Just & Reasonable™

There’s been much comment recently about the ineffectiveness of prison sentences – in particular short sentences of a year or less. The Howard League for Penal Reform reports that it costs about £40,000 per year to house the average prisoner in England and Wales but that nearly two thirds of prisoners re-offend within two years of release from prison. To put this figure into context, £40,000 is nearly twice the pre-tax salary that the average employee earned in the United Kingdom in 2008 according to the Office for National Statistics. As the Rt Hon John Redwood recently noted in his blog, a victim of a theft not only suffers loss of property but has this loss compounded by having to pay for the convicted thief to spend time in prison.

Although there’s a growing number of alternatives to prison sentences (such as community programmes), many people – including many sentencers – still think that non-custodial sentences are too much of a light touch.

If we want to reduce the waste of taxpayers’ money on ineffective prison sentences, we need to develop more alternatives which the public and sentencers will be happy with. With this in mind, another string to the sentencer’s bow could be the ability to deny a convict the right to receive state benefits in cash.

Any cash benefits to which the convict is entitled would be received for a given period of time by means of a card.

It would not be possible to withdraw cash from the card or go overdrawn and the card would be non-transferable (i.e. it could only be used by the convict). It would be illegal for retailers to allow people to pay for products like alcohol and cigarettes using such a card, in much the same way that it’s illegal for retailers to sell alcohol to children. In this way, users of the card would be encouraged to spend state benefits on the things for which they are intended.

The card would also make it much harder to spend state benefits on illegal drugs because few street drug dealers are set up to accept plastic. In this way, the card would help to reduce the current outrageous redistribution of wealth from hard-working taxpayers to illegal drug dealers via the benefits system depicted in television programmes like The Wire.

Given that life in prison is often perceived to be more comfortable for prisoners than life on the outside, loss of liberty may not be seen as adequate recompense for many crimes. Accordingly, the ability to deny a convict the right to receive state benefits in cash for a period of time could be a further useful sanction for sentencers.

Those of a more liberal persuasion may say that it’s bad for someone’s self-esteem to have to use a card which identifies them as a convict. But is this any worse than the stigma attached to a prison sentence or a community sentence?

On the contrary, the card might help to improve self-esteem by discouraging spending on addictive substances like alcohol, cigarettes and illegal drugs. Indeed, the card could be a helpful reinforcement to addiction treatment programmes. Again, compare this to prison where illegal drugs are often readily available.

In small ways, the card could also help to improve financial literacy. For example, managing the account and calculating how much money remains available on the card. Improved financial literacy could also help to build self-esteem.

One day we might consider extending this use of card technology to the whole cash benefits system. In the same way that chip and pin cards helped to reduce the level of credit card crime, this card system could help to reduce benefit fraud, for example by a combination of chip and pin technology and having a photograph of the holder on the card.

If you think any of this sounds like a good idea, please let me know by posting a comment. Any improvements on the idea will also be gratefully received. If there’s enough of a positive response, I’ll be encouraged to write to the Ministry of Justice about the idea.