Well, DUH! But, this is the UK we're talking about. Like our liberals here, they want to disarm people to "protect them" but contine to loose these ferals humans on those same people.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003078033105384&rtmo=V6qwJfgK&atmo=FFFFFFFX&pg=/et/00/7/7/ncrim07.html
Crime and Punishment: Jail is the only real solution
Crime figures due out this month are expected to show a big rise in violence and assaults. But although Tony Blair says he wants tougher action from the courts, a consortium of 40 penal reform organisations has issued a "manifesto" calling for fewer jail terms and more community sentences. Peter Coad, a retired probation officer, says that they are dangerously wrong
THEY called him Bail Boy - a persistent young offender who gained his nickname because almost every time he committed a crime he was put on bail or given an alternative sentence to prison.
In four years he accumulated an immense catalogue of crimes, including burglary, theft, criminal damage, blackmail and assaults on women and pensioners. Every time a magistrate failed to place him in custody, another victim was created. While serving a 12-month supervision order he committed 10 other offences.
We are told by the likes of Lord Bingham, the former Lord Chief Justice and now senior law lord, that prison does not work and that community sentences are more effective than custody. But the evidence is conclusive that the majority of those given community-based sentences are persistent offenders unmotivated to reform. Most of them should be given custodial sentences.
Even first offenders should be given a community sentence only if there is some indication of remorse and a wish to reform. But the priority in sentencing must be to give consideration to the public. From 1993 to 1998, the prison population rose by 43 per cent. There was a 15 per cent fall in the crime rate - one million fewer crimes. If the prison population trebled, the crime rate would plummet.
The British Crime Survey calculated that there were 16 million crimes a year. Research showed that 664 drug and alcohol abusers committed more than 70,000 crimes in three months, an average of eight crimes a week. At any one time there were about 200,000 persistent offenders being supervised by the Probation Service.
If only half of them committed one offence a week, they would account for five million crimes. If they had been given a custodial sentence in the first place, the fall in the crime rate would have been dramatic. There is incontrovertible evidence that prison works for persistent offenders.Look at the facts.
Reconviction rates are generally lower for offenders given longer prison sentences. According to the Home Office, for a male on a two-year probation order it is 62 per cent; but it is only 29 per cent for an offender spending one year in the community following a two-year jail sentence. Compare these reconviction rates to the misleading claims of chief probation officers, who maintain that their success rates for community-based orders are greater than 70 per cent.
It is not only thefts and burglaries that offenders continue to carry out while under supervision. Home Office figures show that in 1998, offenders on probation committed 40 murders, 16 attempted murders, 20 manslaughters, 33 rapes, five attempted rapes and 13 arsons.
This is a tragedy for which probation officers and magistrates must bear the major responsibility - the former because of their questionable claims of effectiveness and the latter because they impose 85 per cent of all community sentences. Until the Sixties, serious recidivists could be given preventive detention of between five and 14 years' imprisonment. Its reintroduction should be considered.
There should be other changes that you will not find recommended in the recent "manifesto" from the Penal Affairs Consortium. Prisoners serving sentences of under four years automatically qualify for a 50 per cent remission; this should be reduced to 25 per cent depending on good behaviour.
The Home Detention Curfew scheme - a cynical device to reduce the pressure on the prison population which allows the early release on electronic tag of selected prisoners - should be abandoned. It is nothing short of a national scandal that so many persistent young offenders under the supervision of the Probation Service should have inflicted so much material, physical and often lifelong emotional trauma on their victims.
Peter Coad is Director of the Criminal Justice Association. Tel: 01179 684459.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003078033105384&rtmo=V6qwJfgK&atmo=FFFFFFFX&pg=/et/00/7/7/ncrim07.html
Crime and Punishment: Jail is the only real solution
Crime figures due out this month are expected to show a big rise in violence and assaults. But although Tony Blair says he wants tougher action from the courts, a consortium of 40 penal reform organisations has issued a "manifesto" calling for fewer jail terms and more community sentences. Peter Coad, a retired probation officer, says that they are dangerously wrong
THEY called him Bail Boy - a persistent young offender who gained his nickname because almost every time he committed a crime he was put on bail or given an alternative sentence to prison.
In four years he accumulated an immense catalogue of crimes, including burglary, theft, criminal damage, blackmail and assaults on women and pensioners. Every time a magistrate failed to place him in custody, another victim was created. While serving a 12-month supervision order he committed 10 other offences.
We are told by the likes of Lord Bingham, the former Lord Chief Justice and now senior law lord, that prison does not work and that community sentences are more effective than custody. But the evidence is conclusive that the majority of those given community-based sentences are persistent offenders unmotivated to reform. Most of them should be given custodial sentences.
Even first offenders should be given a community sentence only if there is some indication of remorse and a wish to reform. But the priority in sentencing must be to give consideration to the public. From 1993 to 1998, the prison population rose by 43 per cent. There was a 15 per cent fall in the crime rate - one million fewer crimes. If the prison population trebled, the crime rate would plummet.
The British Crime Survey calculated that there were 16 million crimes a year. Research showed that 664 drug and alcohol abusers committed more than 70,000 crimes in three months, an average of eight crimes a week. At any one time there were about 200,000 persistent offenders being supervised by the Probation Service.
If only half of them committed one offence a week, they would account for five million crimes. If they had been given a custodial sentence in the first place, the fall in the crime rate would have been dramatic. There is incontrovertible evidence that prison works for persistent offenders.Look at the facts.
Reconviction rates are generally lower for offenders given longer prison sentences. According to the Home Office, for a male on a two-year probation order it is 62 per cent; but it is only 29 per cent for an offender spending one year in the community following a two-year jail sentence. Compare these reconviction rates to the misleading claims of chief probation officers, who maintain that their success rates for community-based orders are greater than 70 per cent.
It is not only thefts and burglaries that offenders continue to carry out while under supervision. Home Office figures show that in 1998, offenders on probation committed 40 murders, 16 attempted murders, 20 manslaughters, 33 rapes, five attempted rapes and 13 arsons.
This is a tragedy for which probation officers and magistrates must bear the major responsibility - the former because of their questionable claims of effectiveness and the latter because they impose 85 per cent of all community sentences. Until the Sixties, serious recidivists could be given preventive detention of between five and 14 years' imprisonment. Its reintroduction should be considered.
There should be other changes that you will not find recommended in the recent "manifesto" from the Penal Affairs Consortium. Prisoners serving sentences of under four years automatically qualify for a 50 per cent remission; this should be reduced to 25 per cent depending on good behaviour.
The Home Detention Curfew scheme - a cynical device to reduce the pressure on the prison population which allows the early release on electronic tag of selected prisoners - should be abandoned. It is nothing short of a national scandal that so many persistent young offenders under the supervision of the Probation Service should have inflicted so much material, physical and often lifelong emotional trauma on their victims.
Peter Coad is Director of the Criminal Justice Association. Tel: 01179 684459.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000.
