CRIME PREVENTION
Cuts in public spending can be an opportunity
While ministers seem to be in agreement about the need to cut budgets across a broad sweep of services, there is some dissent when it comes to criminal justice, says Aleksi Knuutila
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Aleksi Knuutila is a researcher at the New Economics Foundation
avid Cameron’s comments on the subject suggest that he is unlikely to
reverse Labour’s £4 billion prison building programme, one of the most expensive in Europe. Before the election, Labour ministers were promising to create another 14,500 beds in UK prisons, and at one point, the Conservatives were planning another 5,000 on top of this.
Ken Clarke, however, is the rogue voice in this debate. The minister for justice said that it was ‘astonishing’ than Britain’s prison population stands at 85,000, almost double what it was when he was in charge of prisons as home secretary seventeen years ago. Clarke has pledged to reverse this ‘Victorian’ trend and seek alternatives to custodial sentences.
At a time when public services face the deepest cuts since the Second World War, he is surely right to question the cost effectiveness of incarceration. The ministry of justice recently estimated that the building and running costs of 5 Mini-Titan prisons could be up to £4.5 billion pounds. These would deliver about half of Labour’s planned increase in capacity.
Are the billions
we are disbursing for locking people up really creating a safer society?
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England and Wales already have the proportionally highest prison population of all Western European countries. After the planned expansions, it would offer Zimbabwe and Tajikistan tough competition in the statistics.
In the current state of public finances, decisions around public spending warrants even stronger
scrutiny. Are the billions we are disbursing for locking people up really creating a safer society?
A new report by the New Economics Foundation studied in depth the consequences of imprisonment of young people and children. The evidence reviewed for Punishing Costs shows that going through prison makes it more likely for released young people to be unemployed, to have unstable accommodation and to live on a lower income.
The evidence also suggests that incarceration makes it more likely for young people to continue offending after they have been discharged. Prison does reduce the amount of crime for the period people are behind bars. Because of the entrenchment of criminal behaviour, its overall contributions to safety are ultimately small.
Punishing Costs shows that running prisons is even more costly than the estimates by the ministry of justice suggest. Holding an under-age person in a Young Offender Institution costs about £100,000 per year. The New Economics Foundation report shows that the indirect costs to the state are at least a further £40,000. These are created by the continuing crime, unemployment and need for support in accommodation after release.
Rod Morgan, the former chairman of the Youth Justice Board, recently compared building prisons to opening new coal fired power plants. Both create mounting costs for the future. Carbon emissions
damage coming generations and prisons force us to deal with the consequences of resulting social exclusion.
What happens to young people and children who are locked up is distressing enough. The tragedy is even greater when you consider what could have been done if the same massive public resources would have been used in a more humane and productive way.
A large part of those that end up in our prisons do not pose a serious threat to public safety. According to research by Barnardo’s, 82 percent of the 12- 14 year-olds who are put behind bars have never committed a violent offence.
For these children, rigorous supervision in the community combined with strong support for rehabilitation would make a real difference. This would not only be lighter on the public purse, but has also been shown to reduce re- offending more effectively.
The massive public resources dedicated to jails leave less scope for investment into the prevention of crime or more productive ways of dealing with offenders. Within the youth justice field, about ten times more is spent on locking up children than on projects to prevent them from becoming criminals.
The public support for children who need it is often not available. Community sentences which work as alternatives to custody are frequently underfunded and poor quality. This means that many young people slide through the system to the option that is
Jul/Aug 10
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