Listening to James Timpson's interview, it is clear that he would like to see a sea-change in sentencing policy. That will not be his remit, but if the new PM supports such a change, I think it would have very significant ramifications for our political culture. Let me explain. /1
It would take a brave government to announce that it wanted to send fewer people to jail or to send them there for shorter sentences. It immediately allows the opposition an attack line: the Govt is soft on crime and there will be more of it as a result. /2
By contrast, the expectation is that creating new offences and pushing endlessly for "tougher" sentences will play well with the public. If you can drum up a little fear while you're at it, it will boost the benefit to be had from ever more exaggerated "toughness". /3
The further expectation is that whilst the public craves toughness, it will never ask whether the criminal justice system is sufficiently resourced to operate fairly (or, indeed, at all). Nor will it worry much, if at all, about prison places or conditions. /4
That makes toughness cheap. The public rarely even asks if tougher sentences do, in fact, deter criminals or make it less likely that they will re-offend*. Why ask? Aren't those propositions obvious?
*There are other possible justifications for a prison sentence which I do not address here. /5
Way back, in my university days, I took a course on Criminology and Penology. I was taught by the great Andrew Ashworth and Roger Hood. It was eye-opening. The studies we looked at did not suggest that tougher sentences had the deterrent effect I had assumed they would. /6
That was true whether one looked at individual deterrence (i.e. whether it deterred the person sentenced from reoffending) or general deterrence (i.e. whether it deterred other people from offending). /7
This has always been a controversial question. There has been some recent work. This is one of the key findings of the report prepared in 2022 for the Sentencing Council /8
I remember reading interviews with burglars. When asked whether they would be deterred by the thought of long prison terms, their answer was essentially: "It would if I thought about it, so I don't think about it". /9
Things were not as simple as I had thought they were. That was because people were not simple. It made me sceptical of "simplism" in politics more generally /10
So much populist authoritarian politics is aggressive simplism. There's a problem, say not enough houses. The reason is obvious, too many people. The answer is obvious, fewer people - stop immigration. How do you stop that? Get tough. Deter migrants. It's simple. It's obvious!/11
Lurking underneath the populist authoritarian preference for tough measures is (for me), a genuinely fascinating question. Why isn't it dented by evidence? If you really want to deter crime, why do something that evidence suggests is ineffective? /12
Lack of supply so let's reduce the market? Doh! I'd say it goes beyond aggressive simplism into rank stupidity. The root cause of a housing shortage is insufficient housing not too many people.
This comes up frequently in sports doping. There are people who argue that it can only be fought with life bans, but exactly the same thing applies. Tougher penalties have no effect, because dopers don't expect to be caught.
