Alternatives to the punitive

I used to regularly contribute to the Guardian's Comment is Free and did so again this week in a thread entitled: At least Bob Ainsworth dares to speak about drugs

Whilst on the site I started rereading my previous contributions and thought I would share this one from January 2008

@ BigFaceDog

"What do these young people have to guide them in life? What have faux liberals such as John Moore put in place of what he and his fellow travellers have destroyed? Perhaps one of you can answer that simple question?"

Two responses

I regret I have destroyed very little. We retain a punitive criminal justice system that fails to address the crimes of the powerful (which cause the greatest harms) and focus instead on the powerless and most vulnerable in our society. Criminal justice interventions create more crime than they solve. Politicians follow policies they know will increase the number of victims and then (often successfully) seduce those very victims with tough words and promises of more of the same.

On a personal level what have I tried to create as alternatives?

Well I spent 20 years working directly with men and women leaving prison and forensic mental health services, managing and developing services that enabled them to escape the destructive grip of the penal syste. Services that treated them with respect, helped them access community resources, find housing, get jobs, sort out their money, become integrated into our communities and live ok lives.

I know that there are a couple of hundred women and men living ordinary lives away from prison and contact with the police as a result of that work. They benefited from our efforts to create opportunities for them to become socially included AND as a direct result there are at a guess many thousands of other members of our community who as a result were never victimised.

Its easy to condemn, demand more violence and more pain, but if you want to make things better you have to admit that what works to stop the anti social behaviour of the vast majority of people in our criminal justice system is community based services that facilitate intergration, inclusion and which respects them as fellow members of our society.

The foolishness of minimum sentences

One of claimed purposes of state punishment is deterrence. When the lawbreaker is sentenced a message is sent out to other potential lawbreakers. The sentence must be sufficiently severe to deter other lawbreakers.  This function has been used to justify minimum sentences - a legally specified minimum penalty that applies to all who break a specific law. One area where we have minimum statutory sentences is for gun crime.

However such sentences can result is grave miscarriages of justice.  Last week a 53 year old woman, Gail Cochrane, was sentenced to five years in prison for possession of a firearm. Five years is the minimum penalty for this case.  But look closer and you realise the stupidity of the law.

The gun in question is a 1927 Czech made Browning which her Father had brought back as a souvenir from the Second World War.  When he died she kept the gun. She had no ammunition for the gun and there was no evidence it had ever left her home.  Whilst it was a real gun it was also a family heirloom and without ammunition it was harmless. Yet the law is the law and Ms Cochrane is now serving five years in prison.

She is experience the pains of imprisonment to send out a message to who?  Middle aged women who have sentimentally failed to dispose of their father's souvenirs?  Or is it a case of politicians and the police claiming that this sort of thing shows how tough they are?  Whatever its both stupid and really unjust to Ms Cochrane.