Punishment has historically been shown to have a fairly limited effect, we in the UK had the death penalty for what would be called minor infringements, such as stealing a pie - a 9 year boy was executed for that, transportation for even less serious crimes but such draconian measures did not in themselves reduce crime.
Its also a matter of record that UK prison terms have steadily increased over the last 100 years, but no-one would say that we currently live in a golden age of crime free living.
Crime does have a very strong correlation with poverty, it goes up when we have a recession, and generally decreases in better times, it afflicts those at the lower end of the income scale, hence the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities in prison.
Crime is pretty much a class ridden affair in the UK, especially violent crime.
These are mostly associations rather than proof, crime itself can be a cause of poverty for example.
For all that, the idea of deterring crime seems to me to work only in a more limited sense, multiple offenders can and do change their offence of choice when the tariff for their usual crime becomes more than they are prepared to accept, so a burglar might change to car theft, but when the tariff for multiple car crimes goes up, they may change to credit card fraud, or if they carry out street robberies and it looks like the next such crime will net them 8 years or so, they will change to something less costly in terms of jail.
You’ll note though, that these habitual offenders still keep committing crime, and they also accept that at some point they will also be caught, hence the change of crime of choice to minimise the jail term.
The most striking thing about criminals as a whole(which isn’t that good a way to consider them) is that their education levels are appalling, with a typical maths age of around 5 to 7 years old and a reading age of around 9 years old.
It means that they are effectively unemployable, but it also means something else, they actually do not have the intellectual power to understand what they lose when they are given a prison term.
The vast majority of prisoner I deal with struggle to read the newspapers, and by that I mean the lowest rags published, they fail to understand the concept of media bias, they are unable to generate the cynicism that one get from reading such papers because they simply do not have the critical facilities.
Around 70% to 85% return to prison, the figure is higher for younger criminals, those under 21, than for those over 30 which will come as no real surprise.
It shows that rehabilitation does less to prevent crime than does jail time, years and age are what have the most effect.
I do think that beyond a certain age, repeat offenders are most unlikely to ever make a meaningful contribution to society, by the time a repeat offender is around 26, they will have an offending career stretching back 14 years or more, they are unemployable, and the reality is that they would not be capable of holding down work if it came to them easy.
I think there is a case for these repeat offenders being held in prison for extreme terms, without the costly pretence of rehabilitation.
You need to realise that in prison, we have drugs counsellors, careers advisors, psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, trades skills trainers, along with social workers, those delivering the many life skills courses etc etc etc.
This does not come cheap, and quite honestly, we could save this money by not pretending we have the answers to criminals, and instead simply hold them in an institution for far less money until they are incapable of causing society harm.
I’ll let you do some of the maths here, but,
Lets imagine a drug addict with a fairly mild heroin habit, its costing around £200 per week, or around $300.
I’ve chosen drugs because that lies at the root of around 66% of UK prisoners, and bear in mind that this relates almost completely to hard drugs and not cannabis or ecstasy. You could make some argument about legalising drugs but that would be a hijack.
To obtain that money, our addict has to acquire goods of around 10 times that value, because thats the going rate for stolen stuff, could be mobile phones, GPS units, stolen cars, whatever you want to think of.
This addict has to do this 52 weeks a year, whilst committing this crime, our addict also does not work, and in fact draws state benefits, not a huge amount but you the taxpayer are funding it, and remember that someone will have to provide somewhere for our criminal to live, another cost.
Add in these costs, and multiply by 10 years or more - quite a sum isn’t it ?
It costs around £25k per year to keep our criminal inside a Category C prison per year, but if you took out all pretence at rehabilitation, and just went for containment, this would be significantly less, perhaps one third to one half the cost.
There is one further thing, I was just showing you the financial cost to society, but you can’t put a value on the misery these individuals inflict on us, the individuals that make up society, your stolen car is damn inconvenient, but the increased insurance as a result is also a pain, but this is mild compared to the fear of going outdoors that the victim of a violent robbery may undergo.
I genuinely think there is room in the prison system for contianment, not just of serious criminals such as murderers, but also for repeat offenders, and forget about rehabilitation, forget about deterrance, just keep them isolated from society with no pretences.
