Why Decency Matters

There are those who will attack and denigrate prisoners at all costs and at every opportunity.  Some such people occasionally leave comments on the blog and one theme is the eternal question of why should prisoners be treated decently? After all, given the suffering we have caused, why should we get anything more than cold gruel and a daily kicking? I could dismiss such people as being ill-informed, neanderthal, but that would be facile.  Such people, I assume, may be suffering the effects of crime and their contempt may be genuine.  Their comments may be crude but the emotions behind them may be very real and complicated.  It would be abrogating the purpose of the blog if I were to dismiss such people as they dismiss me.

So why should prisoners be treated decently?  There are two main reasons, one utilitarian and one moral.  I don't expect either to persuade those who stew in a pit of their own hate.

In a utilitarian frame of reference, how society treats prisoners has a strong effect upon the levels of future crime.  If you prescribe punishments that include hatred and despair, if you strip away all social capital and reject the prisoner to the extent of being outcast from society, then there are consequences.  Those consequences include higher rates of future offending. It may be emotionally and politically satisfying to hurt those who have hurt us, but in doing so we create future victims.  In this sense, advocating endless punishment and degradation for prisoners is stupid beyond belief; it is the social equivalent of a toddler's temper tantrum.

Morally, to degrade prisoners is to deny a shared humanity.  To degrade other individuals reflects upon the darkness in our own souls.  It is an impulse to be resisted, not fed.  To expel prisoners from society - emotionally, socially, politically - is to expel them from being considered human. And this carries unspeakable changes to all of us.

Treating prisoners decently is often posed as being anti-punishment; it need not be.  But there must surely be limits to punishment, a defined purpose and a rational outcome.  To reduce ourselves to acting out of emotional spasms degrades all involved.

There are debates that could, should, be engaged with.  What should be the aims of punishment?  What should be the limits?  What should the daily regime of prisoners be like, what facilities should be afforded? At present these are not issues for debate but rather act as lightening rods for our basest personal emotions and political urges.  And as long as this remains the case, then society loses as much as prisoners do.

Scales of Justice

A recent murder trial raised the issue of whether victims should be forced to have their evidence tested via cross-examination by the defence.


Such an experience is inevitably going to be emotionally painful for witnesses and, equally inevitably, out of compassion we would want to reduce the suffering of people who have already endured terrible experiences.


And yet...with liberty at stake, to be swayed by compassion in the adversarial process would undermine justice. Evidence must be tested, harshly, before people are convicted and thrown in prison.


Of course victims deserve compassion, but never to the extent that this undermines the rights of the defendant.  We must never forget that while the process may be difficult for witnesses, the potential consequences for those on trial are even worse.


Whether you are seeking a criminal justice degree, on trial yourself, or are involved with the criminal justice system in any way, you know that this torment is inevitable in the criminal justice process.  Its purpose is to attribute responsibility and punishment.


If we, as a society, want a process that aims to reduce additional harm, we really must seriously consider the benefits of restorative justice.

"Whither Victims?"

Here is the problem. The criminal justice system is designed to be largely impersonal, magisterial and impartial. Crimes are prosecuted as being against the Crown, the State, and never an individual.

Conversely, the effects of crime are often profoundly personal. The suffering and pain carried by victims of violent and sexual crimes, in particular, are unique and theirs alone.

It is in the gap between these two domains that disputes, anger, despair and frustration fester. And bridging this gap, attempting to use an impersonal process to address individual suffering, highlights the flaw in very concept of 'criminal justice'. It just isn't designed to heal, to address suffering. The focus upon judgement and punishment has, for a thousand years, overshadowed any attempt to reform the personal bonds that crime severs.

It is no surprise that that are vociferous victims, both individuals and groups, who rail against the current system and their status within it. There is a perpetual cry that 'victims are ignored' and that 'the system protects the criminal but not the victim'. There is some truth in this. Not from malice, not from political disdain, but as a natural consequence of criminal justice as it is conceived.

Nevertheless, recent years have seen governments attempting to lever the concerns of individual victims into the framework of an impersonal justice system. A Victims Service was created, intended to guide and support victims through the trial process. Some categories of alleged victims are absolved from having to face the people they are accusing. Victims can make a statement before sentencing which expresses the effect the crime has had on their lives. Victims can choose to keep in touch with the Prison and Probation services and be consulted and informed when a prisoner is being considered for various activities. Victims can attend parole hearings and lobby the parole board. And victims can ask the parole board to include certain conditions to be included in release licences, such as the prisoner being barred from wide geographical areas.

Some of these efforts are laudable. Who ever thought that prosecution and defence witnesses, the alleged criminal and victim, should share the same waiting rooms in courthouses, for instance? Offering support to victims at points in the criminal justice process cannot be objectionable and are long overdue.

Some of these efforts, though, are political sops that risk undermining Justice and rendering it arbitrary. Should a person’s sentence or release rest upon whether the victims arrive at the courthouse or parole hearing? What if the victim was a thoroughly horrible human being and had no supporters? What if one bereaved family wails with a shriller voice than another? These are not factors that should determine the metric of Justice, and to permit this is to abandon criminal justice in favour of personalised revenge - or forgiveness.

To say that the concerns of victims have been ignored is simply not true. That victims have not had their agenda imposed upon the system is, and neither is the system designed to satisfy individual victim's demands. For example, the desire of Frances Lawrence to know the location of her husbands killer in the community was denied. As a matter of policy - and good sense -the sharing of such information with victims increases the chances of a revenge attack. Instead, the license conditions of the released criminal contains conditions that bar them - on pain or recall to prison - from entering areas where their victims may be found. Such are the compromises that must exist when an impersonal system attempts to meet individual needs, and often no one is satisfied.

In many ways there can never be a place in the criminal justice system for victims. By its very definition and design, criminal justice cannot meet the needs of the individuals enmeshed within it. To do so would be to render it arbitrary.

This is a dilemma that all of us - the accused, the offended against and the wider society - can only begin to address when we accept that impersonal justice systems can never address personal suffering. Perhaps only then, maybe, we will consider a system of justice which can solve these problems. Restorative justice, anyone?

Note from Ed: Ben has himself lost a family member to violent crime.

Restorative Justice

The Big Problem with the criminal justice system is that it is firmly wedded to the idea of causing mutual harm - you hurt me, so I hurt you back. That so few people recognise that this merely increases the sum of human suffering and social harm is an indictment on the popular imagination. Or a testament to the resilience of our atavistic urges to lash out at those who hurt us.

Restorative justice moves away from the idea that crimes are offences against the State and humanises them. Crimes are mostly about breakdowns in human relationships, a tear in the social fabric. And once re-conceived in this way it becomes more obvious that the solution is to try to repair that harm.

Restorative Justice schemes have a remarkable - and I mean stunningly so - effect on the re-offending rate. It's time to get our head away from prison and look back into our communities for solutions to social harm.

The Death Penalty

It is a strange feeling, writing this whilst knowing that there are people out there who would like to see me killed. Nothing personal, I appreciate that, but still...

There are many things that I just don't understand about the death penalty. What I do understand, though, is the visceral urge on the part of some victims to destroy the criminal. When my sister was killed, I spent a long time devising ingenious ways of inflicting suffering on her killer. This, I think, is not unusual.

Of the things I don't understand, though, most are philosophical rather than practical.

For example, it is said that human life is so valuable that to extinguish it is the most heinous of crimes. Given the low value society attributes to human life in general, though, I doubt that proposition. Still, let's run with it.

Life is so precious that we should kill those who take it. Am I the only one who sees the conceptual knot in that reasoning?? Either life is sacred, or it isn't. If it is, how can we sanction State killing of criminals? I have never understood this. I honestly don't.

My other problem is that there are those victims who claim (in advance) that executing the Bad Man will make them feel better. Really? I worry about anyone who would take pleasure in the death of another human being. That is just the type of emotion that serial killers are said to have. Crowds who gather outside of prisons, clustering around hot dog stands and waving placards, are worrying. They show a delight in death that makes murderers blush.

The main source of emotional pain, surely, comes from the loss of the murdered victim and not the continued existence of the murderer? And there is no external act that can heal that wound. No matter how many people are hung, electrocuted or gassed, the loved one remains dead. So I have to wonder, does executing the murderer actually do anything for that pain? And in what way?

There is also the knotty problem that executing the murderer inflicts upon their family the very pain that the killer himself inflicted, and which is the reason for him being executed. Is it me, or is this all very convoluted and actually morally incomprehensible?

There were many moments when I would have happily seen my sisters killer executed, preferably by being dipped in acid whilst rats gnawed at extremities. The urge to lash out at those who hurt us is normal. It doesn't mean that these urges are allowed to be acted upon. I would never dream of asking that my basest urges be translated into public policy.

As the years have passed and I can become more reflective about my sister’s death, I have become convinced that what I want of her killer is to know that she has an understanding of what she has done. I want to know that she carries that weight on her conscience.

Killing her would be pointless. It would not heal my wound. Imprisoning her would also have no impact. All that would satisfy me is to look into her eyes and see the depths of her regret for what she did, to see that part of her that will never be the same in the full knowledge of her actions.

Bloody Victims

Victims of crime can be a right pain. Not a popular view amongst the masses, I appreciate, but then you need a dose of reality thrown in your face on occasion. Having it done by a murderer only adds a frisson of outrage to some harsh truths.

Victims of crime should, rightly, call upon our sympathy and expect society to rally around and make efforts to repair the harm done to them and their lives. In a system focused upon restorative principles, this could be done so much better and it is to society’s loss that the insane urge to punish over-rides all else. But that's your choice; you live with the consequences of it.

But victims of crime should not be allowed to dictate criminal justice policy any more than Mother Theresa was able to lecture the Pope on theology. Due to the toxic combination of hate-filled victims groups and a slavering popular media, we are sliding into just that situation. Victims are having far too much influence on policy.

We must examine the motives of these vociferous groups (other victims groups are less perverse in their effects). Mothers against Murder, Victims Voice, anything connected to Norman Brennan... They are not concerned with Justice as an abstract ideal, an improvement in the overall good that exists in society. That would be positive and to be contended. Rather, they are fuelled by personal pain, stoking the fires of their own hate and vengeance.

That they should feel such anger is only natural. To be victimised and not feel fury at those responsible would be slightly odd. As a personal hell, they are entitled to stew in it.

However, they ask society to translate their personal hate into public policy. They ask that we warp the criminal justice system into a mechanism that makes them happier. This only increases the sum of social misery that comes from crime and is far from being Justice.

Some victims have become a political constituency, one of thousands which attempts to influence policy. This is just the operation of normal pluralist politics; it’s fine by me. But they attempt to claim a special status, wrap themselves in a shroud of pain and claim some great insight into criminal justice that -somehow - flows from their victimhood.

This is plain silly. Being bashed about doesn't add to your knowledge of crime and justice, any more than being blinded by the sun qualifies you for a degree in astronomy. It may increase the certainty of your views but it doesn't make those views any more

cogent.

We should not pander to this constituency. We should support them, attempt to heal them, give due regard for the experiences they have suffered. But if we allow them to claim a special political status then society as whole will suffer for acceding to their narrow interests.

Justice belongs to all of us. If we hand it over to victims to shape then as their happiness and hate increases, the Justice that the rest of society looks to will be withered and distorted. We all lose.