Should we punish or reform offenders? - LEx Live Debate

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

This lively debate, organized by the University of Leicester, discusses whether offenders should be punished or reformed. The panel includes criminology professor Carol Hederman, policy expert Blair Gibbs, ex-offender and reform advocate Mark Johnson, and probation service head Heather Monroe. The discussion explores the effectiveness and ethics of punishment versus rehabilitation, with arguments about the high cost and ineffectiveness of short prison sentences and the potential benefits of community orders. The debate also touches on public perceptions and political pressures influencing criminal justice policies.

Highlights

Carol Hederman critiques the effectiveness of short prison sentences, advocating for community orders as a more effective alternative. 🚫
Blair Gibbs highlights the importance of punishment in a functioning justice system, but also acknowledges the need for rehabilitation. ⚖️
Mark Johnson shares personal insights into rehabilitation, emphasizing support over stigma for successful outcomes. 💪
Heather Monroe discusses the role of community sentences in punishment and reform, noting they can be demanding for offenders. 🤝
Audience questions emphasize the need for tailoring sentences to individual needs, exploring alternatives to short prison sentences. 🧐

Key Takeaways

Rehabilitation gets a spotlight; panelists argue it's more effective and cost-efficient than short-term sentences. 🎯
Debate circles around the idea of making community sentences more effective and visible to gain public support. 👀
Short sentences receive criticism for poor outcomes; calls for more innovative approaches surface. 🚫
Punishment isn't just jail time; community payback and rehabilitation have punitive aspects too. ⚖️
Punishment and reform can coexist, striking a balance remains crucial. ⚖️

Overview

Kicking off this high-stakes debate, the panelists come together to tackle a critical question: Should society focus more on punishing or reforming offenders? The discussion is set against the historically significant backdrop of the Tower of London, a place with its own story of incarceration. 💬

Carol Hederman leads the charge against short prison sentences, calling into question their effectiveness and cost efficiency. Meanwhile, Blair Gibbs plays devil’s advocate, highlighting the necessity of punishment in maintaining societal order, though agreeing reforms are needed. ⚖️

Personal testimonies add weight, with ex-offender Mark Johnson advocating for a system that supports rather than stigmatizes. Heather Monroe, representing the probation service, emphasizes that true rehabilitation involves a challenging journey through community-based punishments. 🔄

Chapters

00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Overview by Bob Burgess The chapter 'Introduction and Overview' by Bob Burgess serves as the opening to the Leicester Exchanges series, organized by the University of Leicester. It introduces the concept of live debates aimed at examining the interaction between academic research, policy, and practice. The initiative is intended to foster engagement among people as they debate current prominent issues.
03:00 - 07:00: Introduction of Panelists The chapter introduces the panelists and sets the stage for the discussion, highlighting potential topics such as whether Britain is broken, the importance of supporting the arts, the need for investment in fundamental science, and the debate on whether to punish or reform offenders. The event is hosted by Bob Burgess, the Vice Chancellor of the university, at the Tower of London.
07:00 - 14:30: Opening Statement by Carol Hederman In the opening statement by Carol Hederman, the location of the event is highlighted as a significant element, historically serving as a prison since at least 1100. Notable past prisoners who were held there include William Wallace, Henry VI, Sir Thomas Moore, Guy Fawkes, Roger Casement, Rudolph Hass, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey. This context sets the tone for the evening's discussion.
14:30 - 20:00: Opening Statement by Blair Gibbs The chapter titled 'Opening Statement by Blair Gibbs' features an introduction to a panel discussion. It begins with a light-hearted note about past executions in Leicester, assuring the audience that they are safe. The introduction then proceeds to introduce the panelists, starting with Carol Hederman, a professor of criminology from the University of Leicester, whose research focuses on the effectiveness of sentencing.
20:00 - 29:00: Opening Statement by Mark Johnson In the chapter titled 'Opening Statement by Mark Johnson,' the discussion centers on the effectiveness of various sentencing approaches and enforcement of court penalties. The focus is on exploring 'what works' in contexts such as prisons and probation. The chapter features insights from individuals like a former senior civil servant in the Home Office and Blair Gibbs, the head of crime and justice policy at the think tank Policy Exchange. Before his tenure at Policy Exchange, Blair Gibbs was involved in relevant work, which is implied but not detailed in the text provided.
29:00 - 35:00: Opening Statement by Heather Monroe This chapter begins with an opening statement by Heather Monroe. It outlines Heather Monroe's professional background, including her role as chief of staff to the policing and criminal justice minister Nick Herbert from 2007 to 2010. She also served as the campaign director of the Taxpayers Alliance and as a home affairs researcher at the Reform think tank. Heather Monroe studied history and politics at Merton College, University of Oxford.
35:00 - 47:00: Q&A Session 1 The chapter 'Q&A Session 1' discusses the journey of Mark, who overcame serious crime, homelessness, and drug abuse. He went through rehabilitation at 29 and emerged as a prominent figure in criminal justice reform. Mark now advises various governmental bodies and has been honored with the Pride of Britain award. He founded 'User Voice,' a charity aimed at engaging individuals with experience in the criminal justice system.
47:00 - 59:00: Audience Comments and Panel Responses The chapter titled 'Audience Comments and Panel Responses' appears to be a transcript from a public speaking event or a panel discussion. It introduces Heather Monroe, a panelist, as the chief executive of the London Probation Service, appointed in August 2010. Her career history is briefly outlined, highlighting her qualification as a professional officer in 1978 and her work in various locations including Durham, Hereford, Worcestershire, and later Leicestershire where she took on a chief executive role. The chapter likely includes audience questions or comments and responses from panelists, though only a portion is provided here.
59:00 - 79:30: Q&A Session 2 This chapter, titled 'Q&A Session 2,' begins with a formal opening of the session by referencing the expertise of the panelists. The session is a continuation of discussions surrounding the probation service from 2004. Carol Hederman, one of the panelists, makes her opening statement, addressing the audience and expressing a shared desire for improvements within the criminal justice system. The tone is formal, aiming at engaging the audience in the topic of criminal justice reforms.
79:30 - 83:00: Conclusion by Bob Burgess and Information about Leicester Exchanges The chapter discusses perspectives on victimization prevention and the role of punishment in deterrence. It highlights differing views on whether exposure to the prison system acts as a deterrent or reforms individuals. The chapter seems to touch upon a debate within the audience, suggesting familiarity with the subject matter among participants.

Should we punish or reform offenders? - LEx Live Debate Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 well can i begin by welcoming you all to the first meeting of leicester exchanges a series of live debates that have been organized by the university of leicester in order to look at the way in which academic research interacting with policy and practice can engage in groups of people debating prominent issues of the time so among the issues
00:30 - 01:00 that might be considered across the series would be topics like is britain broken why support the arts is investment required in fundamental science to make britain truly international and this evening should we punish or reform offenders my name is bob burgess and i'm the vice chancellor of the university and it's great pleasure to have you here this evening in the tower of london i hope you're all enjoying the
01:00 - 01:30 location that has been chosen for this event certainly it is a location that reminds us of the evening's topic given it was used as a prison since at least the year 1100 and among the former prisoners that have been here so i am told include william wallace henry vi sir thomas moore guy fawkes roger casement and rudolph hass indeed i'm also told that amberlynn catherine hard and lady jane gray
01:30 - 02:00 the latter with the leicester connection were held and executed here but i'm guaranteed that this will not happen to you this evening now we have four expert panelists and i'll just go across the front introducing each panelist in turn carol hederman on my out on my right is from the university of leicester and is one of our professors of criminology her research interests include the effectiveness of sentencing
02:00 - 02:30 rational approaches to sentencing the comparative effectiveness of different approaches to enforcing court penalties and the broad question of what works in prison and probation she has previously been a senior civil servant in the home office blair gibbs again to my right he's head of crime and justice policy at the think tank policy exchange prior to joining policy exchange he worked as
02:30 - 03:00 chief of staff to the policing and criminal justice minister nick herbert from 2007 to 2010 and as campaign director uh campaign director of the taxpayers alliance and as a home affairs researcher at the reform think tank he read history and politics at merton college in the university of oxford turning to my left mark johnson is a regular columnist for the guardian and whose book wasted is a bestseller mark has a history of
03:00 - 03:30 serious crime homelessness and drug abuse he went through rehabilitation at the age of 29 and since then has become a leading figure in the criminal justice reform movement mark is an advisor to local central and senior government bodies and is the winner of the pride of britain award he is the founder of user voice a charity which seeks to engage those who have experience of the criminal justice system
03:30 - 04:00 in bringing about its reform and to reduce offending and then on the far left heather monroe is the chief executive of the london probation service she was appointed to this position in august 2010 heather qualified as a professional officer in 1978 and has worked for fright in a variety of locations including durham hereford and worcestershire before moving to leicestershire in 1981 where she became the chief executive of
04:00 - 04:30 the probation service in 2004 well with that line up we have all the expertise and so at this point i'll invite each of the panelists to make their opening statement starting with carol hederman thank you very much paul um i hope uh that you can at least hear me if not uh see me at the back um i wanted to start by saying uh something that i think we can all agree on which is that everybody in this room would like to see the criminal justice system
04:30 - 05:00 prevent victimization all of us would like to see it be more effective in that regard i think that where some of us might have a slightly different perspective is in the role that punishment plays in preventing offending and i want to focus particularly on the idea that a taste of custody brings about is either a deterrent or that it reforms people uh i'm sure that quite a few of the people in the room will know
05:00 - 05:30 that we have a hundred thousand receptions into custody uh each year or or they're thereabouts it's about 93 000 the last statistics fifty thousand of those so about half of them or more than half are for six months or a sentence of six months or less another ten thousand are four sentences between six to 12 months so the idea that we're saving uh imprisonment for the
05:30 - 06:00 um the worst of our offenders is to my mind quite questionable and also when you look at who gets those short sentences 76 of short sentences offer non-violent offences and that's true of 87 of those on women so my first question is do we really need to be using prison that much and you know i'm not arguing about the people who are getting more than a year and longer
06:00 - 06:30 for two reasons the first is that those people get some probation help on release and the other thing is that once you get beyond that level of sentence you're talking about more increasingly serious offenders the reason that i think that short prison sentences are a bad idea is because they have the worst reconviction rates they have a worse free conviction rate than longer sentences and longer prison sentences they have a worse reconviction rate than probation
06:30 - 07:00 any sort of probation community order disposal now of course the question is um and there will be some sentences in the room um are the people who get probation the same as the people who go into short on go into prison on short sentences and they aren't the same people but there is an overlap between them and the latest ministry of justice analysis that took like for like people so control for seriousness of offense number of previous convictions
07:00 - 07:30 gender age those sorts of factors found that even when you controlled for that probation was still outperforming short prison sentences and one of the reasons we have to think about that is to ask why why would that be true and one of the reasons is that all those people on short prison sentences the national audit office has shown that they spend an average of six to seven weeks inside and that is at a cost of
07:30 - 08:00 about 4 700 pounds and you can get a year on probation for that so i would expect that if i'm going to get value for money i would want those short prison sentences to be more effective but like for like prison is seven percent more effective which isn't a huge amount admittedly but it does show that there is a real difference between um sending people on a community order versus giving people a short prison sentence now one of the reasons that i think this
08:00 - 08:30 is true is because the prison service finds it really hard to do anything useful with people in six to seven weeks that's that's one of the reasons the other reason is that there's home office research that shows that people who had a job going in don't go out to a job people who had an accommodation going in do not have an accommodation on the way out and people who had family ties some sort
08:30 - 09:00 of social stability before they went in have lost it by the time they come out of prison so what i'm suggesting is that we are actually making the chance of victimization greater i'm not arguing this on the grounds that i feel sorry for offenders although it's true that a lot of them are you know very damaged individuals but what i'm arguing is that we are making more victims by using short prison sentences for some of the people
09:00 - 09:30 who are currently going on into prison on a short sentence and we're doing so at a very high cost now that's going to make me sound like i think probation is the best thing since sliced bread and i do have enormous respect for the probation service there's no question about it i've seen the sorts of work they do and they do it with the most damaged and difficult people it's possible to imagine and i'm sure those of you censuses will feel the same way as i do about that
09:30 - 10:00 i think that probation could be better certainly i think there are a whole range of ways in which community disposals could be made better however i'm a slightly wary about the idea that improving community sentences will stop the use of short prison sentences and i say that because when you talk to sentences they say we only send people there who have to go to it and the history of alternatives to custody is they become alternatives to each
10:00 - 10:30 other i'm i'm afraid i don't necessarily have solutions just some questions for you thank you very much indeed carol we'll now move on to a presentation by blair thanks bob um i want to take a step back and look at some of the basics in this debate why do we punish people at all well i think there's an element of um denying the the purpose and the usefulness of punishment even in a
10:30 - 11:00 modern and civilized society so i thought it's important just to set this up nobody obviously likes receiving punishment and nobody should take enjoyment in dispensing punishment but i think it is a necessary evil in a effective and functioning criminal justice system luis casey the victims commissioner has talked about the way in which punishment has value in that the state is asking the victim of crime sometimes a victim of a terrible crime and their friends and
11:00 - 11:30 relatives to step aside and it does that in order that the criminal justice system instead can punish that person for the harm that they have caused the alternative to punishment well we know what that is it's vengeance it's vigilantes it's vendetta and no society can function with that as an alternative so the state takes responsibility for punishment and rightly so but i don't think this is a question either about being if you like more enlightened and more
11:30 - 12:00 civilized um depending on how much punishment we choose to use it's interesting how america is often cited as one of the least civilized nations in the criminal justice world america makes less use of solitary confinement than japan for instance now nobody i think commonly regards japan as another civilized country japan of course still has the death penalty so i think that's kind of crude characterization we need to avoid in this debate what does the public
12:00 - 12:30 think about punishment um we commissioned a poll of the public to ask them their views of community sentences the probation work that um carol's talked about and we asked them what fundamentally they think the purpose of a community sentence should be more than half 51 said it should make the offender pay back something to society a little over a fifth said it should punish the offender and deter a crime and then about 20 percent said it should
12:30 - 13:00 rehabilitate the offender and in that order so i think we need to be clear that the public across all sections of society does regard punishment as an important part of a sentence and punishment and payback two quite closely linked concepts do come before rehabilitation in their view so i think we need punishment and where possible we need rehabilitation too but i think punishment always comes before rehabilitation because rehabilitation is only for those who can
13:00 - 13:30 be rehabilitated and to some extent rehabilitation depends on the offender choosing to leave behind a life of crime it can only really work however much crime victims want rehabilitation for offenders however much probation officers and prison guards spend trying to rehabilitate offenders that can only ever really work if the offender wants to change as well and let's face it some offenders
13:30 - 14:00 don't want to change some offenders do some will want to change just not yet and for those who are engaged in crime particularly of serious and organized crime punishment be it prison or any form of sanction is an occupational hazard for the time that they're committing crime the prospect of punishment is just something they live with and if they're imprisoned then after their release they can return to crime if they choose to or not but it's ultimately their choice whether or not we spend much public money trying to reform them is dependent
14:00 - 14:30 i think much more than we like to admit on where the offender is in their own life um what's our problem the problem is and this goes to carroll's point is we only really have one method of punishment in our criminal justice system and there's only one method of punishment of the public regard as a punishment and that's prison this is the problem we need punishment but we don't have by any means a diverse and sophisticated range of punishment
14:30 - 15:00 options available to sentences we have something called community sentences which we'll hear a lot about this evening but i would advocate that these are not alternatives as a punishment they may achieve other things and they may have reduced reconviction rates but they're not in their current form a punishment and until we have alternatives to prison we'll be locked into a debate around whether we like prison or whether we should use it more or less when in fact we should be talking about which punishments are appropriate there will always be a place for prison but we need more punishment options for sentiment
15:00 - 15:30 sentences not less thank you very much indeed if we move on to mark johnson mark firstly i'd like to say i'm not a academic or uh policymaker and uh the only expertise i've got is over my own rehabilitation um i would agree with uh what what blair said about punishment and reform um the the bar of the law is set up people commit crime out of the moral choice to do so and it's been there for you know throughout history
15:30 - 16:00 um yet we've got you know overwhelming evidence to say that actually the people it's ill-fitting and the people that actually use it it doesn't actually meet their needs drug alcohol mental health personality disorders etc it doesn't it doesn't cater for that it makes a strong emphasis on moral choice and not an illness so the politicians have set the agenda as well
16:00 - 16:30 on on the criminal justice as public protection but it set it at the most narrow point and that is take removing people from society and lock and lock them behind the wall and actually i would i would argue that that actually creates a problem in itself um removal of responsibility irresponsible people it's it you know it's it's as simple as that so more more harms done through uh the perspective of the system incarceration loss of liberty is a
16:30 - 17:00 punishment but there's so many other losses um family you know um personal sort of life uh and also which is really the most important part for me personally as an ex-offender is a stigma the life-long stigma which is like a life sentence by installments um you know once whether you whatever you've done at 11 years old upwards will literally stay with you for most of your life in in some in some regards um
17:00 - 17:30 so prison's the um incarceration is a punishment but there's so little opportunities for reform behind the walls and um the negligible services which which aid rehabilitation which are not much better outside in the community if from my perspective but the public are given the image of protecting the public reducing reoffending so the branding is doing both but actually when you lift the lid
17:30 - 18:00 you're doing one you know one's being done really well but the other side isn't and the the real sort of uh measurement of that are the reoffending rates um so all offenders get box ticket exercises that don't consider the the person's actual ability to change i'll give you sort of uh some antidote evidence it was recently in uh this uh scrubs speaking to an offender it was his tenth sentence and he'd been in probably about 12
18:00 - 18:30 years of his life and um he was put on a ipp um so he was giving her he was basically a prolific and priority offender and he was going to be sort of managed when he gets out so restrict his movements restrict isn't you know more not not sort of technically minded and um what what i found was shocking he said you know he was really angry and resentful about this this um his scenario and his situation and um about having to be managed he said i'm not a roman
18:30 - 19:00 you know i haven't there's no victims to my crime my verbal officers now as an ex-offender i said there's no such thing as a victimless crime challenge and his face went bright red and he got really angry and even more resentful and i said to to the governor what's what really worries me is we're in a situation now where this guy spent 12 years of his life taking up public money in a system and he's not had one deluded belief that he's had about himself
19:00 - 19:30 picked away not one challenge made of his delusion about how successful his life is and what he's living and what's even more insane we've got a group of people outside waiting for him to do the inevitable i believe that change is possible as an individual if somebody's got the capacity to be honest with themselves and that that the opportunity to reform is i call it talk about teachable moments you know we all have when we get arrested when there's been a knife crime
19:30 - 20:00 perpetrated when we you know the and it's in its lost within the justice system of how long this systemic sort of process sort of takes place and also when we when we're in you know when people go to prison obviously as i've said there's very little opportunities uh to change or be challenged um so from drug services to mental health to you know we all we all know that one um so how can you punish somebody who's already punishing themselves who's
20:00 - 20:30 already leading a punishing lifestyle that's the question um and when we're in a situation where we've got this huge disadvantage group within society that find themselves in prison carter report said it a couple of years ago the same people experienced poverty go to prison germinto it's as simple as that in prison especially around young people is a better environment a more stable environment often they'll never admit this because it's easier to say you're a bad boy than you're somebody with unmet needs um that um that prison's a
20:30 - 21:00 better place than their environments that they come from that's a situation that we're in um so i think punishment can go against reform um the the definition of the word um the argument about you know the the way that we allow the the sort of media to be involved in it um and redefine what we term as vulnerable or rehabilitation you know we've got the media saying rehabilitation is a soft
21:00 - 21:30 option personally it's the hardest option anybody could ever go through to have every deluded belief that you've had about yourself peeled away and bashed out of you quite in some cases not that lovingly or kindly um but but in a in you know use that expression tough love so we know that a term of we also know and this is in the drug world that term term of um confinement in the early stages of rehabilitation has proven to produce good outcomes so
21:30 - 22:00 incarceration is the best environment to start that period of rehabilitation the other thing we'll add is the criminal justice system is focused on outputs so people who get locked up delivery of successful drug rehab mentoring programs someone getting into a job but not outcome focused and hopefully that will change within the new sort of agenda about people who don't reoffend and i think when we set that as the as the end goal uh what we'll
22:00 - 22:30 start to do is get a system that is user-centric yeah um and off and off and also invite people who've used the system into critically reflect about services and feed those back into services and that's when we'll start to get effective uh punishments or all rehabilitative programs and as i said we must see this through the offender eyes and not allow this immediate frenzy to dictate uh punishments and interventions
22:30 - 23:00 and how often do we see politicians disregard professional insights over what's popular in the news that need that is a really big barrier to any kind of success um one more thing community payback is seen by many who get sentenced to it as pointless and we've done a lot of work and research with the with the sort of um the moj around this with the people actually on the ground so from painting a fence to smashing up
23:00 - 23:30 videotapes in a probation basement it's pointless it can be used as absolutely rehabilitation agent it's not so what actually kind of is there in the structure actually doesn't use or squeeze out everything that it could the the high vis vests there's a ipsos murray public service uh public opinion poll about what the public wanted to see about crime i think we've we've heard this before about um the the public wanted to see
23:30 - 24:00 some see something being done about crime but they don't want to know the details and mr straw and his found wisdom invented the high business that's where that comes from from that report it doesn't come from science and what i find the most worrying thing is where is the research around humiliation yeah what what does that cause in the people that have to actually wear it because when we're talking about protecting the public that doesn't protect the public that
24:00 - 24:30 actually exacerbates a problem and creates a detachment from an already detached group of people thank you very much indeed and finally we turn to heather monroe for our opening statement okay well i think what's become clear from everybody is this is actually quite a complex issue it isn't just a matter of should we punish or reform offenders because actually we've just heard that punish uh punishment which we often think of as
24:30 - 25:00 imprisonment does have elements of reform and certainly from a probation perspective we often use imprisonment and recommend uh custody because it does keep society safe there are some people who are very dangerous who should go to prison for control reasons not just punishment but it's about having some control and if they're in for a long time having a chance to have some work done with them in that setting to reform them um and for some it can be a chance to have a bit of a
25:00 - 25:30 respite from uh for respect for society so we use it often as a control element not just punishment um and as we've heard for some people going to prison as you said drug offenders it can be an opportunity to reform so it isn't just straightforward punishment uh you know equals prison and community sentences is not punishment it's reform and i'll say a bit more about community sentences in a minute i just want to say something about
25:30 - 26:00 because um carol talked about effectiveness and i do think this is a very important element of the debate because surely an effective criminal justice system should not just take account of the purposes of whether we're punishing or reforming but it should take account of the effectiveness of the different sentences what will the outcomes be and i think sentences don't have that information often in front of them for this sort of offender going to this
26:00 - 26:30 sort of sentence what is the the effective rate they also don't have information about costs and cowell's mentioned costs and i think you know in the health service we get quite the you know there's quite grown up discussions about should we use this form of cancer treatment or not and they take account of effectiveness versus cost it does feel a bit like with criminal justice we can't have a sensible debate that takes account of other issues it has to be around are we punishing or reforming um
26:30 - 27:00 and on the question of uh that blair was written about punishments what society really wants you know i'm not so sure on that because again it depends what you ask and if you ask victims what they want what they say is i do not want this to happen to somebody else and that relates back to this idea of thinking about effectiveness you know it their their first immediate reaction isn't just punishment they want to have an element of that but the main drive
27:00 - 27:30 is that they don't want this to happen to anybody else um and uh we heard there about this sort of the political question i think there has been over recent years there has been um with politicians having much more of a focus on you know the tony blair phrase was tough on crime tough on the causes of crime and i think what we saw was a lot more emphasis on tough on crime and sort of upping the ante on who can be the toughest on crime
27:30 - 28:00 and almost nobody daring to talk about they're tough on the causes of crime and i do think that the balance uh therefore swung too far so we did start talking about punishment uh more and more and re-labeling as we've heard some of our sentences community service became community punishment and community payback and we started doing different things and took away many of the rehabilitative elements within that sentence i think it's also interesting when we
28:00 - 28:30 talk about uh the fact that there's been less of a focus on tough on the causes of crime when we think about as we've heard who are actually in prison you know do we really want to punish the mad and the sad and even the bad are usually bad because we've failed them in society you know people who they're full of people who've been in care which i think is a great euphemism actually for what we do with people when they're when they are looked after children that's another bit of a euphemism too
28:30 - 29:00 that they've changed the name to so um and i don't know if anybody saw the holloway program that was on last year she you know really showed some of the women that are in there for short term you know they do we really want to punish them by locking them up so i think there is that complexity about what we're doing to to people by saying we're punishing them and locking them up and uh finally you know we've talked i talked to earlier about how i think prison can have reformative elements in it
29:00 - 29:30 for me uh i think we do need to focus on uh community sentences actually the rehabilitative sentences do have a huge element of punishment in them and it's almost like we're afraid to say that or talk about it they can be the most demanding and difficult sentences and mark knows this from his experience of changing your behavior and i hope some of you will recognize this if you've ever tried to change your behavior
29:30 - 30:00 you know get fit diet cut down on alcohol you know it's actually very difficult to change behavior and you have to face up to a lot of things within yourself to do that and it can be extremely painful and that's the work we're doing often with offenders on community senses so i would argue that you know not only can prison have reformative elements but community sentences do have huge elements of punishment if
30:00 - 30:30 you talk about the pain that's caused people but they're also extremely effective thank you thank you very much indeed heather and thank you to all four speakers for their particular inputs now i know that members of the audience will be uh eager to react to these these introductory statements in terms of the questions and comments that you want to put and some people have already pre-submitted questions to us
30:30 - 31:00 so i wonder if we start with one or two questions from people who've submitted them to us starting with gemma lewsley my question is um the full title of the recent ministry of justice green paper suggests that we can punish and rehabilitate at the same time is this possible or or punishment and rehabilitation fundamentally opposed okay thank you very much indeed no i don't think they are opposed i think the best forms of
31:00 - 31:30 punishment also rehabilitate um the evidence i'd cite for that was the the study that we did looking at the reconviction rates for um those on community sentences who receive different components so if you're not aware magistrates and and judges can uh design these days a package of our requirements in a community sentence so community service um is now much more diverse and can have lots of elements drug treatment
31:30 - 32:00 curfew supervision all sorts of different aspects how do you work out whether the punishment element is having an effect or not well the punishment element that we deem to be the clearest form of punishment was the unpaid work requirement which is the community payback the the orange vest that um mark talked about mark talked about earlier the unpaid work requirements are now quite a major part of the community sentence regime but they can be combined with other things as well
32:00 - 32:30 and when you look at the reconviction rates for supervision which heather will will say is a requirement to attend um probation meetings and and appointments with your probation officer versus the reconviction rates for the same uh category of offenders of supervision plus unpaid work and if you look at for instance curfew on its own versus curfew plus unpaid work the additional punishment element the unpaid work
32:30 - 33:00 results in much lower reconviction rates are over 10 percent lower in fact so in both cases you've got examples there of a community sentence which is focused on rehabilitation but a punishment element and it's the punishment element which appears from the evidence to suggest that um it can reduce reconviction so you can have both uh well just on the issue of uh yeah you know unpaid work uh which is the actual requirement actually what happened often happens is we recommend that for lower risk
33:00 - 33:30 offenders so it's of no surprise actually that the reconviction rates are lower for that group of offenders so i think you have to you know dig down and look at some of the the data differently i think blair said that uh you know most forms of punishment have a rehabilitative element well i would argue as i think i was saying that most forms of rehabilitate rehabilitation have a punishment element and that's what we need to say more about well look i mean it depends that the
33:30 - 34:00 context of it using the high business um humiliation and subjecting people to humiliation and shame are in opposition to rehabilitation you know that's a fact i was recently i was on a community payback uh with somebody he was a teacher very low level crime and he had to go to a school to do his community payback it identified him in his local community lost his job as a result do you think he was
34:00 - 34:30 that aided his rehabilitation i don't i don't think so so it's you know subjecting people in the community it might fit the moral high ground of the people who make the law you know and it might fit but actually when we get down into the detail the real expertise of of helping people to change it does the opposite down to the pro for the psychological profile of prison guards to probation staff now have changed vastly uh from old style probation who are social work
34:30 - 35:00 multi-skilled into silos and and so that that for me that all goes all against rehabilitation i don't think that they're inevitably in opposition but i certainly think that the way we operationalize thing at the moment puts them in opposition um get getting a sort of six months in custody many weeks after you've committed the offence not knowing with any degree of certainty
35:00 - 35:30 whether you're going to get that and the fact that that short period in custody causes additional damage it doesn't just it isn't just the time inside but the other things that you lose while being inside which are sort of elements that i don't think most sentences would want to impose on people like a lot of accommodation and employment seem to me to be an unhelpful way of promoting rehabilitation i think that
35:30 - 36:00 it's possible to persuade people that you know you've done wrong we are going to punish you but as as you would do with children you may punish a child for doing something wrong but actually one of the things that's most effective with children psychologically in terms of changing their behavior is actually the bit where you um you bring them back it's the it's the absence of love that causes children to change their behavior it's the
36:00 - 36:30 feeling that they're being re-accepted that is the thing that really changes their behavior the thing that they want to earn your trust and respect again and in the same way i think that we focus exclusively um and i don't think probation do this but i think that the general debate focuses around what people have done wrong now acknowledging what they've done wrong is the starting point but when you want to change behavior focusing on what people can do and
36:30 - 37:00 focusing on how they can improve themselves seems to me to be a more useful way of progressing and what to give you an example i was interviewing women who had used the together women project in the north of england and the thing that was most striking about them was that they didn't see themselves as being in control of their lives and they didn't see themselves as worth investing in and one of the things that project really did was to say
37:00 - 37:30 you can take control of your life and we think enough of you to spend time with you trying to change your behavior and for some of them that really was the very first time that anybody had spent that sort of time with them and it seems to me that that might be a more positive way forward than constantly looking you know i'm not saying don't acknowledge the offense but having acknowledged it try and focus on some of the positive things that can help people to get out of the fender moving on to a further question from
37:30 - 38:00 neil french given that 75 of prisoners who are serving short sentences are reconvicted within two years should we not abolish short sentences altogether mark interesting you know i'm not i'm i'm not an expert in this but you know as it's been quite people have quite clearly said that short sentences are really problematic for a lot of people and they don't give rehabilitation
38:00 - 38:30 a chance to sort of take a hold but there is a detachment within the community um so you know for me i've met a lot of uh drug users on short sentences a hell of a lot pesky sort of crimes you know i mean the local community and nothing to worry you know shoplifting persistent shoplifting etc and um any chance of getting a decent rehabilitation or even a link to an outside rehabilitation on release
38:30 - 39:00 is just nobody can work with it due to the high turnover but i wouldn't say to increase sentences and that's the thing i think that gets lost in translation or that peop caught people calling for longer sentences as a result of saying short centers are ineffective where there's a lot of other options um you know for instance a drug a drug court where people go to court they've definitely got a drug problem and they're put straight into drug treatment you know for me that that's a more effective way to deal with it
39:00 - 39:30 abolishing short-term sentences is a current campaign objective of a number of uh penal reform organizations but i don't think it's really grounded in any sense of um the political realities of a criminal justice system that has to deal with people um abolish short-term sentences and and then and then what so you're a magistrate or a sentencer you're um you're faced on a weekly basis
39:30 - 40:00 with people who have never mind committed crime before they've received up to 10 community sentences i think the average is actually nine so replace the short term sentence with a community sentence they've already gone through half a dozen or a dozen times already so we'll claim that something doesn't work to replace it with something we know also doesn't work and the system will
40:00 - 40:30 get better uh quite apart from the fact that i don't think we should be in the business of fettering the sentencing options of of our courts if anything we need to give them more options not not fewer options i don't i think it's a campaign and a kind of policy without really any kind of thought to the consequences so no i wouldn't i wouldn't support that at all i think we need to do more to improve the sentences that precede prison and that's why i'm so concerned about improving the punishment element in community sentences because the truth is
40:30 - 41:00 these are the sentences that precede the short-term prison sentence few people arrive in prison on a short sentence having never received a previous sentence or anything else carol um the the argument that probation hasn't well community service or unpaid work hasn't worked a fine hasn't worked probation hasn't worked so let's send them to prison what do we do then will we send them to prison again what do we do then will we
41:00 - 41:30 send them to prison again and actually what you find is that sometimes it's the next go at probation that makes the difference to people i'm not sure what the answer is to the question about getting rid of short-term prison sentences i think you would have to get rid of sentences of less than a year for that to not just lead to a sort of sentence drift up but i think more more helpful would be the idea of more community justice
41:30 - 42:00 courts i think one of the things that's quite problematic for magistrates is that to some degree their hands are tied when they get uh people in front of them and the problem-solving approach of community justice course and some drugs course where where there's a bit of an opportunity to say you know what exactly should we tailor for this individual in front of us um you know should we take a bit of a gamble on this person even though they've been into custody for more
42:00 - 42:30 you know full previous times that sort of what are we going to do to keep the community safer rather than um you know he's been in custody before so let's send him there again which to some degree i think sentences feel a bit constrained by let's take three or four quick comments from members of the audience yes uh john thornhill chair of the magistrates association i welcome this debate because it is right that we should be talking about are we punishing or are we
42:30 - 43:00 rehabilitating and they're not mutually exclusive i have concerns about some of the figures thank you blair for correcting the figure about the stock it's actually about five to seven percent at any one time of those who are there on short-term custodial sentences and of every 10 receptions seven of those have already had a prison sentence and we're dealing with some difficult problems what do you do the 32 year old standing in front of you who has committed an act of violence
43:00 - 43:30 against a public servant that caused serious injury but the bench actually took a very brave view and said we'll use a community penalty she's now standing in front of you for breaching that penalty on three separate occasions now it's all right saying we have no solutions carol i think we've got to find those solutions and that's the real issue and magistrates will use the community penalties we're using greater and more wider current penalties than are available at
43:30 - 44:00 the moment you talked about together women's project at bradford which i attended now blair you're right within that there is punishment the ladies there have to attend five days a week to start with now for many with the lifestyles that is a form of punishment that is challenging that is difficult and yet the funding for that project is being removed so we have to look at the balance here it is right that we would hope that within most sentences
44:00 - 44:30 we achieve some form of punishment but that we also receive some form of rehabilitation as well and if those available programs are made more widely available to us again blair you made that point we need a wider range of programs but the telling point was all three or at least four have said let me correct rehabilitation only works if the offender is willing to change i think blair you said that and mark i think you said something
44:30 - 45:00 similar change is possible if someone has the capacity to rehabilitate themselves and we have to work with those programs but i think we have to work with those programs at a very early stage we need early intervention where we're tackling those issues and the underlying causes of the offending behavior where society has failed them and don't leave the criminal justice system to clear up the mess that other elements of society have ignored
45:00 - 45:30 so comments on the comments heather okay yes um i i just want to say something about breach and community census because i do actually think we can improve community sentences we you know we do take a lot of people back to court for beach because we have to we have no ability to make professional judgments anymore around this when i joined the probation service there was perhaps too much professional judgement and i think it's actually swung much more the other way so now it's
45:30 - 46:00 absolutely automatic we take people back for breach so what we've become is an organization that focuses on seeing on law enforcement and seeing breach is the outcome you know if we successfully breach something that's a good outcome i've spent the last five years trying to change the organization around to say what we should be about is getting offenders to comply and i just want to go back to a point that mark said which is about asking offenders themselves because what we've done is designed a system of community
46:00 - 46:30 sensors it takes no account of what offenders themselves think about if we were a business you would go to your customers and say well how can we improve our business how can we be more successful we have talked to offenders using user voice and saying you know how how what would help to make you comply with your orders and it's very interesting because they say things like well actually having somebody to talk to maybe uh two weeks after my order's finished if i could ring somebody up in the middle of the night or something when things are going wrong
46:30 - 47:00 and we've become so rigid and inflexible so i think we can design better sentences if we have much more freedom to do that that deliver on the outcomes and they're not specified in the way that they are and i think we can do more about this in this point of whether people are willing to change or not because there is a lot of evidence about how you work with people to make them believe that they can change because that's part of it if people don't think they can ever reform it's impossible for them and that's part of the job i think
47:00 - 47:30 probation can do also working alongside ex-offenders and say look you could be like this person and this is the journey so i think there is more we can do to improve offending and just of one final point about the people coming back and back go back to the point it takes a long time and you have to find the right point and we mustn't say that failures previously will necessarily mean there'll be a failure again because there will be a tipping point in people's lives and you know that's where i think probation can help
47:30 - 48:00 to say this is the right time and we need senators who can believe that actually that might might work this time other other comments yes fine i'm just interested in exploring the question of of whether the courts actually need additional punishment options in order for offenders to to face consequences for their crimes or whether it's a bit more perhaps along the lines that you were suggesting mark about making the existing options
48:00 - 48:30 in particular in the community work better both to punish and reform or rehabilitate so for instance if you look at the options in the community order many of them could be said to be punitive so tagging and curfew for instance most people would probably think of as community punitive community payback is probably largely punitive though one might say it combines both attendance center requirements exclusions etc and we shouldn't forget that the most commonly used punishment
48:30 - 49:00 or sentence is still the fine and that is of course you know it might be said purely a punishment so so i'm just interested in how much it's about the the courts needing additional punishment options and how much it's about making work better what's already there other comments yes yes i was wondering whether we should treat very differently in terms of punishment and reform different kinds of offender
49:00 - 49:30 what i had in mind is that we might think differently about what we should do with a tax avoider a heroin user and a pedophile the system what we've got actually more
49:30 - 50:00 and making it more effective what i find interesting especially around community payback there's a project in i think it's new york i'm not sure i spoke to one of the people who run it it called the blue bucket and it's it's a community payback model but it's a social enterprise and you can get sentence to it but actually it you can get go up into actually managing and running the business at the same time so teaching skills and if there's any problem within your position in the organization you go back on this blue bucket wheeling it around the streets of
50:00 - 50:30 new york cleaning cars and cleaning up the street and the way that that's looked at i think is really interesting because at the moment community payback costs an awful lot of money it for me by listening to the people who are actually at the sharp end is pointless and i think we need to really look at you know those the details what you what you what you said there um what i would mention uh talking about projects iac intensive alternatives to custody
50:30 - 51:00 there's a project in manchester which is having its funding pulled at the moment and it's it's takes people i think on uh two and a half around the average two and a half year sentence mark um and so quite fairly serious crime and they use tagging at the first point keep people on the short sort of lead until they start to comply then relax it but people go to this center and it's a one-stop shop it's a fender-centric in its whole design and that is you walk in the door and
51:00 - 51:30 everything you need you can walk around the whole center and everything's there and they're having remarkable sort of success rates and i think it costs what seven thousand pound per head per year ridiculously low figure and is more effective why is it more effective because offenders are getting contact with people who actually can do something about their dilemma that's for me the the problem that we've got today is this systemic failure you know we designed the criminal justice system streamlined business like
51:30 - 52:00 in its approach when you've got a client group that actually need you know more therapeutic and people-based centered intervention um and that's you know it's uh community justice panels was mentioned and that i find that quite worrying uh and i've spoke to people at the mojos about my concerns as well with that because by by the design of the community justice panels by default it excludes some of the most important groups in the community to take part so
52:00 - 52:30 the people one is with the motivations to want to take part you're an angry victim do i mean with money germain in its design those are the people that would take part now i've said in columns etcetera that justice for me needs to be clinical needs to be detached domain and professional approach and not having this friended you know i mean public mob wanting to bash offenders over what they see is this you know they've committed crime out of the moral choice i find that
52:30 - 53:00 really worrying and there's a lack of detail within that justice panel like with restorative justice as well it's kind of promoted rather than looked at you know with a more scientific approach to it i'll give you another sort of answer though interviewing a 14 year old girl and i took her to a conference with me and one of the rj people uh said um to her you know what what sentence did you get and she said i've got restorative justice and what was that well i wrote a letter
53:00 - 53:30 to my victim and what did you think about that she said i thought what about me who's who said sorry to me johnny and that if you look at from her scent of her mind's eye yeah that is just it's not hit the mark it's not done it satisfied this high moral group of people you know with with high morals that are satisfied that yes justice has been delivered but to her it's been meaningless it's been a meaningless experience and
53:30 - 54:00 that that's what i find worrying about when you take justice outside in the communities is actually the the sort of science has got to be applied to as well just on the point that helen made about whether we need additional options when i'm sure nobody in the room is old enough to remember community service orders being introduced but when when they were introduced they were introduced as an alternative to custody and now they're regarded unpaid work is
54:00 - 54:30 regarded as one of the lowest options uh in the community order and i have this concern when you talk to sentences particularly magistrates they talk in terms of offenders running out of road of try having tried everything else and nothing is quite the same as custody and so i think the alternatives you introduce tend to become alternatives to each other rather than alternatives to custody
54:30 - 55:00 um the one possible exception to that i think is the intensive alternative to custody pilot which really does seem to have quite quite a groundswell of support among sentences which is after all i mean much though public opinion is important it's important because of the way it may influence the members of the public who become lame magistrates it's not an additional censorship option it's packaging the options of the community exactly in a different more intensive way yeah and and i think
55:00 - 55:30 that that that sort of approach is more sensible than trying to look for a magic bullet blair i i agree with that i don't think there is a magic bullet in terms of a new sentencing option but i do think we make a lot of headway if we made our existing sentencing options which purport to be about punishment truly to be punishment i think we've made some progress with unpaid work and i think the visibility of unpaid work is important
55:30 - 56:00 and i think the type of work that is done now tends to be better but five or ten years ago when it was first introduced it was left pretty much up to local probation areas to decide what that unpaid work was and i wonder how many people in the audience would regard working sorting clothes in a charity shop working in an animal rescue center serving tea in luncheon clubs as punishment because that's what
56:00 - 56:30 punishment means in terms of unpaid work which is often done now so my plea would be make the unpaid work requirement a true punishment in the way in which the public expect it to be and if we look at what the public regards punishment they regard as work manual work outside in the community for a clear public benefit cleaning graffiti clearing streets clearing monuments physical labor
56:30 - 57:00 actually it's old fashioned but that's what the public expect as a punishment now this does go to that issue which has been raised which is that rehabilitation is hard and if you're a drug addict or you're addicted to alcohol being ordered as part of your community sentence to undertake treatment for those things is difficult right but that doesn't mean it's a punishment but just because something is hard getting up in the morning if you've never had to do that to attend a probation appointment at the set time every day of
57:00 - 57:30 the week is hard but that's not the punishment and if we if we think that that is the punishment then we'll lose the public and that's that that's the risk here we have to we have to see the right place for punishment in the system but if we think that we're doing punishment when we're not the public will look on this and think that it's a sham and unfortunately that the current verdict of the public on community sentences is that they are weak we know that they're poorly enforced the third are not completed
57:30 - 58:00 so i think we do have to make headway helen on improving the disposals we have at the moment but there are reasons why we don't impose fines anymore i mean we do impose a lot of fines but much less as a proportion than we used to why because we we're not very good at collecting the fines the ministry of justice has a billion pounds of outstanding fines uncollected no wonder magistrates don't put much faith in them so their options are there in theory in practice they have to do the best they can with
58:00 - 58:30 what works and i think we'd make a lot of headway if we focus on the punishment element of unpaid work being visible and being a clear punishment in the eyes of the public as they'd expect it i think one of the problems is the public do not know what happens when somebody's on probation or on a community sentence you know we know now because of television even if you even know what the the um the crown prosecution service does because we see law and order you know we know what happens when people go to court we know what happens when people go to prison
58:30 - 59:00 do you really know what happens when somebody's on a community order i don't think the public do and i think it would be really good if people saw some of the you know the difficult people and dangerous people we work with as well but work with very successfully to turn lives around and the other thing is of course sentences see the failures you know there are some great success stories but getting to hear about those i mean mark's a success story and he's great because he can tell his story you know we need to hear more about those people who have
59:00 - 59:30 with support and help manage to turn their lives around then people might have more faith actually as a as an alternative to custody well we've heard from a number of people in the audience this evening but of course the debate goes on and goes on and has been going on in another place namely the leicester exchanges website so by way of rounding out the evening i thought it reasonable to take one of the questions that a participant in the leicester exchange's website had placed i'm going to ask each of the panelists to
59:30 - 60:00 to give a quick view on this and the participant said should we consider a complete overhaul of the criminal justice system tailoring sentencing to the individual criminal rather than to the crime ever well i think the current criminal justice system does do an element of that actually um already that's certainly what probation does when they uh write a report for the court where we do assess a whole range of factors um i i can i you know in my heart of
60:00 - 60:30 hearts yes i can see lots of reasons to overhaul the criminal justice system but i don't think we're there and i think what we've got to do is build on the best things of it we need to learn more from other places about works well we've had some examples of what's worked in the in the states and other places there are some very good examples elsewhere that i think we need to learn from but i wouldn't be in favor of overhauling everything i think i think it's a balance uh between the two really you know a sort of a business approach
60:30 - 61:00 but that's people centered um i would absolutely certainly agree with that and about getting the right intervention at the right time the teachable moment to the right people and crime yeah i think that would be the wrong the wrong approach i think the criminal justice system imposes sanctions in response to rule breaking and if you have sanctions applied solely on the basis of the needs if you like of the the rule
61:00 - 61:30 breaker then the rules themselves start to become less clear to everyone else and in the interest of order and civility i think we need clear rules and clear laws that are commonly understood but i do think we do pay attention at the moment anyway to the different types of offender that come through the door especially if they're celebrities uh minor celebrities um the members of parliament who were punished for fraud i think in in certain cases and the misuse of their expenses they could
61:30 - 62:00 have walked away with a fine but i think it was quite telling that they didn't i think the magistrates were you know a product of their society and were aware of how high profile those crimes were and being members of parliament they had to have a sentence which reflected public displeasure with that particular offense by those particular people and so they went to prison in in new york um talk with the two georges and boy george uh was a celebrity much more
62:00 - 62:30 embarrassing much more effective as a punishment to have him do five days clearing the streets in manhattan george michael in hampstead he got eight weeks in prison i actually think in that case would be much more humiliating for george michael uh within the existing sentencing framework to do exactly the kind of five days of community sentencing that was available in manhattan of course the magistrate was probably smart and knew that if they'd given george michael unpaid work in london he might have ended up in a charity shop which wouldn't have been good for anyone
62:30 - 63:00 i don't think we need to radically reform our criminal justice system i think we have to balance the public interest the interests of victims and the interests of offenders so i wouldn't actually argue for tailoring the system around the needs of offenders what i would like to see is that the overall package the overall level of a punishment is genuinely proportionate to the crime and then within that there's an adjustment made for the particular needs of the offender and i
63:00 - 63:30 still think we're too although the the original carter review talked in terms of trying to have a seamless sentence it doesn't feel to me that in most cases like we've got the different parts working properly together so that there is this element of recognizing that an offence has been committed and that was wrong but then that we move on and think about how we might change somebody's behavior well thank you very much indeed i'm afraid that's all that we have time for
63:30 - 64:00 this evening i'm sure you would like to join with me and thanking our speakers carol hellman blair gibbs mark johnson and heather monroe for sharing their views with us and i'd also like to thank all of you for participating in this uh discussion and debate this evening but remember it doesn't end there because we've arranged things so that you can carry on exchanging your views at the leicester exchanges website that you can get onto through leicester
64:00 - 64:30 exchanges dot com where this and other topics are very much live and we hope very much that we should see you at future events both here and in leicester thank you very much indeed