Archive for the ‘Justice’ Category

Putting prison spending in context

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Ever wondered how much money the government spends on justice, prisons and policing in the context of total government spending?

There’s a brilliant chart which shows this information and quite a bit more for the fiscal year ended March 2010.

According to the chart, the government spent around £17 billion directly on justice, prisons and policing including: £9.3 billion spent by the Ministry of Justice, £6.4 billion spent on policing, £1.1 billion of devolved spending on justice in Scotland and £200 million of devolved spending on prisons, the public prosecution service, criminal justice and youth justice in Northern Ireland (not to mention the relevant portion of the £4.4 billion of devolved spending on local government and social justice in Wales). Therefore, out of £669.3 billion total government spending for the year, the government spent around 2.5 pence out of every pound directly on justice, prisons and policing.

Of course, these numbers only account for the direct spending on justice, prisons and policing. It could be argued that there are considerable indirect costs which arise as a result of the prison system, for example additional benefits spending when a bread-winner in a relationship is jailed and faces reduced employment opportunities on release.

According to the chart, the government spent nearly £60 billion on employment related benefits in the fiscal year ended March 2010.

These benefits and the spending on justice, prisons and policing represented over 11 pence in every pound the government spent that year. One wonders whether they will prove to be a sensible investment of taxpayers’ money.

Judging by the facts – like persistently high re-offending rates by people released from prison – the money being spent on the prison system could be spent better. Have you got any suggestions for how the prison system could be improved? Please do post them below.

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Response from Mark Field, MP

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Mark Field, MP sent a prompt response dated 12 April 2010 to the e-mail quoted in the previous post on this blog.

According to his letter, another constituent contacted him in March 2010 regarding the Howard League’s excellent work in prisons. Mr. Field in the past has written to both the government and his own front bench to highlight projects within prisons to get prisoners involved in interesting and productive work and to foster relationships with business.

He also feels that an imbalance exists in our justice system which we must address if we are serious about breaking the cycle of crime. As such, should the Conservative Party win the upcoming election, it has pledged to introduce a range of measures including:

  • replacing the automatic release scheme with earned release;
  • making community sentences tough and effective, and withdrawing any benefits for those who fail to attend;
  • ensuring that offenders compensate victims through a victims’ fund – those serving custodial sentences will pay into the victims’ fund through work in prison;
  • accelerating the deportation of foreign national prisoners; and
  • introducing honesty in sentencing so courts set a minimum and a maximum period of incarceration.

These all seem like pragmatic policies – in particular withdrawing benefits for those who fail to attend community sentences. It would be good if the next government would also consider re-aligning incentives in the justice system along the lines mentioned in an earlier post on this blog to encourage less re-offending.

What would be your top priority for reform of the justice system if you were in charge – let readers know by commenting below.

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Incentives in the justice system

Monday, February 15th, 2010

It was interesting to see fairly prominent coverage of the Conservative party’s latest proposals for criminal justice reform on page three of today’s Financial Times. The main goal of the proposals is to improve the cost-effectiveness of the criminal justice system. The article reports that the system today costs around 2.5% of gross domestic product each year (a higher per person level than the US or any EU country) and yet is so ineffective that nearly seven out of ten people are back in prison within two years of their release.

The Conservatives’ key proposal is for the private and voluntary sectors to take over the post-prison rehabilitation of released prisoners who don’t pose a significant threat to the public. One suggestion for this proposal is to pay for results by rewarding private and voluntary service providers who manage to keep an individual out of prison for longer than a given period of time, say two years.

It seems evident from the high rates of re-offending that many of the incentives of the current criminal justice system are failing. So, the Conservatives’ proposals to offer new incentives to the private and voluntary sectors to reduce re-offending are a timely step in the right direction.

Perhaps reform should go further though. For example, why not introduce similar incentives for the public sector as well, such as the National Probation Service and Her Majesty’s Prison Service? These public sector bodies could be paid for results by offering them a greater allocation of taxpayers’ money provided that re-offending rates are reduced.

Behavioural economists such as Professor Richard Thaler, who co-authored “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness” and advises the Conservatives about regulation, understand that losing something makes us roughly twice as unhappy as gaining the same thing makes us happy. The government could use this powerful feature of human psychology to devise an even more effective incentive scheme whereby, in addition to rewards for reducing the rate of re-offending, a failure to reduce the rate of re-offending would lead to lost revenue for the private and voluntary sectors and reduced allocations of taxpayers’ money for the public sector.

Indeed, while discussing incentives, how about extending the incentive programme to the prisoners too? Incentivising prisoners to reduce the rate of re-offending ought to have the added benefit of making prisoners feel that they have more of a stake in the outcome of their – and their fellow prisoners’ – prison sentences.

Join the debate – post a comment below now to let folks know what you think about incentives in the justice system.


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Shantaram

Monday, December 28th, 2009

One of the most memorable parts of Gregory Roberts’ enthralling novel “Shantaram” is when the head man of the Mumbai slum, Qasim Ali Hussein, neatly resolves a fight about religion between two neighbours and friends from the slum – one Muslim and one Hindu.

In front of the crowd of neighbours that had assembled around the scene of the fight, he orders the two men to work for the rest of the day cleaning the slum latrines. He then binds the two men together at the ankle using his scarf around one’s right and the other’s left leg “to remind you that you are friends and brothers, while cleaning the latrine will fill your noses with the stink of what you have done to each other today.” That evening, having convened a council of Hindu and Muslim friends and neighbours, he requires each man to learn one complete prayer from the religious observances of the other as their punishment for fighting about religion.

“In this way justice is done, because justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. You can see, by what we have done with these two boys, that justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

Qasim Ali Hussein’s wise solution seems to meet the five purposes of sentencing described in the Criminal Justice Act 2003: punishment (cleaning the latrines); reduction of crime and deterrence (cleaning the latrines in public and tied together); reform and rehabilitation (learning a prayer from each other’s religion); protection of the public (via the deterrence and reform mentioned above); and reparation (cleaning the latrines for the community’s benefit).

Why not compare this with a prison sentence under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006?

Punishment (prison – arguably more comfortable than cleaning latrines); reduction of crime and deterrence (sadly there are some people for whom prison is not a deterrent, whereas there are very few people for whom cleaning the latrines in a Mumbai slum would not be a deterrent); reform and rehabilitation (prison – yet approximately 65% of all prisoners released were reconvicted within two years according to a 2007 Home Office study); protection of the public (prison); and reparation (prison – at a cost to the taxpayers in the community of approximately £39,000 per prisoner per year).

Some of you may say, “Ah, but Qasim Ali Hussein only has to serve justice to a tiny city of around twenty-five thousand people compared to tens of millions of people in, say, England. No wonder he can tailor his solutions so well.”

Yet he didn’t have policemen or courts to assist.

Don’t you think that we could spend £39,000 per prisoner per year on something which addresses more effectively the five purposes of sentencing described in the Criminal Justice Act 2003?

A good start might be to channel more resources to community programmes such as those highlighted by the Howard League for Penal Reform’s Community Programmes Awards. Why not read more about the awards – and nominate for the 2010 awards right now – at http://bit.ly/9Cnybn.


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