the relatively insignificant number in 11 our prisons. The anti-prison ideologists have also criticised the numbers of female offenders in prison, which in 2000 was 3,400, an 8 per cent increase over the previous year. In 2002, it was 4,210, 12 representing an 18 per cent increase over the previous twelve months. Critics have fostered the belief that many of them have been put behind bars for what they claim are trivial offences such as non-payment of fines or TV licences. Nothing could be further from the truth. Large numbers of these sentences relate to very serious offences such as burglary and drug-related 13 crimes. A woman is as capable as a man in knowing right from wrong. Being a mother of young children or being pregnant has not stopped many from committing crime; neither should it stop a female offender from paying the penalty for wrongdoing. International comparisons It is often claimed that the UK sends more of its population to prison than most other European countries. This calculation is based, for each country, on the numbers in prison compared with its overall population. But this is a trap to lead the unwary into believing that we send more of our criminals to prison than other European countries. Russia Poland Czech Rep Spain Portugal Hungary N. Ireland Eire Italy Greece France Australia Scotland Austria Canada Switzerland UK* Germany Belgium Netherlands New Zealand Norway Finland Denmark Sweden 0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 Rate per 100,000 recorded crime *UK = England & Wales Figure 5.2 International comparisons in use of imprisonment (1996) In order to establish how lenient or severe it is in its use of prison, it is necessary, for each country, to compare that country’s prison population with its crime rate. On that basis the use of imprisonment in the UK is found to be much lower than many other countries as demonstrated in Figure 5.2. EU UK* Canada Japan Australia Ireland France 160 140 120 100 Per 100,000 recorded crimes 80 Per 100,000 60 population 40 20 *UK = England & Wales 0 More recent comparative data also indicates that prison in the UK is underused, as shown in Figure 5.3. These comparisons show that the UK sends fewer of its offenders to jail than the other countries, but has the highest numbers in jail compared with its overall population, which reflects its high crime rate. Research has also shown that the United Kingdom is one of the most lenient sentencers in 14 relation to most individual crime categories. For example, out of fifteen countries, the UK is the fifth most lenient in relation to rape, the most lenient in relation to assault and the fourth most lenient in relation to robbery. The only reason why the UK is the third most severe sentencer for homicide compared with thirteen other countries is that we have a mandatory life sentence for this offence, and therefore the courts have no alternative but to pass a life sentence once guilt has been established. Figure 5.3 International comparison of prison populations (1999) ‘Prisons fail’ The public are frequently told by the anti-prison lobby that ‘prisons are a failure’. It is an absurd statement. Prisons can never fail because whilst an offender is locked up he cannot commit any more offences. What is more, it is the only sentence at our disposal which can give the public this gilt-edged guarantee. Incapacitation of the offender can only be said to fail because an offender is imprisoned too late or let loose too soon, or because not enough criminals are imprisoned. Charles Murray, an American criminologist, has untied many of the knots created by the obtuse arguments of anti-prison academics and he has demonstrated that, far from failing, prisons are a reliable bulwark against crime and that, as the United Kingdom has used prison 15 less, so crime has gone through the roof. For example, as shown in Figure 5.4, between 1955 and 1993 there was a sustained decline in the use of imprisonment in the UK. During this 0 1980 1990 1996 Crimes per 100,000 of the UK population Prisoners per 100,000 crimes 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 1950 1955 1960 1970 period, the number of reported crimes increased twelve-fold while the numbers of prisoners only doubled. During this period the risk of going to jail if you committed a crime was cut by no less than 80 per cent. Figure 5.4 The decline in imprisonment and the rise of crime in the UK Thus, this period saw the unfolding of a golden age for criminals in the UK, as crime became much less risky. In 1954, for example, one out of three criminals convicted of robbery were sent to jail. In 1994, it was one in twenty. In 1954, one in ten burglars were sentenced to 16 prison, but by 1994 it was one in a hundred, a drop of 87 per cent. Nothing could make clearer the utter foolishness of the Lord Chief Justice’s recent and repeated guidelines to judges to send fewer burglars to jail. Another way to bring this point home is to compare, for the UK and the United States, the incarceration rates for assault, robbery, burglary and vehicle theft – see Figures 5.5–5.8. Prison does work because, as stated, once an offender is incarcerated he is out of harm’s way and cannot victimise the public. Both in the USA and the UK, it has been shown that as the risk of imprisonment goes down, so the crime rate goes up. Between 1960 and 1974, the USA sent fewer and fewer criminals to prison. If this was intended as an experiment to discover what happens when such a policy is followed, they soon found out. Over the next fourteen years, their crime rate soared to unprecedented levels and America became known as one of the crime centres of the world. This period also saw an increased emphasis on the protection of offenders’ ‘individual rights’, which were often seen to frustrate natural justice; the perception developed that criminals need only appeal to their ‘constitutional rights’ to block legitimate attempts to convict them of crimes they had committed. 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1980 1985 1990 1995 UK USA Figure 5.5 Number of incarcerated assaulters per 1,000 alleged assaulters, 1980–1995 20 15 10 5 0 1980 1985 1990 1995 UK USA Figure 5.6 Number of incarcerated robbers per 1,000 alleged robbers, 1980–1995 10 8 6 4 2 0 1980 1985 1990 1995 UK USA Figure 5.7 Number of incarcerated burglars per 1,000 alleged burglars , 1980–1995 By the 1970s the public’s growing resentment of this state of affairs on both sides of the Atlantic had been astutely tapped by such commercially successful films as Dirty Harry, 1971, and Death Wish, 1974, which portrayed members of the public and the police re­ establishing the rights of the public to be protected from crime over the so-called individual rights of the criminals. When the first Death Wish film was screened in the USA, audiences spontaneously cheered the scenes which showed the victim-turned-vigilante making sure that the criminal received what many judged to be his ‘just deserts’. Taking the law into one’s own hands must not be condoned, but such reactions serve as a barometer indicating the depth of feeling amongst the public over the helplessness they felt in the face of non-stop crime, and their anger over the increased opportunities for offenders to escape any form of justice. By 1974, the US crime rate had reached such epidemic proportions that it stopped its experiment of sending fewer and fewer offenders to prison. It reversed this policy and has since significantly increased its use of prison. As a result, the crime rate for most types of crime in the USA has, with a few exceptions, gone back down to the levels of twenty or more years ago. For example, in 1995 property crimes had fallen to the 1975 levels; homicide rates were down to 1969 levels; and robbery rates were also back to 1975 levels. Anti-prison ideologists have expressed their dismay at the increase in the size of the US prison population; for example, Jock Young has argued that ‘it is not part of the social contract which underpins 17 liberal democracy that it should imprison and oversee so many of its citizens’. However, he remains silent on the question as to whether it should be part of this contract to allow persistent offenders freedom to commit crime almost at will and cause untold misery for the general public. 15 10 5 0 1995 UK USA 1980 1985 1990 Figure 5.8 Number of incarcerated vehicle thieves per 1,000 alleged vehicle thieves, 1980– 1995 Some have argued that the crime reductions experienced in America can be explained by demographic changes. However, a number of separate studies have demonstrated the crucial role prison has played in bringing down crime levels. For example, a study published in 1996 concluded that an increase of one thousand in the prison population prevents about 4 murders, 53 rapes, 1,200 assaults, 1,100 robberies, 2,600 burglaries and 9,200 thefts per year. In other words, for the cost of imprisoning one offender about fifteen crimes are prevented. 18 A previous analysis of this data showed even larger effects of prison – twenty-one crimes prevented, not fifteen, per additional prisoner. 19 Another study, by the American Bureau of Justice Statistics, concluded that the increase in the US prison population between 1975 and 1989 reduced violent crime by 10 to 15 per cent of the figure it would have been, thus preventing a conservatively estimated 390,000 murders, rapes, robberies and assaults alone. 20 It has also been pointed out that the USA, despite imprisoning almost two million of its offenders, still has a high crime rate. But this does not mean that ‘prisons fail’. What it means is that when crime rates are low it is easier to maintain a high risk of imprisonment because the numbers of offenders are not so huge as to prevent the system keeping on top of the problem. But if the crime rate is allowed to get out of hand, for example as happened in the USA between 1960 and 1974, and in the UK after 1955, when the risk of imprisonment was reduced, it is very difficult to get back to the previous ratio of prisoners to offences. In other words, if the crime rate is allowed to become high, large increases in the prison population are necessary just to enable the risk of imprisonment to keep up with the continued increases in crime. What is more, this catching-up process takes time. In the USA, for example, it was only in the mid 1990s with more than a million people in prison, that the ratio of prisoners to crime reach the level that prevailed in 1961. We can make an analogy with the railways in the UK. They have been neglected for over forty years, and the rate of deterioration in the track, signalling and other equipment has been allowed to increase markedly, so much so that in reality the railway system is now breaking down and no longer functions properly. The investment level required just to keep up with the effects of under-investment are so huge that it is now far more difficult to keep pace with the current repair work than it would have been had the investment level been maintained at a high level when the deterioration rate was still low. Just dealing with current repair work makes no difference to the overall problem of breakdowns and system failures due to previous neglect. In the same way, it is easier to lock up higher proportions of those committing crime when there are less of them. But once crime has been allowed to spiral, it is extremely difficult to catch up and get back to being able to lock up higher proportions of those committing offences when there are far more of them. In addition, many who oppose Murray’s thesis do so on the grounds that it is oversimplified. They argue it is wrong to look for a simple relationship between imprisonment and the crime rate. Left-wing academics are never happier than when they have an opportunity to present crime as ‘highly complex’, beyond the understanding of the general public, and therefore best left to them as ‘experts’ to offer solutions for its cure. According to them, the social forces at work which influence crime are far more varied and numerous than allowed for in Murray’s thesis. They say, for example, that the social world is a complex interactive entity in which any particular social intervention (such as a prison sentence) can only possibly have a limited effect on other social events. According to this view, a large number of factors, such as levels of deterrence, informal controls, employment, child rearing, cultural, political and moral climate, and so on, can combine together to influence the crime rate. This is an easy point to make, but one which is without any evidence to back it up. The results of studies assessing the influence on crime, for example, of unemployment, child rearing and other social factors, have always been far from conclusive. However, even if it were unanimously accepted that these factors were important in understanding crime, it would not obviate the fact that when offenders are in prison they cannot commit offences against the public. Nevertheless, many also point to the fact that the USA has a higher imprisonment rate than many other countries, for example Switzerland, yet it still has much higher crime rates for certain types of offences. But this is because their imprisonment rate is chasing after a much higher crime rate than is found in Switzerland. A point frequently missed by those ideologically opposed to the use of prison is that if the USA, despite imprisoning large numbers of criminals, still has a higher crime rate than other countries such as Switzerland, it is because there are, in the USA, still far more offenders not locked up who are committing crimes in the community. Some academics cite international comparisons of the relationship between changes in the risk of imprisonment and changes in the crime rate, as providing evidence that Murray is wrong. For example, Table 5.2, taken from Murray, appears to show quite clearly that a drop in the risk of imprisonment leads to a rise in the crime rate. However, the counter-argument of the anti-prison lobby is that the causal direction between these two factors is the reverse. They argue that crime increases because of the many interrelated complex factors previously mentioned, and this in turn leads to a fall in the risk of imprisonment because the prison capacity cannot keep up with the increase in crime. They argue that Murray’s thesis does not hold up, and point to the example of Scotland where the risk of imprisonment stayed constant yet the crime rate went up. But the flaw in their argument is that what is important, from the point of view of the public, is not the factor or factors (outside of prison) which cause crime to rise, but what causes crime to fall. Even if we were to subscribe to the view that rises in crime are associated with ‘complex social factors’, this does not alter the fact that by increasing the risk of imprisonment it is possible to arrest the crime rate and eventually bring it down. What is important for the safety of the public, therefore, is not a debate about why the crime rate has gone up, but to bring it down by increasing the numbers of offenders sent to prison, which has been shown to work both in the USA and the UK. For example, from 1993 to 1998 the UK prison population rose by 22,240, or 51 per cent, and at the same time the crime rate 21 fell by 21.4 per cent, representing almost a million fewer crimes. To be distracted at this point by arguing that we should not send offenders to prison because it does not address the ‘underlying causes’ of crime is no use to the public who need protection from persistent criminals now. It is beyond all reason to allow them to go on being victimised whilst the search goes on to identify and remedy the so-called underlying complex, interrelated social factors hypothesised by some to be the cause of offending. Table 5.2: The relationship between changes in the risk of imprisonment and changes in recorded crime, 1987–1995 % change in % change in risk of recorded crime imprisonment England & -17 +31 Wales Scotland 0 +4 Republic of -13 +20 Ireland France -9 +16 Austria -33 +24 Netherlands +91 +8 Denmark +4 +3 Source: C. Murray, ‘Does Prison Work'’, Choice in Welfare, No. 38 (1997) Prisons – an overview Let me pull together what has been said so far about why prisons work as a means of protecting the public against crime. The public debate about prisons is often confused because the issue of how to stop crime and protect the public is needlessly mixed up with the separate question of how to solve the complex stresses of society, including such factors as unemployment, poverty and family background, seen by anti-prison factions as the root causes of offending. However, the evidence shows that prison can prevent crime and reduce crime rates; if you lock up enough offenders for long enough the incarceration effect is considerable and thousands of offences will be prevented. This, of course, does nothing about the so-called ‘underlying causes’; this is simply locking up known persistent offenders. The critics of this view say that in some countries crime rates remain high even though more and more offenders are locked up; hence, they deduce that prison does not work. They miss the obvious point, which is that even though a country like the USA for example, may be locking up more offenders, what is critical is how many offenders it does not lock up. No matter how high the imprisonment rate, whilst even larger numbers of persistent offenders remain at large, the crime rate will stay high. The point to grasp is that it is possible to have falling crime rates due to locking up more offenders and at the same time still be left with a high level of crime. This is because it takes time and considerable investment in prisons for the imprisonment rate to catch up with the crime rate, once the crime rate had been allowed to get out of hand. No Western country apart from the USA has been prepared to go down this road, and, as a result, against all expectations, the crime rates in America are now generally lower than those of the UK. However, whether the idea that ‘social stresses and strains’ are the root causes of crime is correct or not, it is irrelevant to the question of whether ‘prison works’. It is irrelevant because, first, prison has been demonstrated to be able to bring crime down, whatever may cause it to rise. Second, by the time an offender becomes persistent, any understanding of the so-called root causes of crime is too late as far as he is concerned; such insights will not stop him. Armies of social workers and probation officers have for years consistently failed to reform persistent offenders using interventions based on such ‘insights’. His habit of persistent offending has become ingrained, just as much as his expectations that the benefits he gains from crime are well worth the small risks of being caught and the even smaller risks of losing his liberty. My years spent working with offenders made it abundantly clear to me that an individual chooses to commit offences; with the exception of those who are mentally ill, people are responsible for what they do. As a probation officer, I repeatedly saw that many of those who chose to commit crime would have been prevented from becoming persistent offenders if they had been stopped early on in their criminal careers by a firm response from the authorities. Turning a blind eye to wrongdoing encourages more wrongdoing. We are all creatures of habit and the offending records of criminals show it does not take long for them to establish a routinised criminal pattern of behaviour if it is left unchecked. The rich rewards of their criminal life, coupled with the very small risks they run of being captured and/or imprisoned, compound to create within them a deep criminal persistence. We should not be critical of prisons for failing to do what we should not expect of them. The fact that they do not address the underlying causes of crime, if these exist beyond the greed and laziness of those who commit it, is no reason for not valuing them as the best means at our disposal for stopping persistent offenders in their tracks, protecting the public and providing justice for the victims. Prison and probation: an unfair comparison There is also a great deal of other evidence, little known to the public, which shows that prison is both more effective at protecting the public and at reforming criminals than is supervising offenders in the community. However, the anti-prison lobby frequently attempts to put prison in a poor light compared with these other methods, by measuring reconviction rates for those released from prison from the date of discharge, whereas for those on probation and other forms of supervision order they are measured from the date the supervision started. Thus they ignore the incarceration effect of prison, which is a denial of the primary purpose of sentencing – protecting the public. For example, to compare a two-year probation order with a two-year prison sentence, both from the date of sentence, would reduce the post-prison reconviction rates by about 50 per cent, as only half the sentence is served. Thus the 63 per cent reconviction rate for all males placed on probation should be compared with about 29 per cent reconviction rate for the one 22 year in the community following a two-year custodial sentence. Government research carried out in 1996 showed that 664 drug and alcohol abusers had committed more than 23 70,000 crimes in three months, on average eight crimes a week each. At any one time there 24 are about 155,000 persistent offenders being supervised by the Probation Service. If only half of them committed a modest estimate of two crimes a week, they would account for at least 8 million crimes. If they had been given a custodial sentence in the first place, the fall in the crime rate would have been dramatic. The evidence that prison works for persistent offenders is unarguable. Home Office data has also shown that longer prison sentences are significantly more effective 25 at reforming criminals than short prison sentences. These show that reconviction rates, which for those discharged after a sentence of up to one year are 60 per cent, fall dramatically to 33 per cent for those discharged after a sentence of between four and ten years, and to an even lower 27 per cent for those who served sentences of ten or more years. Thus the 26 statement from a previous Conservative Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, that ‘prisons threaten to become an expensive way of making bad people worse’ flies in the face of the evidence. The Penal Affairs Consortium, one of the self-appointed UK anti-prison organisations, has argued that Home Office figures (from March 1997) which showed a higher reconviction rate for offenders on probation than those released from prison can be largely explained by differential characteristics of the offenders concerned. They argue that those jailed for one-off serious offences are less likely to offend again than many persistent property offenders on probation, and this contributes to the poor comparison of probation reconviction rates with 27 those of offenders discharged from prison. This is an entirely fallacious point, because it is not the number of such offenders in prison at any one time which impact on the comparative reconviction rates for probation and prison, but the number who are released in any one-year. It follows that the number of serious ‘one-off offenders’ being released into the community each year will be small compared with the very much larger numbers of persistent property offenders, so their impact on the reconviction rates will be insignificant. In any event, Home Office prison data published in 1996 showed that the numbers of offenders convicted of serious offences in the prison population with no previous convictions to be as low as 15 per cent. This was precisely the same percentage of this category of 28 offender under probation supervision. Thus the Penal Affairs Consortium’s argument is undermined. The reconviction rates for prison become even more impressive when they are considered against the reality of the prison population, which includes drug addicts, serious alcoholics, those with psychiatric illnesses, the unstable, violent, professional criminals, persistent offenders, psychotics, drug dealers and so on. Compelling evidence for the effectiveness of prison in reforming offenders early on in their criminal career comes from an analysis, carried out in London, of the effects of different sentences on four separate groups of offenders. These groups consisted of those with no previous convictions, one previous conviction, two, three or four previous convictions and those with five or more. Measured over a six-year period, as Table 5.3 shows, those with no previous convictions who were given a prison sentence had a low reconviction rate of 15 per cent compared with the much higher 38 per cent reconviction rate for those in this category who were given probation. Table 5.3: Reconviction rates (%) according to sentence (measured over 5 years) Sentence No. of previous convictions 0 1 2, 3 or 4 5+ Discharge 19% 50% 90% 85% Fine 19% 41% 61% 84% Probation 38% 46% 54% 88% Suspended sentence 27% 56% 73% 88% Prison 15% 51% 69% 90% Source: N. Walker et al., ‘Reconviction Rates of Adult Males, after Different Sentences’, British Journal of Criminology, 21:4 (October), pp. 357–60, 1981 The high rates of further offending associated with those released from prison in the higher previous conviction groups confirms prison was the right sentence for them in the first place. Prisons do not create criminals or make criminals worse; prisons are mere bricks and mortar and therefore cannot be held responsible for further offending; this is solely the responsibility of the individual who chooses to continue a life of crime. Similarly, the argument that some offenders are vulnerable to being made ‘worse’ by learning new crime skills from other, more criminalised inmates is based on an entirely false premise. (If there was credence to this idea, how much more does it apply to criminals left free in the community to corrupt the vulnerable wherever they meet them, a fact reported on regularly in probation reports up and down the land') However, the records of the vast majority of offenders receiving their first prison sentence show that they are already experienced and established criminals with little new to learn. It is wrong to say that prisons fail; it is their inmates who fail. If they do acquire new criminal skills in prison, they are not obliged to use them; this is entirely a matter of choice for the offenders concerned. ‘Prisons are human dustbins – their regimes are entirely negative’ This criticism is frequently made of our prison system, often by those with little or no practical experience of life in custody. It is true that some prisons are overcrowded, but I repeat that this is not because they are ‘overused’, but because there are so few places even for the tiny minority of offenders who are sent to jail. In any event, all prisoners are volunteers, and prison conditions, both good and bad, are well known to them at the time they risk their freedom by committing crime. Nevertheless, offenders in UK prisons have access to trained prison and probation staff who are available to deal with any problems that may arise. Help is provided with many financial and practical problems not always available to those on the outside. Many prisons have excellent sports facilities and trained instructors, who offer inmates free physical training and recreational programmes in well-equipped gymnasiums that would be the envy of many in the outside community. Prisoners in need of medical or dental help not available in the prison are taken to outside hospitals where they receive treatment with a promptness not enjoyed by the majority of the law-abiding public. Every effort is made to help the offender mend his ways by the provision of special programmes and courses, designed by the prison psychologists, probation and/or prison officers. In addition, each prisoner serving more than one year has an individually designed ‘sentence plan’ to encourage him to reform. Advice and help is provided by staff inside the prison and by many outside agencies on drug, alcohol and other problems. ‘Life Skills’ courses are run in increasing numbers of prisons to encourage the prisoners to lead crime-free lives on release. In 2000, UK prisons provided about 10 million education study hours to large 29 numbers of prisoners. Free tuition and educational facilities, not available to many of the law-abiding public on the outside, have enabled many offenders to obtain degrees and other higher-education qualifications, which, it is arguable, they would not have achieved otherwise. It is a myth that prison ‘breaks up families’. It is offenders who by their criminal way of life break family ties. Prison staff encourage prisoners to re-establish family contacts broken long before the offender started his prison sentence, and every effort is made to facilitate visits by family and friends. Much effort is put into ensuring a smooth passage from prison to the outside world. Generous financial grants are paid to those who need them on release. Numerous organisations such as NACRO make free job training schemes available to many about to be released. In 1995, the Prisoners’ Information Book was published for circulation to all inmates, which is updated every year. Among other things, it contained information on no less than sixty-three 30 organisations offering inmates help over a wide variety of issues. In sum, prisons in the United Kingdom provide their inmates with free meals and laundry services and ensure free legal advice is available; they also provide prisoners with access to free medical and dental treatment, free training and help from experts on a range of Prisons Sport Media Culture Agriculture & Fisheries Housing Trade & Industry Roads & Transport Environment Law & Order Education Health Social Security 1.9 2.4 2.8 2.9 4.9 7.8 8.7 14.3 31.3 45.7 84.6 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 psychiatric, personal and social issues, free job training, free high-calibre sports and recreational facilities, free taxi services when required, free transport to their home, and grants of money when needed. The sustained efforts and money (quite properly) spent on criminals in our prisons to look after them during their sentence and to encourage them to reform are largely obscured from the public by the misleading propaganda of the anti-prison lobby. These facts make a mockery of the criticism that prisons are human dustbins offering a ‘no­ hope negative regime’. ‘Prison are more expensive than supervising offenders in the community’ The claim that prison is more expensive than supervising offenders in the community is entirely misleading. It would be true if the offenders concerned committed no more offences. 31 But it is known that whilst under supervision they commit millions of offences. Crime costs us at least a staggering £60 billion per year, in addition to the emotional and personal costs to 32 the victims. As shown in Figure 5.9, in 1998/99 prisons cost us only £1.9 billion, which was less than we spent on sports and media; by 2003 the costs of prisons had risen to £2.7 billion, but they are still a bargain we cannot afford to miss. Figure 5.9 Central and local government expenditure, 1997/98 (£ billions) It is salutary to compare the £1.9 billion (1998/99) costs of our prisons with the following amounts relevant for that period. The Association of British Insurers estimated that in 1998 33 crime costs each household £31 per week. The Essex Police Force, in their 1997 annual report, calculated that youth crime costs £10 billion per year, or the equivalent of a hundred 34 new hospitals per year. Homicide costs £1.4 billion; burglaries £2.7 billion; sex offenders £2.5 billion; and drug offences, not including drug-related theft and violence, costs 35 £1.2 billion per year. Although only a small selection of crime costs, these sums totally overshadow the amounts of money we spend on our prisons. Yet as early as 1988, a senior lecturer at Leicester University calculated that prison sentences were the cheapest way to cut crime. He showed that, for example, in order to gain a 1 per cent cut in reported property crimes (which, based only on thefts of bikes, cars, robbery and burglary for the year 2000, equals approximately 640,000 offences), would cost no more than £3.6 million if prison 36 sentences were lengthened, or £4.9 million if more offenders were sent to jail. If we make the conservative assumption that the 155,000 persistent offenders under supervision in the community are only responsible for half the present costs of crime (£60 billion), then by imprisoning them we save £30 billion per year, against the additional costs of approximately £3 billion for the extra prison places required. Given these calculations, the argument that it simply is not financially practical to lock up 150,000-plus offenders is shown to be false. As huge as the financial costs of crime are, they take no account of the personal costs paid by victims. The loss of family heirlooms and items of sentimental value often results in a lifetime of distress. A debilitating loss of confidence as well as physical and emotional damage can be but part of the grim legacy of many targeted by criminals. A pervasive sense of anxiety and loss of peace of mind can result from being the victim of so-called ‘minor’ crimes, as well as more serious offending, and undermine feelings of personal safety, security and privacy. According to a government report published in 2000, dealing with the deleterious health 37 effects of crime costs the National Health Service £1.1 billion; it estimated that the cost of the direct emotional and physical impact on victims of crime was £18 billion and £14 billion 38 the result of violent crime. Yet none of this has prevented numerous home secretaries, including David Waddington and Douglas Hurd in the late 1980s and more recently David Blunkett, from trying to persuade the British public that prison resources should be used sparingly, that only serious sex and violent offences should be dealt with by means of a prison sentence, and that property offenders should be dealt with in the community. What is quite extraordinary about this appeal is that very few property offenders are, in any event, sent to jail. For example, based on Home Office figures for 2000, 101,800 male offenders were sentenced for theft and handling stolen goods. Only one-fifth were sent to prison - in the majority of cases for very short terms of three months or less. The remaining approximately 70,000 were either given discharges, fines or 39 community sentences. Likewise, less than 1 per cent of the 1.64 million burglaries committed every year results in a prison sentence, and the number of male offenders 40 sentenced to prison for this crime fell by 4 per cent between 2000 and 2001. The dissemblers Yet despite this mountain of evidence which shows that prisons are used very sparingly, but that when they are they protect the public and reform offenders more effectively than any other disposal, the public is frequently subject to irrational outpourings, from a variety of individuals and organisations, including judges, politicians, prison-reform groups, the media and sometimes even the Church of England, about the evils of prison. Former Home Secretary Lord Douglas Hurd has called for a campaign against imprisoning criminals; as pointed out by Brian Lawrence (a former Clerk of the Court with thirty-seven years experience), this is tantamount to him calling for a campaign urging people to commit crime whenever they like, which would quickly lead to a complete breakdown in law and order. Furthermore, Lord Hurd’s concern for criminals led him to say, and repeat, on 41 television that burglary was a relatively minor offence. His dismissal of one of the most physically and emotionally injurious of crimes as 'minor' is breathtaking in its arrogance. Announcements from senior members of our judiciary sometimes show how unclear their thinking is about prisons. For example, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, known for his anti-prison views and his non-stop advocacy of lenient sentencing, especially for burglars, suddenly announced in January 2002 that mobile phone muggers should be sent to prison for five years. He justified this apparent about-face by saying these offences involved violence 42 and therefore the public should be protected from these offenders. But Lord Woolf has argued that ‘prisons make people worse’. If he believes this, then isn’t a prison sentence just as likely to make a violent offender worse, as it is a non-violent one' And, using Lord Woolf’s own logic, couldn’t it be argued that the consequences for the public are far more dangerous if you make a violent offender even more violent by sending him to prison, than a non-violent property offender' The inconsistency in the thinking of criminal justice officials was also seen in the announcement, in May 2003, that the penalty for dangerous drivers who kill will increase from ten to fourteen years in prison, under the government’s latest move to cut the death toll on the roads. But if prison is seen as the answer to protect the public from dangerous drivers, 43 why is it not viewed as the way to protect us from other forms of crime'And what are the public to make of the fact that in May 2002 the Sentencing Advisory Panel, a supposedly independent body set up by Parliament to advise on sentencing guidelines, recommended a first-time burglar receive nine months in prison, and a few months later Lord Woolf stated the 44 y should not go to prison at all' This inconsistency and lack of direction among judges is not new. The day after Lord Woolf’s predecessor, Lord Bingham, had announced that fewer criminals should be jailed because ‘prison did not work’, a London judge sentenced a burglar to seven years, appearing to make a deliberately pointed reference to Lord Bingham’s guidelines by saying that ‘the good thing about prison was that it would 45 stop the defendant burgling and terrifying members of the public’. In 1989, in a published newspaper interview, the director of NACRO talked of her dream of a 46 society without prisons by the 21st century. Such a dream would be a nightmare for society. In 1999, the Church of England, in an embarrassing display of its naivety and ignorance of the facts, published a report saying most prison inmates should not be locked up and that prisons 47 were ‘a bad bargain for taxpayers’. A newspaper reported a bishop as saying that the Church should lobby for community service to replace prison sentences wherever possible. It appears that he did not know this had been the situation for years, or that the offences for which community service was being imposed were becoming more and more serious. What is more, had he enquired, the bishop would have discovered that the previous offending records of offenders sentenced in this way were getting longer and it was becoming difficult to find work for an increasing number of them to do. The bishop was also unaware, no doubt, that the vast majority had no motivation to do any work once some was found – why should they have' They knew their indolence was likely to go unpunished. Neither, as shown by their 48 reconviction records, did community service stop them committing crime. In 1994, Baroness Faithful made a major speech at a conference on government proposals for young offenders, in which she claimed that ‘sending young people to prison will greatly increase their chances of becoming adult offenders’ and that ‘supervision in the community is 49 the best hope of steering them away from crime’. Such statements are as factually wrong and on the same level of foolishness as arguing that bridges would be stronger if they were built of plywood and plasticine. Judge Tumin, a previous Inspector of Prisons, in a published interview in The Times in 1997, appeared to dismiss the needs and wishes of the public to be protected from crime when he said that he thought Michael Howard was just ‘seeking popular support’ by increasing the 50 imprisonment rate. A number of journalists poured scorn on the increase in numbers of offenders being sent to prison but made no comment about the number of offences that were prevented as a result, or the benefits this would bring to the wider public. Stephen Shaw in a published article in 1998 described prison as the ‘black hole’ in Labour’s approach to criminal 51 justice. Thinking straight about prisons Based on one government estimate of the number of crimes committed each year by offenders it can be computed that the effect of imprisoning an additional 20,000 offenders prevents 52 between 3 and 5 million crimes for a twelve-month sentence. It is therefore no surprise that we have had some benefit from the rise in the prison population since 1993; but the supposed drop in crime to the present level of 12.6 million offences still leaves the community with a dreadful crime problem, even before we take into account that these British Crime Survey estimates are only a partial measure of all crime. However, we must recall that a significant factor in the rise in prison numbers has been the large increase in other categories of prisoners, such as those serving life, foreign prisoners and those on remand, and not just those sentenced for persistent theft, robbery, burglary and so on. As will be touched upon later, increasing numbers of these latter prisoners, having been released early from prison would be on licence at the time of their further offending, leaving no option for them but a prison sentence. Therefore to see the overall increase in the number of prison sentences as entirely the result of the courts becoming more punitive is wrong. That there are millions of crimes still being committed, despite the rise in the prison population, indicates that far more offenders need to be jailed, and not be allowed to continue to predate on the public; we need, as will be discussed in later chapters, to plan for a prison population that is at least three times the present level of 75,000. 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1998 Figure 5.10 Percentage of change in numbers sentenced to custody and community service (CS) % change 1996 1997 1999 2000 custody CS We should resist being bullied by ill-informed arguments to think negatively about prisons, or be frightened into thinking that we imprison too many offenders. Whilst, since 1993, more offenders have been sentenced to custody each year, there was, between 1997, when New Labour took office, and 2001, a sharp fall in the rate of the yearly increase. For example, as displayed in Figure 5.10, the numbers of offenders sentenced to custody in 1998 represented an increase of 7 per cent over the previous year; for 1999 the increase was 5 per cent, and for 2000 the rate of increase was down to 1 per cent (see Note 1). However, this trend was hidden by the hysterical outcries from the anti-prison lobby about the increase in overall prison numbers. More recent data (reported in Home Office Bulletin 15/04) shows that the prison population increased at a lower rate between 2002 and 2003 (up 3 per cent) than the increase observed between 2001 and 2002 (up 7 per cent). The greatest value of prison to the public is the millions of offences that are not committed by persistent offenders whilst they are locked up. This enormous social benefit is deliberately undervalued or ignored by those who unfailingly point to those released from prison who continue to commit crime as evidence that prison has failed, whilst turning a blind eye to the even higher reconviction rates of offenders supervised in the community. Nevertheless, a sustained misinformation campaign has persuaded many into adopting a negative mindset in relation to prisons. How else can we explain the community’s apparent willingness to support sentencing policies that directly conflict with its own safety and well­ being, by allowing unrepentant criminals their freedom to go on committing crime' What other explanation is there for the phenomenon whereby we knowingly follow lenient sentencing practices which predictably result in the misery and significant harm to many millions of people victimised by criminals every year' Although anti-prison propaganda has poisoned the view of many towards prison regimes, in reality, as we have noted, they have much to offer prisoners, both to enhance their lifestyle inside and to prepare them for life outside. If prisoners continue to commit crime after their release it is in spite of the determined rehabilitative efforts made by prison staff and the considerable financial and practical resources which are committed to this objective. The fact that many continue with their life of crime shows how determined they are to persist with their offending because it pays so well, not that ‘prison has failed’. Although, as I have shown, prison regimes make huge efforts to encourage inmates to ‘go straight’ on release, offenders are entirely responsible for their own reform. Prisons keep in safe conditions many who are unlikeable, difficult, dangerous, unrepentant and sometimes insane, thus saving countless people from the misery of criminal victimisation. Yet because of the success of anti-prison propaganda prisons are more often vilified than praised. It is true that there are problems in prisons, but such problems can be addressed. Overcrowding is artificially induced by maintaining a deliberate shortage of places and it can therefore be solved by a significant prison expansion programme. Bullying, baroning and drug-trafficking are other problems that are also unacceptable, but it is the inmates who generate these problems by importing their criminal attitudes, not the regime, which is constantly trying to overcome them. An illusion As already stated it is an illusion that we have too many offenders in prison. If prisons are full, it is because we have too few places even for the tiny minority of offenders who are sentenced to prison. The public need have no bad conscience about locking up, for increasingly long periods, those persistent offenders who fail to reform. They are all volunteers who have all been given numerous chances to go straight and who have consistently abused these opportunities by continuing to victimise the public. Their motive is profit. They earn large sums of money from crime and have almost no risk of being caught. For the tiny minority who are, a short prison sentence is nothing more than an irritant, a short break in an otherwise active and lucrative career. As demonstrated, it is longer prison sentences which encourage them to reform. Losing their freedom for increasingly longer periods means that the advantages to them of pursuing a life of crime will be outweighed by the disadvantages. Notes Note 1 Offenders sentenced to custody and community sentences, 1995–2000 Custody Thousands % change over previous year Community Thousands % change over previous year 1995 79.5 1995 129.9 1996 85.3 7.0 1996 132.7 2.0 1997 93.8 10.0 1997 140.0 6.0 1998 100.5 7.0 1998 149.5 7.0 1999 105.4 5.0 1999 151.8 1.5 2000 106.6 1.0 2000 156.1 3.0 Source: Home Office Statistics (2000( References 1 Home Office Research & Statistics Department, Digest 4: Information on the Criminal Justice System in England & Wales, 1999 2 ‘Boss’s fears over street crime’, Bristol Evening Post, 5 November 2002 3 ‘Send fewer to jail, judges told’, Daily Telegraph, 5 November 2002 4 Home Office 20/01, Cautions, Court Proceedings and Sentencing, England & Wales 2000, 2001 5 Ibid; Home Office, Probation Statistics England & Wales 1998; Home Office Research & Statistics Department, Digest 4: Information on the Criminal Justice System in England & Wales, 1999 6 Home Office Findings 154, Prison Population in 2000: A Statistical Review; Home Office, The Prison Population, March 2002 7 For the sharp rise in foreign inmates in British prisons, see ‘Prison crisis as foreign inmates soar’, Independent, 6 August 2003 8 Home Office, Probation Statistics England & Wales 2000 9 Home Office Criminal Statistics England and Wales 1999, Homicide, 1946–1999; A Century of Change: Trends in UK Statistics Since 1900, House of Commons Research Paper 99/111, 21 December 1999 10 M. Gosling, ‘Managing Life Sentence Prisoners – Where are we now'’ Justice of the Peace, 165, p. 575, 28 July 2001 11 Home Office, Probation Statistics England & Wales 2000, ‘Prison Population Brief – England and Wales, October 1999’, The Magistrate, 56:2, p. 37, February 2000; Home Office, The Prison Population, March 2002 13 ‘Drugs and robbery behind record rise in women jailed’, Daily Mail, 5 June 1999 14 K. Pease, ‘Cross-national Imprisonment Rates’, British Journal of Criminology, 34, Special Issue, 1994 15 C. Murray, Does Prison Work', Choice in Welfare Series, No. 38, in association with The Sunday Times, 1997 16 Ibid 17 J. Young, ‘The Dilemmas of a Libertarian’, in C. Murray, Does Prison Work', Choice in Welfare Series, No. 38, in association with The Sunday Times, 1997 18 S.D. Levitt, ‘The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Over-crowding Litigation’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 3, pp. 319–52, 1996 19 T.B. Marvell and C.E. Moody, Jr., ‘Prison Population Growth and Crime Reduction’, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 10:2, p. 136, 1994 20 P.A. Langan, ‘Between Prison and Probation: Intermediate Sanctions’, Science, 264, p. 791, 1994 21 P. Coad et al., Criminal Justice: Fact and Fiction, 2nd edn, briefing document of Criminal Justice Association, 2000 22 Home Office, Probation Statistics England & Wales 1999 23 Department of Health, National Treatment Outcome Research Study, 1996 24 Home Office, Probation Statistics England & Wales 2000 25 Home Office Statistical Bulletin, Issue 5/97, Reconvictions of Prisoners Discharged from Prison in 1993, 24 March 1977; Home Office, Prison Statistics England & Wales 1997 26 ‘The figures that show prison is working’, Daily Mail, 25 March 1997 27 P. Coad and D. Fraser, ‘Reducing Re-offending by the Penal Affairs Consortium: A Critical Analysis’, Paper presented to the All Party Home Affairs Committee investigating alternatives to imprisonment, 1997 28 Home Office, Prison Statistics England & Wales 1996 29 Home Office Research Findings R154, Prison Statistics England & Wales 2000 30 The Prison Reform Trust & HM Prison Service, The Prisoners’ Information Book, 1995 31 British Crime Survey, 1998; Home Office Research & Statistics Department, Digest 4 32 P. Coad, et al., Criminal Justice; ‘Crime costs nation £60 billion a year’, The Times, 23 December 2000 33 Paper submitted to the Police Superintendants’ Annual Conference, 1998 34 ‘Cost of youth crime would provide 100 new hospitals a year’, Daily Mail, 26 July 1997 35 P. Coad, et al., Criminal Justice 36 ‘Longer prison sentences are the cheapest way to cut crime’, Daily Telegraph, 28 December 1988 37 Home Office, The Economic and Social Costs of Crime, 2000 38 Audit Commission, Safety in Numbers: Promoting Community Safety, 1998 39 Home Office 20/01, Cautions, Court Proceedings and Sentencing 40 Home Office, Prison Population Brief England & Wales, 2001 41 Correspondence between Brian Lawrence, former Clerk of the Court, and the General Synod of the Church of England, 12 November 1999 42 ‘Jail mobile phone thieves, says law chief’, Independent, 12 January 2002 43 ‘Road killers to face up to 14 years in jail’, Independent, 12 May 2003 44 ‘Jail burglars for at least nine months, courts told’, Telegraph, 11 May 2002; Home Office press release on the Sentencing Advisory Panel, October 1999 45 ‘The good thing about prison is that it protects innocent people from villains such as you’, Daily Mail, 4 March 1997 46 V. Stern, ‘Harsh Words on Prison Sentences’, Independent, 17 March 1989 47 ‘Church condemns jails as deeply damaging’, Telegraph, 10 November 1999 48 Correspondence between Lawrence and the General Synod, 12 November 1999 49 Speech by Baroness Faithfull to the Conference on Government Proposals for Young Offenders, 1994 50 ‘Prisons are unhappy places that make people worse’, The Times, March 28 1997 51 S. Shaw, Criminal Justice Matters, ISTD, 1998, quoted in J. Braggins, ‘Twelve Months of