IN February 1993 the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, called for a crusade against crime, a crusade with the battle cry "condemn a little more and understand a little less". This call to arms, accompanied by the Home Secretary's insistence that "prison works", has resulted in a huge increase in the size of the prison population and a raft of repressive legislation.
But it has not led to a fall in crime or a reduction in public fearfulness. At the same time, it is acknowledged that a crisis of major proportions is brewing in British jails.
Although punitiveness may masquerade as a symbol of state power and government determination, in reality the need for such an approach signifies a breakdown in the ordinary mechanisms of social control. It is an admission of the failure of social policy at the highest level. For this reason, it is disturbing to observe that an obsession with punishment is beginning to infect the debate about crime in Ireland.
The assumption that there is a simple inverse relationship between imprisonment rates and crime rates is fundamentally flawed. Penologists have established that increasing punishment alone has little impact on crime overall. This is primarily because only a fraction of offences are followed by a penalty. Surveys in England have shown that only 3 per cent of all crimes result in a conviction at court or a caution at the police station.
Furthermore, those few who are caught and punished are rarely deterred by their experience. Most of those released from English prisons are reconvicted within two years, and the probability of reconviction increases in line with the number of previous sentences. Imprisonment is no more effective in reducing recidivism than punishment carried out in the community. Most people who decide to cease offending do so for reasons which have little to do with fear of state sanctions.
Neither does punishment rehabilitate in a general sense, although there is a growing body of research which suggests that programmes designed to address particular categories of offending behaviour may have limited success.
All prisons do is offer some limited protection to the public through incapacitation. But we should not forget the harmful effects of custody.
Prisons are degrading and corrupting environments and it is in the best interests of the public that they are used sparingly.
The British government said in 1990 that prison was an expensive way of making bad people worse. ,Strenuous efforts must be made to ensure that at the end of their sentences prisoners do not emerge more hopeless and vengeful.
It is right that the public should be outraged by serious crimes which go unsolved and by a criminal justice process which seems unable to deal with the demands placed upon it.
But in a small State with a relatively low crime rate by international standards, it is absurd that so much political attention should be given to the deliberate infliction of suffering through the State machinery of justice.
THIS is not to deny that there are important social issues to be addressed because they can lead to crime. These include long term unemployment, youth alienation, drug and alcohol misuse, and the attenuation of informal social controls which results from changes in social and working relationships.
It is naive to think that the best, or only, way to deal with these problems is through the agencies of the criminal justice system. Their resolution requires co ordination across a range of Government departments and a commitment to creative policymaking, reinforced by the provision of adequate funds. Resources can then be diverted from unproductive processes of enpowerment to effective programmes of prevention.
However, an obsession with punishment is not just an extravagant waste of public energy and money. It is a uniquely effective way of brutalising individuals, shattering community ties and generating public anxiety. As a method of creating scapegoats, it is without parallel. Surely these cannot be the goals of a mature and just society?
It is worth recalling the words of Nelson Mandela, one of the most famous former prisoners, who observed: ". . . No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should be judged not by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.
We can be sure that while an increased reliance on imprisonment will do little or nothing to reduce crime rates, it will certainly have a pernicious impact on the wider social fabric. Therefore, if the political parties decide to make punishment a key election issue, and they seem determined to do so, then they must accept the effect on crime will be much less than they anticipate. The financial and social costs will be enormous and public fears will be needlessly heightened.
They will also have to take responsibility for the predictable social harm which accompanies a preoccupation with punishment as the solution to crime. We should learn from Britain that there is littlement in embracing ignorance and elevating condemnation and revenge to the level of political principles.
There is a great deal of talk at present about the merits of zero tolerance" policing. What might be more productive is a policy of zero tolerance for unimaginative, unreflective and potentially harmful gesture politics.
