The Impulse to Punish

Depressing if predictable trailing of the forthcoming Sentencing White Paper today, with Justice Secretary Robert Buckland telling Sun readers “it’s time for a tougher criminal justice system” and the Prime Minister writing in the Express that “some individuals are so dangerous or their crimes so abhorrent that they should never be released”.

Some comfort I suppose that after explaining his plans to lower from 21 to 18 the age at which people convicted of murder will be able to be sentenced to spend their whole life in prison , Johnson clarified that he wasn’t “talking about permanently locking up young people who make teenage mistakes or commit youthful indiscretions”. Thanks for that . And maybe some promise in his view that “we need more and better rehabilitation behind bars, improved monitoring of and support for ex-prisoners and more effective non-custodial sentences for low-risk offenders”. But all in all while the numbers directly affected by his draconian measures may be relatively small, there’s a real risk of an inflationary knock on effect on sentencing levels for less grave crimes.

It’s possible that courts may re calibrate their sentences downwards in the wider range of cases where two thirds rather than half will be spent inside. But for some reason I’ve never understood, they are not supposed to take too much account of what a sentence means in practice.  More likely that some will take their lead from Johnson’s idea that public protection should be the single most important principle of sentencing and impose yet longer terms. Of course, public protection is important but the experience of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence – widely acknowledged to be basically unjust -should serve as a warning against ignoring other purposes of sentencing.   

Johnson may be surprised to know that he has some support in international law. The Nelson Mandela Rules say that the purposes of a sentence of imprisonment are primarily to protect society against crime and to reduce recidivism. They go on to say that those purposes can be achieved only if the period of imprisonment is used to ensure, so far as possible, the reintegration of such persons into society upon release so that they can lead a law-abiding and self-supporting life. And that's a problem.  

Last week’s Public Accounts Committee Report showed the government’s abject failure to make progress on David Cameron’s 2016 vision of “a modern, more effective, truly twenty-first century prison system."  Given the financial constraints facing the government in coming years its hard to see much in the future.  We have heard about better rehabilitation in prisons for a decade but it seems much less capable of being delivered than are longer sentences.

Maybe the White Paper will have something more positive to say but I am not holding my breath.  As Nietzsche said, “ Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful".