Prison doesn’t work, so Labour must now become the
party of penal reform, argues David Wilson
How we can escape
the prison mindset
Our prisons are in crisis. The prison population soared to an all-time high of almost 84,000 in 2008 – more than doubling since 1992 – and overcrowding continues to reach record levels. We now have more elderly, children, women and life-sentenced prisoners in our jails than ever before. And we lock up a greater proportion of our population than the French, Germans, Italians, Turks, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians and virtually ever other European nation – even though the English are no more tending towards criminality than our continental neighbours.
Somehow this Labour Government – in power for more than a decade – has presided over a trajectory that is taking us ever closer to the nightmare of mass incarceration and social breakdown that has blighted the United States, where one in every 100 of the population is in jail. In fact, one in every 31 adults – 7.3 million Americans – is either in prison, on parole or under some form of correctional supervision.
We should worry because penal expansionism is corrosive to society. Prisons are not tools to be deployed lightly. Often they fracture family life permanently and they can shred the very fabric of communities. When used to excess, as they are in America, prisons create an underclass with little or no investment in law-abiding society. Generations of the poor and disadvantaged become used to spells behind bars and that is the limit of their horizons. Already in England and Wales prisons have become the surrogate for a health and welfare system which is failing the most vulnerable, becoming little more than warehouses for the dumping of people whose problems society has failed to deal with: those with mental health needs, histories of neglect and abuse, and drug and alcohol addictions.
And despite all this, the dramatic increase in the use of imprisonment has only encouraged a more fearful and insecure population and has raised unrealistic expectations about the role prison can play in securing a safer society. It certainly doesn’t seem to be winning the Government any votes.
What has caused this crisis? Given the long-term trends of falling crime, it is penal policy and the criminal justice system itself that has driven up numbers, rather than any upsurge in crime. Sentences have got steadily longer, while more and more individuals have been recalled to prison for breach of licence. The crisis has also been fuelled by legislation – and fuelled with abandon. Consider this: in the 1980s, there were seven law-and-order-related acts for the entire decade. In the 1990s, there were 11. Since 2000, there have been an astonishing 31 pieces of legislation related to law and order passing through Parliament. More than 3,000 new offences have been created since 1997, around half of which can carry a sentence of imprisonment. In the meantime, we now spend more on law and order as a proportion of gross domestic product than any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In 2007, the Howard League for Penal Reform set up the Commission on English Prisons Today to investigate the crisis in our prisons and come up with a blueprint for a penal system that is fit for the 21st century. I was asked to chair the commission. We have spent the past two years speaking to leading experts and visiting other countries, including the United States and Scandinavia, to gather what lessons we can. Chief among these is that it is perfectly possible to have less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.
We decided early on that a key theme of our report would be “excess” and its counter, “moderation”. We saw excess in the ever-soaring prison population, in terms of law and order spending and excess in terms of legislative hyperactivity.
As the commission conducted its inquiries, we saw another crisis of excess hit our society in the form of the credit crunch and the downfall of the banks. And there are very clear parallels between the current financial crisis and the crisis facing this country’s penal policy and practice. Just as the banking sector has squandered and gambled with the finances of ordinary investors in pursuit of short-term gain, so has penal policy been driven by unregulated expansion and initiatives designed to win media headlines rather than do any lasting public good.
It is time to take stock. Expansionism in criminal justice was driven in a period of economic affluence. Many mistakes were made simply because we could afford them. Other errors were the result of electoral cynicism, although pandering to public fears and stoking an obsession with crime is ultimately self-defeating. An unregulated appetite for punishment will always outstrip a government’s capacity to legislate or ability to fund yet more prison cells. Ultimately, the criminal justice system is a blunt tool that cannot hope to solve the underlying causes of crime, which are rooted in social exclusion and inequality.
And that is the point. If the Labour Party was founded for anything, it was to challenge and bring an end to social exclusion and inequality. Penal reform is in the soul of Labour. What is progressive about choosing to go down the road towards mass incarceration? What is progressive about choosing to throw money at prisons that, in the long run, only exacerbate the social problems that lead to crime? What is progressive about choosing to build a prison, rather than a hospital or a school? In a time of recession, and global uncertainty, we shall need to make our choices more carefully. Only if Labour rediscovers its values – in penal reform, as with many other aspects of social policy – will its choices be the right ones. l
David Wilson is professor of criminology at Birmingham City University and chair of the Commission on English Prisons Today
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