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Is prison somewhere to dump mentally ill poor people? People who’ve been failed both by their upbringings and by society until they offend all over again, purely to satisfy our desire for vengeance? Or is prison somewhere to rehabilitate as part of a broader package to rid society of crime and the injustices that feed it? The Sentencing Council is not renowned as a hotbed of progressive, forward-thinking ideas on justice, but its new guidelines – that the social and ethnic backgrounds of young offenders should be taken into account – are common sense. It won’t go down well with the Daily Mail brigade, but the council believes that, to “avoid ‘criminalising’ children and young people unnecessarily”, sentencing should examine whether an offender’s background includes “deprived homes, poor parental employment records, low educational attainment” or misuse of drugs or alcohol.
The response will be all too predictable. Individuals are responsible for their own actions. We all have agency. Blaming a troubled background is no excuse for inflicting harm on others or on society. Lots of people have backstories littered with difficulties and struggles, but they don’t all go and commit crimes. This is, of course, all true, and nobody is arguing that people who commit crimes should face no sanction because of their upbringing. But it is both entirely sensible – and backed up with overwhelming evidence – to say that those who have suffered damage as children are significantly more likely to commit crimes. They need help, which is beneficial not just to them, but to broader society – because it is the most effective means of preventing them from reoffending.
We need to distinguish between different forms of crime. Those who
commit serious violent crimes should, of course, be incarcerated: most
people who commit rape, for example, in this country get away with it, a
continuing national scandal. But all too many are in prison because of
our failed, woefully misguided “war on drugs”: not just the possession
and distribution of arbitrarily criminalised substances, but other
crimes linked to the trade. Black Britons are far more likely to be
stopped and searched on suspicion of possession, and far more likely to
be charged and incarcerated if they are found with drugs. Lots of
well-to-do white youngsters experiment with drugs at some point, but are
unlikely to suffer a sanction with life-changing consequences.
Prison Reform Trust figures show that most prisoners have at least one
personality disorder. That underlines both a failure of our
under-resourced and stigmatised mental health services, and a failure to
deal with social injustice: those who grow up in poverty are
significantly more likely to suffer from mental distress.
Again, yes, we all have agency: it would be patronising and offensive to dismiss crime as the inevitable product of a difficult upbringing. But our profoundly unjust society does inflict damage on people, and that damage can manifest itself in ways that end up harming others. Having a justice system that takes that into account and has an appropriate response is not just morally right: it is more likely to help rid society of crime. That, rather than vengeance, should surely be the objective of all of us.
By Owen Jones
7 March 2017
