Crime and Punishment

Reblogged: Crime and Punishment: A Personal Perspective


Once again, crime and the efficacy of prison and its alternatives are big news. Prison, according to the Prime Minister, works – sometimes.

Execution has much in its favour. It works – always – if the right person is killed. It is also comparatively cheap, compared with the annual cost of Ł28,000 for one prisoner.

The late lamentable Robert Boothby, a friend of the Kray brothers, used to declare that criminals should be hurt in their hide, their pride, and their pockets - flogged, humiliated, and fined.

When I worked for homeless charities in London, I got to know my clients, aged 16-50, nearly all of them with prison records, very well. They taught me a lot. About 30% were Catholic, whereas the UK percentage is about 8%. There was not an atheist among them.

In nearly every case, their first crime was shoplifting, either food for sustenance, or designer clothing to wear or to sell in order to buy drugs. Before their forays into crime began, most had been homeless.

Before they were homeless, most had had a far from ideal childhood. Home had been hell, with alcoholic parents, rape, divorce, if you can imagine it, it had happened to them. This is not anecdotal, but recorded in pre-sentencing reports. One young man sticks in my mind. He was 22 when he became my client. He had contacted HIV and hepatitis, as had his younger sister, when he was 12 and she 8 from being raped by their mother’s new “partner” when she was pregnant and refused him sex.

I cannot say that in their shoes I would have done differently. What had they to lose? Liberty of a sort. And to gain? Prison – food, bed, warmth, and the companionship of like-minded people. Prisons are the universities of crime.

The charities I worked for housed them, helped them claim benefits, trained them, and usually after a year, found them a flat. In my 5 years in the business, those who found work and a flat did not reoffend.

Crime, like any social disease, offers two opportunities for eradication or reduction. As with cholera or malaria, the sick must be treated and rehabilitated, and the disease must be, if possible eradicated.

My clients were not evil people, but saw no way forward for themselves except through crime. They showed remarkable loyalty to each other, sharing the last biscuit or cigarette. They would on occasion fight ferociously over a matter of what they saw as honour, as when one stole another’s leather coat – “It was mine – I f***ing nicked it, didn’t I?”.

Corporal punishment would not work – they would fight as soon as eat, regardless of injury. They were not intimidated by the prospect of pain – one client came to my key-work session with a newly extracted molar, a pair of blood-stained pliers, and a gaping hole in his gum. He so feared dentistry that he had pulled out his own aching tooth.

Prison for most is a moral vacuum, boring, sometimes terrifying, but not shameful. Former inmates of Feltham usually proudly bore a tattooed dot on their cheek, made with a biro, as a rite of passage. Prison corrupts more than it reforms.

They have no money to pay fines.

Stuck, then, aren't we?

So, to continue the medical allegory, crime is a chronic condition. The best remedy is to eradicate the causes.

How? Nearly impossible, considering the moral and religious desert that is Britain. What would it take? Something akin to religious conversion.

A return of the family to a central role in society, with whatever financial support a family needs to function healthily, including affordable housing.

Public and private morality, from the top down.

A reassertion of Society as a desirable reality, pace Margaret Thatcher, in which everyone is a stakeholder.

A decent education service, as in many European countries, where only the academically unsuccessful attend private schools.

A return to religious values. In Texas, amongst prisoners attending the Christian Inner Change programme, re-offending was 8% compared with 55% for those who did not attend.

Christian socialism, anyone?