Tough on crime? Jail's not the answer

[CHIMO]

You wouldn't run the NHS without testing the effectiveness of drugs. No sane economist would let you run the economy without elaborate modelling to test fiscal and monetary policies. It should be a given that important matters of public policy are based on evidence and research, rather than political whim. Why, then, is the field of criminal justice uniquely and scandalously divorced from this obvious rule?

In no other area of public policy are politicians as ready and willing to play to the public gallery as on crime. Since Tony Blair became shadow home secretary in 1992, Labour's approach to law and order has been to try to out-Tory the Tories in being seen as tough on crime. The Tories were only too willing to prey on people's fear of crime and enter into a sentencing arms race conducted in the pages of tabloid newspapers. Both sides continue to try to frighten the public into the arms of their party. It is this politics of fear that has created the dismal bidding war between politicians and the press on crime, a loss of faith in the police and judiciary, and the systematic demonisation of young people.

Rabid rhetoric has helped to criminalise a generation of young people. Britain is the sick man of Europe in terms of youth justice. We have the lowest age of criminal responsibility and highest rate of youth imprisonment. In Labour's first decade in power, a million children were convicted of a criminal offence and another million were cautioned. After the ridiculous top-down targets of 2002 (where fining a child for littering or cannabis was given the same points value as solving a murder), the police found children were easy pickings. As a result, the number of children entering the criminal justice system rose two and a half times faster than adults.

We now spend 11 times more on locking children up than on projects to stop them sliding into crime in the first place. Yet incarceration just increases the likelihood of turning them into serious adult offenders. There are more people in the colleges of crime we call our prisons than ever before. More places are being built. Sentences are getting longer. But it is not working. Reoffending remains sky-high. Nine out of every 10 young men sentenced to a first short custodial sentence get out of prison and commit more crime. Yet the politics of fear dictates that both the Tories and Labour are pledging to send more people to prison for longer just because it sounds tough. Liberal Democrats would not build more prisons. We are the only party brave enough to suggest that rigorous community sentences are more effective than short prison sentences.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/07/liberal-democrats-criminal-justice