I was watching the debate between Johnson, Huhne and Grayling (yes worried readers he is still alive) getting increasingly angry with Huhne's position on short term custodial sentences. He has referred to them as a school for criminals that teach young, mainly men, new tricks and techniques that leads to a high re-offending rate (92%) after a first custodial sentence.
Can I offer an alternate opinion?
Often the courts have handed down many other sentences to these young offenders and they have made no difference to their behaviour patterns. Being in prison doesn't bother them in the slightest either. They just. Don't. Give a shit.
In my experience these people all know that the judicial system is not effective in curtailing their lifestyles. One individual that I know has been sentenced to community service (failed to attend), has been tagged (cut it off), has been fined (didn't pay it), for a number of separate violent offences and it made no difference to his behaviour patterns. After he spent three weeks on remand for his latest offence (that I know of) he was sentenced to a year on tag, weekly anger management counselling and weekly probation meetings. His probation officer decided (apparently) that he should not be tagged. He has attended one other probation session and none of the anger management sessions since his release six weeks ago. And that's it. The punishments for his actions have been somewhere between ineffectual and non-existent.
Why? Because he doesn't give a shit. He's young, he's single, no mortgage, no responsibility. Nothing that the government or the judicial system can do will alter his behaviour.
In some ways I think I should admire the lack of fear, the lack of respect of authority. The 'live for today and don't worry about the future' attitude that he, and others like him, exudes is definitely more appealing than the 'live long and dull' agenda of the prohibitionists. I can't though because his actions cause harm to others whether it's the person he has attacked, the person he stole from, the neighbours who are kept awake through the night by the volume of his music or the person who's property he damaged.
I don't have any answers. There is an ever larger sub-group of the population that is breeding a new generation of kids who are growing up not giving a shit. I don't want an authoritarian state where fear is used to control the public but at the same time I think the situation will only become worse unless some sort of changes are made to the current system.
Short custodial sentences are not currently the problem or the cure but the re-offending rates should focus attention on an issue that needs addressing. How do you make someone give a shit about our society?
Sunday, April 25, 2010
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8 comments:
"How do you make someone give a shit about our society?"
For some folk, like the one you describe, it's too late to make them give a damn. So the answer really isnt short custodial sentences....but longer and longer ones.
Being in jail may not teach the thug you describe anything other than new criminal skills, but at least while he's getting his education he's not robbing your car, stealing from your house or mugging your granny. If two years doesnt work, then give him five the next time and ten the time after that....oh, by the way, I dont believe in parole either. If he gets five he should serve five.
"It's too expensive to keep all these young people in jail" will be the next cry from the lefties. Actually it saves society a lot of money. Put against the cost of prison the saving in police time of repeatedly arresting this idiot; the CPS time in retrying him every few months plus the court time as well. Add to that the savings in insurance costs in his local area as crime rates fall. Maybe a rise in house prices as the area doesnt look so blighted, or higher rents from shops that can trade more freely etc etc.
So can this thugh be taught to "give a shit", probably not. So there are indeed no good reasons for short custodial sentences, but plenty of good reasons for long ones.
'I don't want an authoritarian state where fear is used to control the public'
'How do you make someone give a shit about our society?'
I think you need to look very long and hard at what you mean by, and then think very carefully about exactly how you define 'the public' and 'our society' above.
Why you think the subjects of your post are members of either is also worth some introspection?
There is something to be said for the 'zero tolerance' approach. Where a minor offence has been met with a laughable sentence, then there is no disincentive to commit a slightly more serious offence and on and on up the scale. Catch them early and young and maybe the cycle can be broken. At the moment, those on tags will cut off their trouser leg and proudly display the evidence of their convictions (and yes, that is true, sadly).
But the other side of that is to make the law worthy of all our respect. It has been made a mockery of, with kids dragged through the courts/to the cashpoint for drawing a chalk hopscotch grid or using bad words they don't understand in the playground, with bin fines, photographers stopped and searched, and thousands of ridiculous laws and some which steal our dearest-held rights (right to lawful protest, , habeus corpus, trial by jury).
Where anyone of us can become an unwitting criminal, and where fines are the preferred method of funding public services, where the work of the police, the courts, the prisons and the probation service is at the mercy of the latest government fad, the resources which should be going towards dealing with the criminal classes are diverted towards social engineering, and the law is made a jackass.
Sorry, that turned into a diatribe. I'm only trying to keep at bay with reason my growing desire to sterilise their parents and send them all to prison hulks.
I agree totally with John R!
Young feral scum like that described wouldn't be so keen to commit crime if there was a chance of going away for five years...
I'd give them three chances; first conviction gets rehabilitation and training. Second gets five years. Third we throw the key away.
Build prison accommodation to prove we mean business.
Many moons ago, before we developed a weak and broken society, there was a scheme in place called Preventive Detention.
Basically this meant that if you fulfilled various categories of offending, then your sentence was increased.
Quite why we did away with this is beyond my ken.
The cane & the cat worked. (Oh, and add in the noose, where necessary).
And if that, in your eyes, makes me a hanging & flogging Tory, I have one word - T.U.P.H. It works. And doesn't crowd the prisons. Or increase the load on 'probation' 'officers'.
I suspect that the answer to these feral, almost hopeless cases might be humiliation. After all what is one of the noticeable things about such people? Their constant urge to 'big themselves up' and bully those they see as weaker than themselves. Their greatest dread is being seen as weak themselves. My suggestion would be some modern form of the stocks, situated in the most public place available. Victims of crime should be encouraged to attend with a view to pointing and laughing at the offender. Perhaps rotten tomatoes etc could be supplied for their convenience? The criminal is left looking utterly pathetic and ridiculous, the victims are empowered and realise that the wimpering, humiliated creature on display is much less of a threat than they feared....
It also has the benefit of not inflicting physical injury on the criminal, something which would be very hard to justify IMO.
If short custodial sentences are followed by reckless re-offending, I suggest the next stage ought to be long custodial sentences.
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