When capital punishment was abolished in Britain in the 1960’s, the resulting public disquiet was mollified by assurances that convicted murderers would spend the rest of their lives in prison.
That assurance proved worthless. Over subsequent years, and by gradual degree, the span of ‘life sentences’ was whittled down to the point where a convicted murderer is now confined, on average, for between 10-12 years.
Apparently, even that is now far too draconian:
Some murderers could serve less than 10 years in prison under guidelines unveiled by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Woolf.
But it would only be in extraordinary circumstances – for example, if they had given themselves up before their crime had even been detected, he said.
The caveat of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ is a promise which will prove to be as valueless as the last one. Step-by-step and case-by-case, the defintion of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ will be widened to the point where convicted killers are routinely sentenced to spend a few hours exploring their inner child with a Court-appointed Outreach Counsellor.
Towards the end of the 19th Century the British State made a contract with its citizens the material terms of which required the individual citizen to surrender up their right to self-defence in return for the protection of the state which, by its agents, would both defend the citizen from harm and pursue and prosecute those who did (or attempted to do) the harm.
Gradually, but inexorably, the state has walked away from its side of that bargain. However, this would be no bad thing were the citizen likewise released from his or her obligations. If the entire contract was simply put in the shredder, it would, at least, leave us free to make our own arrangements for our self-defence and security. But this is not so. The citizen’s promises to relinquish the right and means of self-defence remain not only extant but zealoulsy enforced by the state which has decided that it does, indeed, take only one to tango.
The poor, willing, plodding, dutifully contracting citizen has now been placed in the worst possible situation: forbidden from defending their own life and limb and unable to call on anyone else to do so for them.
The perfect scenario for the perfectly predatory society.
Looking on the bright side, if you kill your would-be assailant you won’t get more than 10 years stir.
Mark – I don’t believe that for one second. David Carr is surely right that the net encompassing ‘extraordinary circumstances’ will widen ever more. However you can bet your mortgage that the net will exclude those who kill assailants in self defence.
In five years time we will experience poor, immigrant child-killers being released early while those that attempt to save or revenge the child will be sent down for much longer.
Frankly I’ve had enough of this country. Its ever more barbaric and finished as a civilised place. If it wasn’t for the missus wanting to stay I’d have been out of here long ago. Am I the only one who wakes in the morning, hears the news and concludes that there are fewer and fewer people with any morals, economic sense or regard for justice?
Yes Pete I agree, I was being flippant. Or possibly sarcastic. Any how….
The state will always jealously guard it’s monopoly on violence when it comes to self-defence. Protaganists will be accused of “taking the law into their own hands” (who’s law is it BTW?).
Even whilst manifestly failing in their self appointed duty of protectorate of the people the state will defend it’s position. After all why have the state unless they are going to protect us from something?
IMO the real scandal is the way the modern system focuses on punishment and/or rehabilitation of the guilty, rather than restitution for the harm done to the innocent.
Murderers shouldn’t be spending those years jailed and eating at the taxpayer’s expense – they should be spending them working like a dog to pay off the wergild.
The problem is not that the state has a monopoly on the use of force, but that they refuse to use force against those who cry out for it.
tanstafl@gmail.com
Julian,
Murderers shouldn’t be spending those years jailed and eating at the taxpayer’s expense – they should be spending them working like a dog to pay off the wergild.
Fair enough point but that process still requires enforcement.
I’ve been alternately scratching my head and wondering where to pick up an AK or Uzi over this. The top judge in the country I am unfortunate enough to live in unveils guidelines to allow convicted murderers to be released after serving 7 years in prison. This is not simply unjust and foolish but uncivilised.
I’ve long known that this country is desperate for an even half credible opposition. On civil liberties alone the governing regime should be utterly trounced. However Michael Howard and the Tories have disappeared from the face of the earth (did anyone notice a single word of protest from just one Tory over the fox hunting vote?) and the British people are required yet again to bend over, grab our ankles and take it from the left.
The 10-12 years for murder is an interesting figure. I suspect it is about that in the US, too, but they never tell us. A thirty-year sentence here seems to amount to about 10 years actual time.
What is the time-served figure in the US and Britain for “economic crimes,” as they are called in communist countries? Are we reaching the point where the most serious crime in Britain and the US is not murder, but some stock-jobbing scheme? I believe that in China still only “economic crimes” rate capital punishment.
Mr Coward – without knowing the actual figures my instinct tells me you’re right. Give it a few years and and the most serious crimes won’t be those of murder or ‘economic crimes’ but ‘crimes against political correctness’.
“[…] while those that attempt to save or revenge the child will be sent down for much longer.”
Surely you aren’t suggesting those are morally equivalent attempts? Properly defending yourself or someone else ought not to be a crime, agreed. But lets not confound that with murderous revenge. It is to avoid arbitrary vendetta we have courts in the first place.
And what do you suppose is especially bad about murdering a child, rather than an adult?
Texas has the death penalty. That pretty much takes care of fears of early release. (Before all the Brits who hate the United States start screaming, ‘how barbaric’ – well, they get ten years of taxpayer funded appeals before they get put to sleep.) I for one am perfectly happy for the state to kill in my name.
I do not think even life imprisonment – meaning imprisonment until death – is fitting punishment for a deliberate murder. Ian Huntley deserves to be toast, as does whoever murdered those two elderly people in their home this last weekend.
Maybe thieves and robbers can be rehabilitated in prison – although anyone with a moral blank space can probably not be taught morality – but anyone who can commit cold blooded, premeditated murder cannot, in my opinion, be rehabilitated. I don’t care what the social workers and Anglican bishops say.
Is Lord Woolf the same one as the loony judge who announced that “first time” burglars (“first time caught”, that is) wouldn’t have to go to prison? The impertinence of these British judges beggars description.
As I’ve said perhaps too many times here, I don’t care for capital punishment as it is the most Statist act I can imagine. I have little regard for the State’s ability to monitor much of anything except clumsily taking my property, I certainly don’t want it to have the ability to take someone’s life.
But that doesn’t mean that prison sentences should be short or prisons expensive. Prisons should be a place to banish those who cannot honor life and property, after they’ve made whatever restitution they can, and be prevented from harming others’ life and property in the future. Revenge is a wasted emotion, and rehabilitation is too expensive with unsure outcomes.
So we create a place where we place those who cannot get along in the social stream, but can be let out if a miscarriage of justice has taken place.
I am also taken aback that, unless I’m mistaken, some of the same people who were indignant that wrongfully imprisoned people were ill used and abused (who were assessed room and board essentially out of the million + pound (or dollar) payouts) seem to be the first ones desiring putting people to death. The State miscarries, and perhaps some fair recompense is needed, perhaps net of costs put forth, but that is pretty difficult when the person is dead.
45% of the tenents on California’s death row were previously convicted of murder, served their time nd released only to kill again. It is estimated that almost half of California’s murders are committed by released killers.
Judges who lack the desire to assign the death sentence should be relegated to parking offenses.
Convicted murderers should be executed within 3 years or released.
Let us know when you’ve clarified your thoughts, Walter.
Guy – I am suggesting that committing murder in revenge for the murder of a child is perfectly understandable and excusable. Show me one parent who would claim not to be filled with ‘murderous revenge’ and I’ll show you a liar. I am also suggesting that murder in revenge for a child’s murder is excusable.
Read the post again. David rightly points out that the state has taken in hand OUR protection and justice. The state has failed to discharge that duty. I know the state isn’t on my side and courts don’t have reagard for my wishes.
A dead child and a dead adult are equally dead but I don’t like bullies and when a child is murdered I find the hackles rise even more that the victim has been chosen often because they simply cannot attack back.
Walter – spot on. I know that up until 1997 almost 100 people were murdered by those previously convicted of murder before being released to kill again. Nothing to worry about, only almost 100 lives taken and 100 families detroyed with the state’s complicity. Move along now, nothing to see here.
I can live without capital punishment so long as those sentenced to life leave prison in a box. Neither sentencing regime will be introduced by the state and people will continue to die because of it.
Editor’s note: Comment deleted. Get lost, we have already banned you before.
Life imprisonment where the Blind Bastard of Leningrad … oops … “Right Honourable Home Secretary Mr David Blunkett MP” … is not given a recommendation towards a minimum period of incarceration by the trial judge, is currently about 8 years in Category B through to Category C imprisonment (Category A requires constant supervision and is reserved only for hunt supporters, suicidal inmates, Toffs and psychotics).
After this period they could feasibly be transferred to an open prison, equivalent to the ‘country club’ jails in the USA, and after about 2 years they would qualify to live in a controlled hostel – permitted to go out to work, donate funds to the Labour Party and take up their seat in the Lords (only kidding) etc. etc.
Yes we do have inmates in our prisons (Nielsen, Sutcliffe, The Black Panther etc.) who will never under any cirumstance be released; but we also have convicted murderers where there is still a sufficient level of doubt over the case that the judge refuses to impose a minimal term upon them.
I don’t have a huge problem with this, only with the thought behind it. Murder is an odd crime, because it can range from the inexcusable (random sadistic killing) to the nearly excusable (killing abusive partner, mercy killing). So, I have no problem with some murders being let out early anyway.
Secondly, as other’s have said, while in prison people do nothing to atone for their crimes. I don’t hold with the idea that suffering is atonement. I want people to admit to what they’ve done wrong, and to try to put it right. Extended periods of community service would be far more useful. Revenge is pointless, I can understand it but not condone it, and I positively despise those who revel in it.
What’s really broken is prison. It’s an expensive, useless punishment. It’s got no redeeming features, except that it temporarily physically prevents the very dangerous from harming society.
What’s really broken is prison. It’s an expensive, useless punishment. It’s got no redeeming features, except that it temporarily physically prevents the very dangerous from harming society.
Right on, Jay…
Seems to me that the former Soviet Union had whole towns set up specifically to keep people out of society… what do you suppose they would charge to board a few ‘western’ prisoners?
Certainly, the ‘rehab’ portion of a prison sentence is useless, at least here… we need to do a far better job of that, or keep people locked away, but good.
Hmmm, it occurs to me that most murders are committed by people known to the victim. It is perhaps that people who kill once are able to be safely released, the person who ‘needed killing’ having been killed? Just a thought, not saying I’m for it…
As far as defending onself, who says you need a gun? IIRC there is a whole school of martial arts that trains to fight w/ farm impliments as the peasants were not ‘allowed’ to have ‘weapons’…
Granted, putting the time and effort into learning said skills takes dedication, perseverence, and a strong sense of personal responsibility, but then, what doesn’t?
Me, no – I own guns… but I can do that here.
I concur absolutely. It’s all very well to rant on about locking people up and throwing away the key but at the end of the day there’s only one standard to apply: does it work?
Prison does not work. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see that locking criminals up in close proximity to other criminals and removing any chance they may have of ‘learning from their betters’ (even if they have failed to do so so far.)
Huge mandatory prison sentences are no deterrent: a criminal that believed they would get caught wouldn’t commit the crime in the first place.
I really am no bleeding heart liberal, I despise the criminal class and all the mindless thuggery that tends to go alongside it, but the prison service has had 100 years of evolution and still fails to deliver.
It depresses me that the generally right-wing-ranter view that ‘punishment’ is more important than ‘justice’ pervades here. Someone takes your shit and they get sent to prison for a year? That’s just so obviously just…
Anyway, murder cases should be judged individually like all other crimes. Mandatory minimum sentences serve only to inflame public opinion – 10 year sentences for obvious mercy killings (legally considered premediated murder) aren’t really the way forward.
Prison does work, because while the felon is in jail, he’s not committing any more crimes.
At its logical conclusion, there wouldnt be such a thing as “repeat offenders” if nobody was ever let out, would there.
So clearly prison can work, the issue is the application of it.
I’m totally in favour of banging up malicious murderers until death do us part. I’m in favour of banging up burglars for ten. They won’t be burgling while in jail, will they.
I wonder what the crime rate in Singapore is… I bet you’ll find that it’s lower than here. And they don’t exactly have a touchy-feely legal system…
While Verity is correct that Texas has the death penalty, she is incorrect about it eliminating fears of early release. Only the most vicious murderers are sentenced to execution- and then only those who murder in a particularly newsworthy fashion.
The psychopath with a bad temper who kills someone in an alley behind a bar, or the angry lothario who backhands his ‘girlfriend’ and breaks her neck, will in many cases be sentenced to what the police and parole officers call, sarcastically, “Misdemeanor Murder”. The offender sits in jail for a few years while his case wends its way through the court system, then is finally sentenced to a year of so of time beyond the time ‘already served’.
You see, we have idiot judges too. (We can keep up with all the modern innovations over here in the colonies – just as well as you do). Some years ago, Gerald Ford-our erstwhile President- wanted to appoint more federal judges as the dockets were grossly overloaded and the accused were spending long periods in jail awaiting trial. The Democrats stonewalled until Jimmy Carter was elected, then suddenly saw the need for many more judges. The federal courts were packed with bleeding heart statists who never met an honest hardworking citizen who they couldn’t suspect of environmental damage or else exploiting the poor, nor a criminal, however vicious, who did not deserve another chance. ( I suppose they knew something about republican and democrat demographics which I have suspected but have never been able to bring myself to accept).
The particular specimen of this judicial plague that we got here in Texas was the ironically named William Wayne Justice. He was appalled that the prison population was not comfortably accomodated. He therefore unilaterally decreed many more comfortable cells and many other amenities. That the new facilities made the prison system into a sort of university system for a graduate program in criminal education bothered him not at all. A few years ago, we were treated to the monthly sight of evening news reports showing mobs of grinning felons being released from the county jails because of ‘overcrowding’. William Wayne had decreed that better facilities must be built; when the voters and the local government were not able to do so by his deadline, he ordered hundreds of felons freed.
As things stand, there are three criminal organizations in our system: the Aryan Brotherhood for whites, the Black Muslims for blacks and the Mexican Mafia for hispanics. If you go to prison, you join the appropriate organization or else end up either homosexually raped or dead. Once in, you don’t resign. You do, however learn to upgrade your ‘job skills’. And, like many other institutions of higher learning, you will make contacts that will be very useful to you after graduation.
The biggest unanswered question in my mind is why the media and the legislature tolerate this. It is really the biggest scandal in the state, and probably in most other states. I suppose it is for the same reason we have a ‘war on drugs’: Threaten all the latter day Hobbes’s with mayhem and they will beg you to enslave/protect them. We never even needed a War on Terror to justify all the Homeland security – we already had everything we needed right at home!
About the only good thing I can say about this situation is that it makes a lot more people value the Second Amendment. It’s sad that you British do not even get that benefit.
It seems that Samizdata is being invaded by liberals. This is actually a good thing, as liberal cliches, several of which are on display above in J and Harvey’s posts, are extremely entertaining.
Does prison work? Yes it does.
How? By keeping the criminal locked away SO HE/SHE CANNOT VIOLATE ANYONE ELSE.
That alone is the only pupose of a prison. Public safety. Not for rehabilitation, and not for revenge (accusing anyone who wants tougher policy on crime of seeking revenge is a standard liberal claim based on the tactic of suggesting nasty hidden psycholigical motives for advocating a specific policy. As well as revenge, racism, homophobia and now Islamaphobia are also used to circumvent rational debate and demonise anyone not submitting to liberal ideology).
Is the system flawed? Yes. Why? Because liberal judges and parole boards keep letting violent criminals out again and again to rape abuse assualt and murder again and again. Why? Because liberals believe that crminals and terrorists are all victims of the evil patriarchal capitalist western white male hegemony and so deserve soft treatment.
So how to improve the system? Circumvent liberal judges with mandatory minimum sentences (5 years for fits violent offence, 10 years for second, then a three strikes rule) and hard labour for violent crime. Abolish all parole for violent crime. Murder should be an automatic life sentence and life should mean exactly that. No person convicted of murder should ever walk the streets free again. Anyone who advocates that they should is saying that the public not only have no right to protection from violence, but that it is acceptable to play Russian Roulette with innocent peoples lives by putting violent muderers back on the street IN THE HOPE that they will not muder again.
Shawn – Yes. If you murder a human being, you are in a cage for life. Word gets around. Is what I’m about to do worth living in a cage for for the rest of my life? Some insane people won’t think – so, once they’re caught, they should be in a cage until they die. But a lot of calculating people will think. And the answer for most murderers is: No. It’s not worth my fury of the moment to live in a cage, with absolutely no hope. Human beings calculate chances.
Yes, mandatory sentencing to take away the flighty opinions of lefty judges. But why not just get rid of judges altogether in murder cases? Why not just three normal people sitting in judgement and a jury of 12?
Or the Singapore system – there is, essentially, NO crime in Singapore except when someone tries to rig the lottery. Three experienced judges with a legal background and no jury. Actually, this is better.
But for the law to be effective, punishment must be sure. In Britain, socialist/social worker/fellow traveller judges, so divorced from the mean streets of Britain and council estates, twizzle about with the law as though it were an amusing little fiefdom to discuss over the port. The whole system should be demolished because it is corrupted by egos who know no restraint. Go the Singapore route. It’s transparent and it works.
Invaded by liberals? Just because individualism and rationality appear to vanish here in favour of the simple-minded bloodlust of the mob when crime, guns, or Islam are mentioned doesn’t mean those of us who can keep our heads are invaders.
Prison is evidently broken. It is a guaranteed way of making criminals worse, and a brutal unnecessary punishment for those wrongly convicted (what? you think the state is never in error or malicious in this area…) or convicted of offenses that simply aren’t criminal.
Yes, it does work to the extent that it keeps criminals who would commit more crimes out of circulation, but that is not in any system deemed by the authorities to be its sole function, and is in any case is a crude statistical weapon. It also keeps those who wouldn’t commit more crimes out of circulation. You could eliminate almost all crime by locking up all working class males until they are 40, but that would not be sufficient justification to do it.
None of this means I accept the stereotypically “liberal” nostrums of a criminal justice system that plainly doesn’t succeed in its equally emotionally driven “rehabilitative”aims. Rational, unsentimental reforms are needed, not least in the treatment of juveniles. But by arbitrarily demanding severe fixed penalties, death or otherwise, for offenses characterised equally arbitrarily, then most commentators are leave me little to choose between their rhetoric and that of the “War on Drugs”.
Maybe you can’t any of you imagine any circumstances in which you might be sent to prison or executed. I can, all to easily.
Yes, for the period that the criminal is in prison they can only violate their criminal brethren.
So, to keep the public safer and safer we lock them up for longer and longer, giving them more and more time to become accustomed to an institutional way of life and to become increasingly detached from the mores and morals of the civilised world. Then, we let them out, where of course they immediately get jobs (yeah I’ve been in the joint for 10 years, gimme a job) and commence to fit in with their fellow men.
Either you lock them up forever or you accept that they will have to be released at some point and you concentrate all the efforts of the system in the meantime into forcing them into behaving like normal human beings.
Someone above proposed locking burglars up for 10 years!A burglar who’s been in jail for 10 years (and who was probably caught on like his 50th offence) is going to come out of prison probably with a drug addiction and a greatly improved ‘burglary-howto’ programmed into his tiny mind. Plus, when you consider that the average house burglar gets away with like £500 of stuff, all of which the insurance pays for, and that 10 years of jail would cost 10x£24000, it doesn’t look terribly reasonable in my book. Pointing this out generally leads to ‘well jails should just be dark holes and the food should be pigswill then they wouldn’t be so expensive’ moronity making their voices heard, usually chanting something to go along with it such as ‘make it as tough for them as it was for us’ (i.e. he stole my stuff now he deserves to get raped and beaten while the guards watch, while being fed swill and kept in solitary for 24h/day.)
America has the highest percentage of its population in jail. Its recividism rate is the highest in the first world. It has a vastly greater proportion of jailable first offences than all other first world countries. It has one of the highest crime rates in the first world. Their prison industry is a gigantic industry with plenty of lobbyists in government, so they build more jails and jail more criminals, and the crime rate continues to increase.
If you want to have a serious debate about whether prison ‘works’ or not then step on up. I’m sick of this ‘lock ’em up forever’ crap. You keep that shit up and you’ll have a country full of prisons where any minor bullshit offence gets you thrown in gaol, and once you’re in there and with a criminal record, there’s really no incentive to rejoin society. No-one wants to hire a criminal, regardless of what you did.
Do not participate in the wholesale criminalisation of society.
If you want to have a serious debate about whether prison ‘works’ or not then step on up. I’m sick of this ‘lock ’em up forever’ crap.
I couldn’t give a damn on if it ‘works’ or not. Ask 10 people for a definition of ‘works’ and you may get 11 different answers. I don’t give a damn if those who transgress my person and property develop a drug problem or are raped in prison. I want them off of my street and in prison. That’s to me would ‘work’.
Apologies for possessing base human feelings but its just who I am. Maybe I suffer for not reading the Grauniad.
I think that the jail has two main rationales:
– to keep the criminal from commiting any more crimes for a period of time
– to dissuade other potential criminals from commiting any crime
Both are important because, although some criminals may not be able to control their own acts for psychological/psychiatric reasons, many of them may do a benefit/risk assessment, considering the chances of being caught and the punishment they may get.
Guy Herbert wrote:
The combination of an institutionally corrupt police force, coupled with an indolent and incompetent Crown Prosecution Service pretty much nullifies the entire concept of justice anyway – and that is before it reaches the courts. The new “guidelines” merely drag the court down to that level.
No, pete, you don’t suffer for not reading the guardian, you suffer for not being able to rise above your base feelings and apply the rationality and morality that one expects of a civilised person. Being a leftist or a right-winger has nothing to do with it whether you choose act like a human being or an animal, and ‘I want those who take my stuff to get thrown in the dungeons, and if they are raped and come out druggies that’s not my problem’ puts you pretty far over on the animal side of things. It’s also myopic: you pay for them to be jailed and treated, and you pay the state to build more prisons when the results of the ‘lock ’em up’ policies hit the streets. Eventually you pay yourself when the ‘justice machine’ (powered by lobbyists, of course) makes doing 55 in a 50 zone a jailable offence, and then it’s you playing ‘don’t drop the soap.’
It’s all very well throwing people’s money around and adopting a ‘I don’t care whether it works, it’s tough so it must be good’ attitude, but actually, it’s not your money to throw down the drain. If we’re absolutely going to have a monstrous state-run justice (hah!) system, then I demand results from it, not this endless pandering to slathering drooling subhuman animals that foam at the mouth on TV whenever someone gets less than 100 years for stealing a car that some of you are clamouring for!
There is also no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the maximum/minimum/average sentences dealt out have ANY effect on the likelihood of people committing that particular crime – even capital punishment has no significant impact on the murder rate. Hell, you can get executed for all sorts of shit in China, but they just keep on breaking those laws…
I should add that I don’t in any way suggest that everyone should be let out of prison or whatever, and I feel that there are offences for which confinement is the best solution – violent crimes, crimes against the person, rape, kidnapping, all that stuff. If we are to confine these people I think they should be confined in a solitary environment with educational access only – give them books, teaching, fucking flute lessons if they want it, whatever’s gotta be tried, but keep the criminals APART. The solution lies in making them _think_ about what they did and why it’s wrong, and there’s nothing that makes a person think more than solitude.
It would probably also help if we didn’t have tons of ‘victimless crimes’ and ‘crimes against society’ on the books. Nothing makes a mockery of the concept of justice more than sending someone to jail for prostitution/soliciting/smoking dope/underage drinking and all these bullshit ‘insensitivity thoughtcrimes’ that are being invented on a daily basis.
I’m awful glad Harvey wrote all that. I hate typing and there’s nothing in it I can disagree with.
Harvey – thanks for that, just do let us know when you’ve made up your mind either way.
I’m not talking about prostitution/soliciting/smoking dope/underage drinking: I’m a libertarian. When it comes to breaking the speed limit I’m as guilty as anyone. I’m talking about crimes worthy of a life sentence and other violent crimes. On this you are wrong wrong wrong. We’ve had 40 years of ever more lenient sentencing and crime levels have rocketed in that period.
You said It’s all very well throwing people’s money around and adopting a ‘I don’t care whether it works, it’s tough so it must be good’ attitude, but actually, it’s not your money to throw down the drain.
So where will the money come from to pay for your books, teaching, fucking flute lessons if they want it?
Pete, the money for a rehabilitation scheme of any sort would invariably come from the same place as a ‘punshiment’ scheme of any sort – from the taxpayer. While that’s not something I entirely agree with I think that we, as taxpayers, should demand value for money and the current system is both inefficient and does not protect individuals. The reason I haven’t made up my mind (as you said) is because there are no convincing results as yet.
If you jail people for violent offences and never let them out, you solve the problem but it costs a great deal of money and in the end, you’re gonna need a LOT of prisons.
If you jail people for a determinate period for violent offences, they come out and there is a risk of them offending again. Judging whether a person is a danger to society when they are released is something chronically difficult which no-one has managed to do with any great success so far. So, again: keep them in forever or let them out knowing they _might_ do it again?
If you jail people for property crime then you have the ‘punishment does not fit the crime’ issue and also that the punishment _costs_ a lot more to administer than the actual economic damage incurred by the crime.
Work furlough schemes seem to be the best performer in this respect (the criminal pays their dues, the victim gets their money back and more on top) but this again causes the ‘lock ’em up’ brigade to foam at the mouth with indignation. These schemes also give criminals a fixed routine, nothing approximating the liberties of a free citizen while teaching them useful skills. They also drastically reduce recidivism.
I doubt many people here will approve of the above and I eagerly await 10 posts calling me a lily-livered-liberal, Grauniad reader or apprentice social worker. Fact remains, going to prison is one of the things that good men fear and criminals do not. The general expansion of the prison and confinement system is not one that any libertarian should be encouraging: it is the ultimate weapon of state control over the individual, whether criminal or not, regardless of whether it is used directly, insinuated or just perpetuated.
The thing with property crime is this: “it’s only money”.
Generally true, as most posessions are – barring sentimental value – replaceable. HOWEVER – I have to spend a portion of my life working to afford these things. No problem so far – except, perhaps, for a difference in value systems between me & some scrote who feels that because I own something they want, they should be allowed to take it. So I work to pay for insurance – costing me more time. If I have to claim on it, my premiums rise. They rise anyway because of the increased risk due to not enough being done about property crime…
Theft costs me time. I can’t get that back. My time is very, very valuable to me and I’m damned if I can see why I should be forced to surrender that to some lowlife vermin. I also get irritated about filling in tax returns, but that is another story…
… so are you wanting your time back off them? (that would be great if you could work out how to do it… “Right mr. burglar, you stole stuff that ThePresentOccupier worked for 10 days to get, so 10 days of your life now go to him.”). Otherwise, are you suggesting that prison somehow steals time from them in retribution for the time they stole from you? I’m puzzled (but amused nonetheless!).
Time is money, and vice-versa. The problem is, the current prison system costs money, meaning that even more time is lost for all of us making the money to pay for them. Property crimes should be paid for by work furlough, as Harvey suggests. This solves the problem of lost time because the criminal will serve untill such time as his debts are repaid, plus a certain percentage, all adjusted for inflation.
Insurance companies could offer to reimburse the victim immediately, and be the long term beneficiary/collector of the criminal’s produtivity. In Old Testament Biblical law, theives had to restore between 2 and times what they had stolen, murderers were summarily put to death. I like the first one, the second is something that I am reluctant to trust the state to do.
By the way Harvey, dont worry about being accused of beign liberal, no liberal in their right mind would demand that anyone, much less a criminal, be made to actually work. Only the rich are supposed to do that, remember?
As for violent crime, prison may be the best solution, as the state is not to be trusted with killing, at least not without a very generaous amount of time and process. If prisons were used only for violent crime, such as rape, murder, and physical assault, there would be far less overcrowding. I am inclined to agree with yet again that keeping criminals seperate, while slightly more expensive, would be a better solution. Torture, suffering, etc. may work as a deterent, but it has not been historicly shown to be very effective in the long term. The Church-government used such tactics for centuries before the Reformation to very poor effect. That period is also an excellent example of why I am loathe to trust the state with too much power of punishment.
Nah, I’m ranting. My point is more that property crimes aren’t as minor as they are sometimes made out to be. Quite apart from the distress they cause, the pragmatic costs are higher than they appear.
It is all hypothetical anyway – the last time I had anything stolen (a York stone patio, FFS!) the police attitude was that it was our fault for daring to have a nice patio in the first place. Fat chance of them actually doing anything about it – we were to be grateful to them for deigning to grace our humble abode.
Of course, if you go down the road of the time compensation, you could get into exchange rates – “Well, Mr burglar, we’ve decided that 10 days of the victim’s life is worth about 3 years of your utterly worthless existence…” Ultimately, the exchange is time=money.
To no one in particular-
For those who deplore the prison system and would prefer some other form of ‘rehabilitation’, I suggest we send them over to their house after trial from now on. They’ll get a reasonable stipend for room and board and I’m sure the criminals will simply be reaborbed into general society. We’ll see how well that system goes over.
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Without making a science out of it, I don’t think prisons built to house those who cannot seem to be able to honor life and property of others, kept to minimum comfort, will be all that expensive. It is when it is populated by those who do not that cause the expenses to rise. That coupled with the fact that prisons, while certainly not a resort, are embedded with unnecessary expenses. Prisoners should be fed and given the oppurtunity to be clean. Otherwise, nothing other than benign supplies offered up from outside.
It’s simply the equation of those who cannot honor life and property while at large are put into a confined space, and as efficiency would have it, they are confined with others of their stripe. While there, they are unable to subject those who can honor life and property of others to harm. While they are there, I don’t propose to offer them any more reconditioning than the concept of whether, once let out, they want to return or not. I am against any form of State conditioning of individuals. Nor do I want the prison system to be a system of revenge. And, again, as the State is ineffective at an unacceptable rate, it should not have the power to take anything that it can not equally restore.
We don’t have the luxury of permenant banishment like societies had a few hundred years ago (and perhaps Russia still has). Therefore, if the behavior is not so unacceptable that it must be prevented categorically from ever happening again, the prisoner will be let out. What they do from that point forward is their own choice, to abide by property rights or not.
Well said, Toolkein!
I would go a little further and add, I believe, immeasurably to the safety of the law-abiding public.
By far the greatest number of crimes are committed by young, testosterone driven morons. Therefore – and these sentences would be mandatory and no open to “interpretation” by judges – first offence: banged up for one year, no parole. Just long enough to get a taste of how miserable life without liberty can be, but not long enough to become institutionalised.
Second offence – slow learner, therefore needs three years in the slammer to fully appreciate how grim it is to have no freedom and to appreciate the connection between crime and loss of liberty. No parole.
Third offence – banged up until the perp’s 35th birthday. No parole. This way, significant numbers of stupid, vicious and violent young punks will be off the streets until they’re pushing middle age. So – their choice – society sentenced them to lose their youth. In fact, they sentenced themselves.
I don’t think someone who hasn’t been engaged in crime for 15 or so years is going to suddenly turn to crime when he gets out. Society would have changed in that 15 years and he wouldn’t know how to operate within it and his old mates would have long dispersed.
We’d have to build many more prisons to accommodate the bulge going through until British society returned to the norms that prevailed before the lefties got their grip of death on Britain’s civil code. However, they could be built in such a way that, as usage diminished, they could be easily converted into luxury flats and condominiums and thus easily recover their cost, and possibly make a small profit. (I would recommend that the prisons under discussion be private.)
You believe that being in prison surrounded by career criminals is not ‘being engaged in crime?’ I don’t think you could get more ‘engaged in crime’ without being the Don himself!
Under your schema, criminals who are in there until they are 35 will be those that do not think of themselves as criminals – if they thought what they were doing was ‘wrong’ then they would refrain from doing it in the first place. With a mandatory sentence up-to-35 there is no incentive for them to reform or even pretend to care. So, locked up with plenty of other criminals with no incentive to reform, the typical ‘pecking order’ system develops with all the typical abuse and violence that characterises the typical modern prison. Those that come out on top do so by virtue of being the hardest man on the block with accompanying henchmen, those that are on the receiving end generally end up pumping themselves full of drugs and being no use to man nor beast. Those in the middle get used to a ‘rule of law’ where the ‘law’ is violent and sporadic.
Verity, you also make no mention of which crimes you believe this sentencing strucure should apply to: did you mean violent crimes and crimes against the person strictly, or crimes of property and ‘corporate crimes’ too?
On a level which will doubtless make me very unpopular, I do not basically agree with crimes of property and finance being punishable by the (to me) far-worse theft of ones liberty, especially when enforced by a frequently blinkered and blindfolded judiciary that claims to ‘protect the good’ but backs this up with nothing but air. There is of course the significant loss by the victim – but perhaps if the state was forced to insure against all thefts and burlgaries (they do claim to ensure the security of their citizens and their property after all,) the police departments would actually give a damn and _prevent_ crimes instead of just catching criminals after the fact! That is their prime task, after all, and I fear that they are being given no incentive to do so.
I wonder when someone will sue the government for failing to protect their property and denying them the right to effectively do so themselves. It is a human right, after all, isn’t it?
Want to be truly barbaric?
Cane ’em. Until the skin breaks. I’ve seen the toughest men cry like babies after a few strokes of that medieval style punishment.
More importantly, it works, and Singapore society hasn’t gotten that namby-pamby yet that such punishment would be disparaged by the bleeding hearts.
But we’ll see. Oh yes we will…
TWG
“Career criminals”? Young thugs who’ve been sent up for a third time? I propose that we put them away for a long, long time before they get a chance to become career criminals. Career criminals do not embark on their careers aged 35.
Harvey: Under your schema, criminals who are in there until they are 35 will be those that do not think of themselves as criminals – if they thought what they were doing was ‘wrong’ then they would refrain from doing it in the first place. Errr, yes, criminals are well known for their dainty sense of never doing anything they think might be wrong.
Yes, I refer to crimes against persons and property. Violent crimes which rip apart society.
I continue to maintain that someone who has been away from society for 12 or 15 years and gets out aged 35 will not have the means to revert to violent crime and won’t have the motivation that he had when he was young and reckless. He won’t even know how society has changed in the interim and how crime detection now works. (Did I mention, no TV? This is to be a draconian regime.)
I maintain that we would only have to lock up one, or at the most, two generations of violent criminals under this plan. Once this bulge was through to the 35 age mark, I think we’d see an outstanding diminution. It’s worth a try. Respecting their “human rights” at the cost of the human rights of the rest of society certainly hasn’t worked and has only encouraged further lawlessness and violence.
True Verity,
“respecting their human rights” is indeed not working. I would think severe strictness relating to imprisonment of violent criminals would be quite effective. I refer to acts of violence as physical attacks against a person, not property or society. I dont buy the lack of means argument though, I can hit someone on the head with a stick in 10 or 15 years just like I can now, especially if I have stayed in practice by hitting my fellow prisoners on the head. Interraction between prisoners should be allowed only when they are working together to accomplish work given to them to pay for their incarceration. Incarceration would of course be at a private prison.
Harvey: I agree that property crimes should not be treated the same, and imprisonment should be implemented only to ensure that persons required to work off their debt to the person whom they robbed remained a part of the work crew. I do think this work crew should be run seperately and in a different manner than the violent criminal group.
I disagree that this should be done be cause taking liberty is worse than property and therefore does not fit. I have no pity for a theif, I simply do not find that imprisonment solves anything, and I do not want some petty theif in prison with a murderer, its an unnecessary bad influence. My main point is that if theives were forced to pay back what they stole and then some, then theft would truly not pay, especially large thefts like embezzlement.
I definately disagree that the state should ensure anything. That would mean that we were all ensuring each other, because the money would come from taxes, and the state would have no real need to do any better, they could just raise taxes. I further disagree that the Police are in place to prevent crime. Police presence often does prevent or discourage crime, and if they are doing their job well many crimes would be prevented. However, anytime the state gets involved in prevention, things get ugly. Prevention is the argument that gun control advocates use, its the argument for every safety regulation on the books, and its the argument for every infringement on privacy and civil liberties. I want a police force that quickly and efficiently catches criminals, and I want a justice system that deals strictly enough to discourage other would-be criminals from engaging in similar acts. I would, however, prefer to err on the side of risk to my life than on the side of risk to my freedom. I do not want the state or any office of it to be too efficient, as that would be far more scary than the slow moving blob it is now.
Thank you, Harvey for your comments.
The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
How in the world on this blog is the government of Singapore upheld as an ideal? That sounds much more right wing/conservative than libertarian. Law and order (as well as compassion) take a back seat to freedom in my book -yes even at the expense of great atrocity. Even beyond that, who deemed the state responsible or, more importantly, capable of moral judgment?
I’d entertain the notion of throwing out criminal prosecution in favor of civil retribution determined by jury of peers.
Julian:
“they should be spending them working like a dog to pay off the wergild”
Sadly I’m not sure it could be made to pay. There is little of any economic value that an incarcerated semi-literate dishonest violent male criminal could be made to do, that a machine couldn’t do a lot more cheaply and without the need for security guards, food and premises.
On the other hand, give them a choice and the position might be very different – i.e. “Pay compensation to the victim or we cut your balls off” might work very well indeed.
Julius,
you may be right about the efficiency aspect of unskilled labor vs. machine. However, I think there are still plenty of things that could be done, such as road clean-up, that add value and hold a reasonable wage. I would change the negative reward from “we cut off your balls” to a positive one “you get released from punishment the sooner you earn enough to pay the one you harmed”. The only negative motivator that should be given is the one we all have to deal with: “If you dont work you dont eat.”
“Shawn – Yes. If you murder a human being, you are in a cage for life”
What – even if it’s a jack-booted Blunkett-poodle dragging you off to get genetically fingerprinted? And do we really want the Tony Martin’s of this world inside for the rest of their lives?
Mandatory sentences are one of the most moronic ideas on the face of the planet.
Everyone dreams of killing someone and some plan on doing it…… they dont think about the consequences until after
Harvey,you have quite evidently never been the victim of a serious assault,try being attacked by a 5 strong mob and being stabbed 6 times(as I was)and then tell me you dont believe in long harsh prison terms,quite frankly i dont give a shit if prison works or not i just want these human animals off the street,and the prevailing attitude to self defence and weapon ownership is just plain wrong,a criminal in the execution of a crime who gets shot,smashed in the mouth with a knuckleduster or even just maced in the face WILL think twice next time(if there is one).