At least John Redwood is thinking outside the box
Dear John Redwood,
Your rolling coverage of suggested spending cuts on your blog is certainly thought-provoking. For example, your post yesterday entitled ‘Fewer prisoners, fewer prison places’ had an element of underlying logic. The idea was simple: let low-level non-violent offenders such as burglars and thieves pay fines instead of sending them to prison. While this policy has some appeal, I believe it falls down on the implementation.
“Let me make it clear at the outset before the spinners get to work. I think prison is the right place for anyone who represents a threat to the public. If people have committed acts of violence from terrorism to burglary with assault, they should go to prison for a good long time. However, our cuts in spending need to be wide ranging. One good cut would be fewer criminals in prison. There are two big categories we need to look at.
The first is all those people who commit crimes by taking money or property that does not belong to them, ranging from the common thief to the fraudster. Surely it would be much better to prove to them that crime does not pay. They should be made to pay the costs of the police and judicial system in handling and prosecuting their case. They should make full restitution to any third party affected by their actions, including an element of compensation.
If someone stole my car, for example, I would like them to buy me a new replacement. I do not wish to pay for them to spend time in prison as well as being financially as worse off from the loss of my vehicle and the ensuing insurance claim. That’s a further punishment for me, the victim. The thief or fraudster would have to work harder and longer hours to meet the bills. Of course if the thief was unable and unwilling to work and refused to pay the bills then prison would be the last resort.
The second is the wide range of new crimes this government has dreamed up to pursue its political correctness and power of the state agenda. Many of these should never have attracted a possible prison sentence in the first place. Judicious changes to the penalty clauses – or outright repeal – would cut down the numbers of such offences.”
Hmmm. To my mind, prison should have three elements: acting as a deterrent, keep the public safe, and rehabilitating the offender. On all three counts, I think your policy falls short of the mark. If the worst possible fate awaiting a car thief or someone who stole a handbag is that they’ll have to pay back the money that they took, what disincentive will they have to commit crime? They can nab as many cars, handbags, mobile phones, wallets and cameras as they want, safe in the knowledge that all they will have to do is pay a few hundred quid back to the victim IF they get caught. To my mind, this would be opening the floodgates as far as criminal activity is concerned. Why would a fraudster not go chasing illegal millions if the worst they had to fear was paying back what they stole from their company or family or friends? In addition, the element of protecting society from repeat offenders and rehabilitating those who continue to cause problems would be lost should prison sentences be bypassed. If there was an excellent probation service (which there isn’t, from what I hear) and we had a fully functioning end-to-end programme for offenders being released into society, your plan to make criminals ‘work off their debt’ is more appealing, but in the absence of a wider rehabilitation programme I think it could have disastrous consequences.
The political correctness agenda has clearly been a joke and I’m sure some people have ended up in jail as a result, but how many of these people are there? I would have thought the numbers would be tiny relative to the entire UK prison population but I could be wrong. My biggest frustration with prison places is the 10,000+ foreign criminals still in British prisons, despite Gordon Brown telling us shortly after he became PM that every foreign criminal would be deported. Add to that their use of the Human Rights Act to avoid deportation and we have one almighty mess on our doorstep. If we can boot out foreign criminals, we could free up all the prison places we need while cutting public spending at the same time. Nevertheless, it is good to see you putting some radical thinking on the agenda, but this time we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
“The idea was simple: let low-level non-violent offenders such as burglars and thieves pay fines instead of sending them to prison.”
Given that a great deal of petty theft and burglary is done by drug addicts, who is going to pay these fines?
Us. The taxpayers. And the habitual thieves will then go on another crime spree to replace the fine money. Brilliant thinking, John. Not.
“The political correctness agenda has clearly been a joke and I’m sure some people have ended up in jail as a result, but how many of these people are there?”
A tiny amount, compared to the burglar and petty thief.
I don’t in principle disagree with what Redwood proposes. However, even in the 1960s and 70s, when discipline, responsibility and fear of or respect for the law were almost certainly much greater than they are now, among certain groups (the feckless or sharp operator), non-payment of fines was common.
The sequence of events went something like this.
1. Offence committed/court/fine.
2. Non-payment of fine/warrant for arrest issued/cops waste time and effort making repeated attempts to execute warrant.
3. Warrant eventually executed.
4. Offender at court/makes excuse (think of MPs’ expenses here, ie. busy, stressed, worried about mother)/no further penalty & offender given time to pay/offender does not do so. Now go back to No.2 and start process again. OR:-
5. Offender does not even turn up for court. Now go back to No.2 and start process again.
6. Repeat process as many times as may be necessary.
7. Just occasionally offender pays having first made excuse, as in No. 4. Pays £3 a week usually from benefits. Whoopee.
It sort of stands to reason that if more offences were made liable for fine, many prison places/expense would be saved; more money would be received by the exchequer (still loads of admin though); but also many more non-payments with all that entails.
Cleverer people than me would need to work out the net gain.
But good on Redwood for at least thinking about the problem.
At least John Redwood is thinking. Beats “drawing up dividing lines” every time.
OK, he’s probably wrong on this one, but if you never have any ideas, then you will never have any good ideas.
There are plenty of people who shouldn’t really be in prison:
1) Non payers of TV tax (that should take around 8% of women out of clink!)
2) Non payers of council tax, utility bills (see above)
3) Drunk drivers who have not injured people or animals
4) People imprisoned for made up crimes by breaching an ‘ASBO’ – if their behaviour was criminal to begin with, prosecute THAT, not a made up acronym!
Thought provoking? Its the most common sense I have heard from a politician in a long time.
“They can nab as many cars, handbags, mobile phones, wallets and cameras as they want, safe in the knowledge that all they will have to do is pay a few hundred quid back to the victim IF they get caught.”
I don’t think you read him properly. His suggestion is replace the goods stolen (new for old), plus a fine, plus the full legal costs. Would add up to more than a few hundred quid I would suggest.
But your central thesis is flawed. It’s not prison that is the deterrent – it is the likelihood of being caught, and convicted. Rehabilitation? What planet are you on. For many youngsters prison is the best schooling they have. Go in a petty thief, come out a master housebreaker! Its not even punishment for many – more a way of life. Prison is no more than a means of the state demonstrating its power. The tip of the iceberg of petty officialdom.
When it comes to ‘respect for the law’, how do Redwood’s ideas plan to control the burgeoning NuLab generation who have no respect for any kind of authority, and quite rightly, because authority has never been a factor in their lives, except when it was protecting them against the fed-up residents exposed to their continual ‘challenging’ behaviour?
How can ‘the law’ demand respect when it has been so demeaned by New Labour? Declaratory laws (This Act ends Child Poverty…) and stupid laws (smoking ban) plus poorly drafted, mostly unenforceable laws like the Fox Hunting ban?
And if people *could* respect the law, the people tasked with enforcing it have been rendered irrelevant. Police? Nice if you ever see one. PCSOs and the rest? They just mislead you into THINKING you are seeing a policeman but will quickly discover they have no powers at all.
LfaT is right to have picked up on John Redwoodd’s failure to think it through. Talwin has it right. The cost of collecting fines is disproportionate to what is received; a typical fine of £60 is collected at £5 a week. Petty criminals typically have very little. One solution is to tap into the black market proceeds for low level crime.
“How much did the Defendant have on him when he was arrested? Right, the Crown will take £100 of that for the costs of today” in Court there and then. We could even go so far as “Is that a nice pair of trainers you are wearing?” although word would get round to dress shabbily in Court and difficulties may arise when he goes home barefoot (human rights). How do you make these people productive?
I think a lot of the problem is that the people who generally commit low level crimes tend to be unemployed and on benefits. What does a fine matter to them – if they even bother to pay it, they’ll pay for it from their benefits – and most won’t even do that. I believe that currently, the level of fines is determined based on your income, and if you have little or none then the fine is nearly non-existant, or allowed to be paid back over a long time.
If we are to charge them for the value of the items stolen/damaged then there are a couple of considerations. Firstly, making it a new for old exchange doesn’t impose a big penalty, it just means that they’ll be trying to steal a lot more new things. I think some element of punitive damages would need to be applied. After all, if I were to steal cars, and I know I’ll get caught for 1 in 3 of the cars that I steal, then even if I have to pay back the full value of the ones they catch me with, I’m still quids in. I’d say payback 5x the value of the goods stolen/damaged, or return them in impeccable condition and pay 3x the value as a fine. Make it really hurt to get caught. And if someone is on benefits, then stop the benefits until the amount required has been collected. (ok, that might just encourage them to do more theft as they’d have no money – perhaps halving it would be better).
@Zelazny: exactly. I was going to say twice the cost of the goods stolen plus legal and police costs. Raid their houses and bank accounts if they don’t willingly pay. If not, convert prisons into workhouses and they can contribute to the return of British manufacturing. Release them when they have worked enough to pay their fine and their food/housing/security costs.
Chris, bold but I like it!
Zelazny, punitive damages would make the issue of non-payment even worse, I suppose.
Measured, at least that would introduce some form of disincentive. Maybe the police could go to their homes and confiscate stuff?!
Shaun and Julia, I know, the lack of respect is simply incredible and is getting rapidly worse. One wonders what kind of society we’ll have when the current delightful youths turn into adults….
Alistair, are you seriously suggesting that going to prison isn’t supposed to deter people from committing crimes?
Patently and Talwin, I am glad to see someone pushing the boundaries when the party chiefs are keeping very quiet. It’s a shame that this sort of thing wasn’t discussed way in advance of an election, because there are some interesting principles at work here.
Nice for the people producing the same goods legally. Unfair competititon anyone?
Hey, here is something crazy: liberalize drugs. Or at least, make the threshold of criminality with drugs much higher (because there are still a lot of people who think it is their business to interfere with what others do to themselves). That would free up quite a few prison places.
Redwood thinking outside the box? Not quite.
Usually I agree with with much of JR’s postings. This time however I must strongly disagree.
As has been pointed out, the fines never get paid, and the effort and expense to enforce payment of fines is out of all proportion to the effect they have. The criminal is hard to pin down, the council tax non-payer has a solid address and therefore is a soft target. This is why so many of them have been jailed.
The prison service should be targetted at the people who cannot be punished any other way, but that means that most property crime will end up in a long custodial sentence.
So more prison places, more prisoners, but less law, fewer offences and a fairer less expensive legal system would make the it more equitable.
Legalizing drugs is something that I’m all in favour of, but I’m not sure the rest of our legislation is quite ready for it. I think people should be free to put whatever they want into their system, but they should still be accountable for their actions – and that latter part is what’s currently missing.
I like the idea of workhouses, but as monoi points out, it might create a competition issue. Perhaps they could be made into road building crews, or provide some other service that is currently supplied by the state. (On a related note, I think the idea that people on benefits should have “workfare” instead of welfare that the UKIP put forth in their welfare policy – i.e. that instead of getting benefits for free, you should work for the local council clearing graffiti or picking up rubbish – is a great one).
As I understand it isn’t that the policy already.
You read in the paper everyday where somebody has been badly hurt or killed by a criminal who has a long list of previous convictions that have been lightly dealt with.
How about putting criminals in prison until they have paid their fines, you could even charge them for their room and board.
Why not go the other way to free up prison places and execute “life” prisoners??
The problem, in that respect, LFAT is that I don’t respect the law and most people I know kinda pick’n'choose. File sharing, recreational drugs, driving slightly over the limit, ignoring restrictions of free speech…. Its a long list.
So bearing that in mind, how can my 30-40 something generation tell kids to ‘obey the law’ in a blanket sense without being obvious hypocrites? If we feel it necessary to pick and choose what laws to obey, how can we ask or tell our kids to do different?
Hi LFAT
just as an example – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/crime-study-casts-doubt-on-prison-as-deterrent-596623.html
you might have noticed that the prison population is rising in both absolute terms, and as a proportion of the population as a whole – yet you don’t see crime falling.
mostly crime is an economic decision, and you factor in the risk of being caught (slim) and made to account for your crime (even slimmer). Of course the woolel liberal middle classes take a different view of the risks to those at the sharp end.
Not sure liberalising drugs would free up many prison places.
I assume you mean that if the drugs weren’t illegal, the price would fall and therefore the addicts wouldn’t need to steal to pay for the drugs.
Unfortunately, if the price falls, demand will rise. In other words, there will be more drug addicts.
Cannabis is a £6bn a year industry, when you factor in sales of both the ‘erb and legalish paraphenalia like pipes, bongs and Bob Marley posters. And seeds and grow equiptment. Anyway, about half a bil, probably (from experience) a lot less, is the legal end.
So that’s £5bn+ of revenues on sales that we’re missing out on for a substance less harmful per se than alcohol. Not to mention the tax on the wages of those who earn their living through the plant’s cultivation and sale, other than (ofc) those who work for the State-backed cannabis monopoloy GW Pharmaceuticals who produce the medicinal Sativex which is not available on the NHS here.
Also, Adam, drugs are like Marmite. At least the ones that aren’t Crack-like in their instant-addiction (and having been briefly kidnapped by crack addicts and subjected to 2nd hand crack smoke I can say that it was a lot less so that people say!). People either like them in which case they do more, or hate them in which case they don’t. When you actually look at the availability of marijuana in the UK from a business point of view, all that legalisation would do is make it *easier* to score weed, not cheaper. Why? Well suddenly the criminal market fuelled by Vietnamese and Thai illegal workers on slave or no wages in urban semi-detached houses would be competing with legal farms in poly tunnels – the costs of the employment of staff etc would be offset by the increasing likelihood of the illegal farms being busted. Stoners will, in general, take easy and hassle free over cheap every time.
Look at Amsterdam!
Shaun, if the price didn’t fall, then it wouldn’t help keep addicts out of jail anyway. Most are not in prison because they took drugs. They are in prison because they stole to get money to buy the drugs.
We do seem to be drifting a little off topic, but for those interested in the possible benefits of legalising drugs, the Guardian (the last place I’d expect to be in favour of such a policy) did an article not long ago about a report that stated legalisation of drugs could save the country £14bn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/07/drugs-policy-legalisation-report
Exactly, Adam. And since Cannabis is no more addictive than chewing gum, despite years and years of prohibitionists throwing millions of dollars in research at it to prove otherwise.
Equally, this is the argument about Methadone. We basically subsidise, on the NHS, heroin addicts to remain fairly f*cked up on an opiate because… well, because by enabling them to remain that way, they are not motivated to go on the rob to score *more* heroin.
The point is that drugs prohibition contributes greatly to the prison population, but not much else. At least with legalisation, there is a chance that the industry would contribute to the cost of prison upkeep.
At the very least, it would free up some police time to make the odds of being caught slightly less in favour of the criminal. It might increase the prison population to start with, but over time, it might also reduce crime overall.
People who just reject drugs legalisation remind me of the aspirin parabol: I broke my arm, so I took some aspirin. As my arm wasn’t getting any better, I took more aspirin. I was still hurting, so I took even more aspirin. Finally, my arm got gangrenous so I had to be amputated. Conclusion: I should have taken more aspirin.