THE political response to crime in Britain has led to an explosion in prisoner numbers and little improvement in the crime rate, according to Dr Rod Morgan, professor of criminology at the University of Bristol.
Prof Morgan's address to a Dublin conference on penal reform today will highlight the way that the British response to crime is being mirrored here, according to the conference organisers, the Penal Reform Trust. The conference will also hear from a British prison governor and a Dutch probation expert.
Prisoner numbers in Britain have increased by 50 per cent since 1992, according to Prof Morgan. "In autumn last year the prison population was rising by 1,000 a month, requiring the authorities to build the equivalent of two Mountjoys a month, " he said. "I don't think anyone seriously believes that the chances of being a victim of crime are any less as a result." The climate of hysteria surround[ing crime ruled out any rational debate on the issue, he added.
A number of senior police officers were questioning the law on the use of so called soft drugs, "but we don't have a politician who dares say that", he said.
The law and order issue had been a large vote winner for the Conservatives among working class voters and, while Labour used to be the party of social reform, it had firmly hitched its campaign to a law and order bandwagon.
Britain was looking at the US example rather than to other European countries. "This in itself is bizarre. The state of California spends more on prisons than it does on higher education. Legislating in response to every crisis, giving greatly increased legal powers, is not the answer to the issue."
The latest British crime bill could envision up to 12,000 more prison places, but Home Office statistics showed that stronger police powers and more prison spaces had "precious little effect on crime, except for the symbolic assuaging of public concerns".
Media preoccupation with crime also fuels the fear, according to Prof Morgan. "There are many more wailing sirens in living rooms than there are in reality. The public at large is fixated on a terror that they experience through the TV."
Prof Morgan said he was struck by the lack of Irish statistics on crime and prisons, with no figures available on the number of people refused bail, and the last report into the prisons more than 20 years old. "This is no way to run a criminal justice system."
