Too many short memories
nick cowen, 20 March 2008
With due credit to ‘Mr Eugenides’ whose frequent use of colourful metaphors renders him unsuitable to be linked to here, we can see the level of conviction with which the government is leading on criminal justice.
May 2000 – Straw plans `short, sharp jail shock’ for young
March 2008 – Too many short sentences – Straw
Anthony Browne wrote brilliantly, some years ago now, about political correctness – and there are few areas where the truth of a topic has been so distorted by the fictional world of PC, as that of sentencing.
The criminal is depicted as an innocent, a “vulnerable” product of social factors. People with the same background factors, leading decent lives, now and in the past, show the claim to be fallacy. Accounts of opportunistic, energetic and cogent criminals, including by the criminals themselves, show it to be fallacy. No set of demographic or personality factors act as reliable predictors of criminal behaviour. Yet, if there is one strong influence, it appears it is the erosion of the father’s role and breakdown of the conventional family.
Prison is depicted as not working, ineffectual and creating “bad people”. This is another simple lie: it could be highly effective, if far more sentences, and greatly increased sentence lengths, were imposed. The bulk of criminals, not sent to prison, still re-offend.
The final myths are around the claim that sentencing is an archaic or cruel approach towards the disadvantaged: That prison makes the man bad is a nonsensical claim of time-travel! That he has been sent there amply evidences his pre-existing state of “badness”. Meanwhile, socially deprived areas are so-often practically and psychologically locked there because of the crimes of relatively few amongst them; vandalism, drug-related crimes, robbery, casual violence and intimidation. What locking away criminals thereby provides is the potential for socially-disadvantaged areas to gain freedoms from such intimidation and the liberating prospect of improvement, development, self-respect and collective ownership. It removes and marginalises the pernicious influences on future generations. It changes the expectations of any would-be criminal, serving as deterrent and strengthening bonds between community and police. Ultimately, increasing prison use shapes a society, in which the values and boundaries reflect the consensus; civilised and democratic. There is nothing civilised or liberal-minded about allowing the uncivilised to terrorise good people.
Jack Straw’s contradiction is just the usual behaviour of the spineless, brainless, PC sort: hopping between principles, like a prevaricating frog between lily pads, avoiding the crocodiles.