Why are so many people being criminalised, and what can be done about it?
This online roundtable brought together people immersed in work in the criminal justice system alongside others from the network who could bring wider or different perspectives.
We had two opening presentations:
Pav Dhaliwal, CEO of Revolving Doors
Pav pointed out that national policy is driven by political expediency and is failing to respond to the evidence base. We have the highest prison population in Western Europe, nearly doubling from 44,000 in 1990 to over 80,000 in 2022, with 96,000 expected by 2026. Disproportionately these people come from particular sections of the population, not least Black and racially minoritised communities. We are spending vast amounts of money (£5bn a year on prisons, and £18bn on costs of re-offending) on a system that is unfair and simply doesn’t work.
We know there are alternatives. For example, community sentences are more effective than prison, but their use has decreased in recent decades. It would be possible to divert funds towards more effective sentencing, and to addressing root causes. Most people in prison have a combination of problems in their lives – poor mental health, addiction, homelessness etc. Judges do have the ability to refer people for help, but only for one issue at a time! To make real progress we need a shift in political will.
Penelope Gibbs, CEO of Transform Justice
Penelope described a five-year campaign she co-ordinated when working at the Prison Reform Trust, to reduce the under-18 prison population. It was a daunting task, as the number of children in prison had risen steeply, to 3,000.
There was no political appetite to bring prison numbers down, so the campaign decided not to focus on changes in legislation. Instead, they engaged with youth offending teams, who were able to make a significant difference by influencing sentencing decisions. They also ran a ‘name and shame’ campaign, establishing a league table of local authorities, shining a spotlight on those councils where the percentage of children in prison was highest. And they sought out those in the system who were already concerned about child imprisonment, to work with and support them.
Other factors were also at play. New Labour had set ‘offences brought to justice’ targets, which encouraged police to push for convictions at every opportunity., and children and proved an easy way to hit the targets. When, eventually, the targets were abandoned, the pressure to imprison children started to fall away.
All of this made a difference. After five years numbers had reduced by a third. And the trend has persisted – today numbers of under-18s in prison are down from the peak of 3,000 to 456. And Penelope pointed out that placing far fewer youth offenders in prison has not generated wider problems for society, in fact the overall level of youth crime has decreased.
Despite these remarkable successes, it has not yet been possible to translate these approaches to the adult prison population. And while the reduction of under-18s in prison has been dramatic, the campaign failed to address the racial bias – the proportion of children in prison from Black and racially minoritised communities is now even higher.
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In breakouts and subsequent discussion, (including responses from Gemma Buckland, Director of Do It Justice, and Sonya Ruparel, CEO of Women in Prison) we considered the current situation and what can be done. Here are some of the points that emerged:
Government is investing heavily on prison infrastructure, much less on preventive action. There is strong evidence which points to benefits of reducing imprisonment, not least of women in prison, but the evidence continues to be ignored. A lot of crime is petty offending (a quarter of people in prison are there for theft) and the prison population could be halved if short and diversionary sentencing policies were adopted. The ‘joint enterprise’ rules fall harshly on racially minoritised groups and on women – for example, in 50% of cases the women were not present at the scene.
People’s experiences as victims of crime are often negative. Public spending on criminal justice has been squeezed, there is a huge backlog in the courts, and underfunding of the probation service is allowing dangerous people to roam free. All this is driving up public demand for imprisonment. The dominant public view is that deterrence, including harsh prison sentencing, is necessary and that it works. Moreover, there is little public confidence that alternatives are effective.
Most national politicians both reflect and encourage this way of thinking. Every 10 or 15 years a justice minister emerges who tries to drive positive change – David Gauke was cited as one example. But they rarely last long. We cannot simply rely on change coming from the top of the system.
Tactically, it may be that most will be achieved working ‘under the radar’, seeking out people with determination and influence within the system who see the need for change.
Indeed, there are a great many people inside the system who really would like things to change, who are passionate about this, and very determined. Independent organisations, including grant making trusts and foundations, are playing a valuable role where they can channel support in their direction.
While many police still see their job as locking people up, there have been efforts from within the police service to work in different ways, e.g. join forces with other agencies, to provide help to people at the right point.
Some other initiatives also point the way. For example, the Family Drug and Alcohol Court [FDAC] is an alternative family court for care proceedings, in which parents participate in a ‘trial for change’. This is a period in which they work on interventions agreed in a personalised plan which the team, family and other professionals come up with together.
But generally, where there is preventative action, or attempts to divert offenders away from prison, schemes tend to be very short term. A lot of effort is little more than tinkering at the edges, not looking at the system as a whole, not trying to make a more fundamental change.
Victims of crime, and the public at large, need to be offered a just outcome, it was suggested. So that victims can have some measure of closure, and can see that the offenders have taken some responsibility. The restorative justice movement is one means to achieve this. But attempts to mainstream restorative justice as a cost-cutting measure are unlikely to turn out well, some felt.
There is a need for broader, more generous sense of what brings people into crime, including early years’ trauma, the care system, institutionalised racism, for example, and avoiding ‘othering’ such people as inherently different, inferior, dangerous.
For example, three in five of all women in prison have experience of domestic abuse. But this is not widely known.
The voices of people with lived experience can be compelling, and these voices can help to build a more fair-minded story. Civil society organisations have a big role here, to help those voices come to the surface. But it is very hard for the independent sector, by itself, to build a national narrative in ways that really change public perceptions. There is a necessary role, some felt, for Government to set out the ‘contract’ with the public in fresh ways, but we don’t see that happening any time soon.
It was pointed out that this is not simply a justice issue – it is better seen as a social justice issue, including racial injustice and gender injustice and class injustice.
To make practical progress in this direction will require a shift from the top-down, centralised system of criminal justice towards a much more ‘community-up’ social justice approach. An example in Merseyside was mentioned, where a local coalition of agencies, including shopkeepers and other local businesses, are coming together to find better ways of responding to people who commit minor offences.
Finally, it was suggested that the four elements of the Better Way behaviour model (putting relationships first, joining forces, sharing and building power, listening to each other) could provide a helpful template, with potential for creating spaces for a different kind of discussion, right across the system.