Prison reform: Business as usual or radical change

Photo: .v1ctor. (Flickr)

In order to reform the criminal justice system and cut the prison population, taking radical decisions is inevitable, writes Daniel Boomsma.

Since Friday the 19th of August the prison population in England reached a new record of 86,821. Already plans to accelerate the opening of new prison buildings have been made. Prison service tried to calm things down and assured that they are ”developing contingencies to increase usable capacity should further pressure be placed on the prison estate”. The truth is, however, that there’s something wrong with the criminal justice system. Since the mid-1990s the prison population has even doubled – but at the same time (recorded) crime has fallen since 2000. It’s time to rethink the system as a whole.

The failing prison and criminal justice system isn’t (entirely) new. New Labour, keen on ‘reform’ in the broadest sense of the word and trying to out-tough the Tories on crime, didn’t come up with fresh new ideas. Tougher sentencing turned out to be Tony Blair’s ‘reform’. Ironically, Blair’s own strategy unit wrote a report a couple of years ago that proved his failure; 22 per cent increase in the prison population accounted for only 5 per cent of an overall 30 per cent drop in crime. Tougher sentencing didn’t seem to work at all. Just locking people up won’t solve anything on the long term. In the New Statesman Andrew Neilson pointed out that reoffending rates ”reveals that people become more likely to reoffend after each spell in prison”.

In June 2010 justice secretary Ken Clarke announced that he had plans for a radical prison policy change. Now, more than a year later, we can see the results. Clarke then made some great remarks though. ”Locking people up ”for the sake it is a waste of public of public funds,” he said. Clarke even proclaimed that prison proved to be “a costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens”. Clarke also called the rates considering reoffending a big problem: ”More than half of the crime in this country is committed by people who have been through the system”, he said.

When reconsidering an entire system one should be careful with cutting away too many resources. Unfortunately, the justice secretary forgot about that. Shadow home office minister David Hanson said: ”he is now planning to cut the resources to the justice department and to probation by 25% over the next four years.” In order to reform properly, cuts like these aren’t going to help. On the long term, it’s even going to cost more. It was quite depressing to see Clarke’s huge ambitions become worthless after he announced his budget cuts.

In order to reform the criminal justice system and cut the prison population, taking radical decisions is inevitable. That’s what the cross-party Justice Committee already pointed out in January 2010. Chairman Sir Alan Beith was perfectly clear: ”Whoever forms the next government, they face a choice between unsustainable ‘business-as-usual’ in the criminal justice system, and making some radical decisions.”

Daniel Boomsma

What does Football tell us about our Politics?

Photo: Alfonso Jimenez (Flickr)

Football represents the crisis of globalisation for our politics, writes Jake Richards.

As I sat watching Tottenham Hostpur get thumped at home by big-spending Manchester City on Sunday, I felt bizarrely conflicting emotions. On the one hand I was angry that a man from Abu Dhabi had decided to spend a few hundred million to pay players 200 thousand pounds a week to win football matches.

On the other hand, it was a great privilege to watch such mesmerising talent sparkle together in English football.

The paradox of righteous anger and at the same time enjoyable bewilderment led me to consider the rise of the Premiership and what it tells us about the politics of our era. It is easy to use the Premiership as the ultimate example of modern disenfranchisement. The paying public are far too often victims to the whim of fantastically rich groups from foreign lands. A decision by a billionaire Indian Chicken-farming mogul affects the small working-class communities in Lancashire who have supported Blackburn Rovers all their lives. A court case ruling in Texas led to Liverpool supporters celebrating the fall of their previous owners as if they had won the football league. The Premier League has left our national game open to the power of global finance. Fans somehow manage to still pay, yet they remain utterly powerless.

The rise of modern day football also reveals the decreasing prevalence of symbolic local institutions in our communities. It is a theme that Lord Glasman emphasises in his ‘Blue Labour’ movement, bemoaning the collapse of communitarian networks working as moral entities. There is a lack of emotional hubs within our communities that in the past have acted to bond and assimilate when other societal forces only divide. As a season ticket holder at Tottenham, the scene of such disastrous riots, it is clear that the expense and exclusivity of modern football creates a vast chasm between those that can afford to pay to watch the lilywhites, and those that can’t.

Match day remains a remarkable cultural ceremony for those that pay to go: a brief moment in our modern age when a community shares an emotional experience, supporting the same side, chatting and discussing the next game. Yet, the division is for all to see on Tottenham High Road on match-day. Whilst Tottenham has a large Afro-Caribbean community, inside the stadium the crowd remains remarkably white. The traffic on roads from elsewhere in North London reveals the extent to which fans travel from more prosperous areas to watch football, whilst locals to the Tottenham area can often not afford to go. Indeed, for many living near the ground, elite football represents the hassle of traffic and drunkards. Tottenham is a clear example of our beautiful game becoming a divisive force, when it has the capability of being unifying.

However, the Premier League is also a remarkable success story of the other side of modern Britain. It is a symbol of the Britain that has grown its creative industries to compete with the very best around the world. Undoubtedly, the financial rewards for our national game have been huge. The total revenue for 2009-10 was around £2 billion. In 2010, the Premier League won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade Category. There are numerous good causes the Premier League endorse, including football investment in the developing world and community coaching in poorer areas of the UK. The global attraction of the Premier League has been brought in huge amount of tourists from Asia who feel the same attachment to Wayne Rooney as those Man United fans from Salford (or Watford!). The financial reward has also benefited the culture of our national game. The rise of the Premier League has witnessed the decline of hooliganism and, to a large extent at least, racism. Foreign players have generally been better role models than their British counterparts, introducing a healthier lifestyle that doesn’t involve smoking and great drinking sessions before and after games.

For those that enjoy contextualising all modern phenomena with political theory, the Premier League can be said to represent an emancipation of the workers. At least, as was the case in the past, those with the talent to score goals and make tackles are getting the rewards rather than the businessmen on the board. Nowadays, it is footballers (and admittedly a few hangers on) who are reaping the rewards, not the owners, for whom football is now often merely an expensive hobby.

So how do we square this circle? The Premier League is a modern day success story. It has made billions for our economy and is the envy of many across the world. Yet it has also left so many here in England detached, unable to afford a ticket, voiceless in a world of the super-rich. Fans often gaze with envy at the German Bundesliga, where ticket prices remain low and there is a real ‘fan-first’ culture that has seen clubs run sensibly. It is no coincidence that Lord Glasman also points to modern Germany and their successful economy in which unions and employers work together. This shows the dilemma of our political age. Whilst the rewards of embracing globalisation and the free-market are there for all to observe, the values that made them relevant to so much of the public are discarded too easily. To condemn the Premier League is silly. Its success is too great. But lessons must be learnt when in future we embrace wealth and markets quickly. The success of a modern product so integral to the public must always go hand in hand with the values from which that product was born. Football represents the crisis of globalisation for our politics – how can we be modern and compete whilst protecting our traditions and values?

Jake Richards