INSTEAD of a system “focused on vengeance and punishment” — partly the results of media portrayals of crime — the Government should foster public support for a culture of rehabilitation, the Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops for prisons recommend in a latest report.
The report, Picking up the Pieces, published last week and described as “an ecumenical approach to criminal justice reform”, calls for “a fundamental shift in public discourse on criminal justice.” It says that each the Church of England and RC Church have highlighted “the destructive role of the media in making a moral panic regarding the prevalence of crime and the necessity for more punitive sentencing”.
The prison population of England and Wales has quadrupled since 1900, while the final population has roughly doubled. In October 2023, England and Wales had the very best incarceration rate in Western Europe. The report describes an “overcrowded, understaffed, and under-resourced” prison system, “characterised by high levels of violence and mental health need”, with rising rates of self-harm and assaults. Prisoners are spending “prolonged periods of their cells with little structure or opportunities for development”, it says. Although the reoffending rate has fallen prior to now decade, it still stands at 38.3 per cent.
Among its ten recommendations are a renewed give attention to rehabilitation, investment in restorative justice programmes — “which the federal government’s own research shows is effective in reducing reoffending” — and early intervention to divert people from crime. “Being tough on crime and the causes of crime will not be about locking more people up and for longer, but somewhat requires creativity and a reformed whole systems approach during which persons are recognised as unique individuals created within the image of God,” it says.
Among the examples of Christian work within the criminal justice system highlighted is Spark2Life, a black-led charity founded by former prisoner and ordained minister Dez Brown. The organisation’s mission is to “prevent harm and promote life” by working to scale back the danger of kids and young adults entering cycles of offending.
The first of the report’s ten recommendations is: “Make take care of victims the primary priority of the criminal justice system.” It quotes the Rt Revd James Jones, a former Bishop of Liverpool, who has stated that “those that have been offended against have an ethical right to see that the offender is appropriately punished, and that the offence will not be repeated. Such a just hope relies on the reform of the offender.”
The report identifies a “growing sense of optimism and hope” throughout the criminal-justice system, during which Christians have “a novel opportunity to present a unified voice and speak truth to power”, citing with approbation recent reviews of each sentencing and the criminal courts.
The report is published on behalf of the Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, the lead bishop for prisons, the RC Bishop of Arundel & Brighton, the Rt Revd Richard Moth, the liaison bishop for prisons for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Quakers in Criminal Justice, and other Christian organisations, including Prison Advice and Care Trust (PACT).
A Gloucester diocesan paper on sentencing published earlier this yr with a foreword by Bishop Treweek said that the Church of England had played a key part within the emergence of today’s Probation Service, “which began within the nineteenth century with missionaries to the London Police Courts. . . Sadly plainly within the twenty first century a give attention to rehabilitation of offenders is severely lacking and we now have shifted to a primary emphasis on punishment rooted in removal from the community, regardless of whether or not persons are a danger to the general public.”
It diagnosed a “distorted” public perception of the incidence of crime, partly consequently of media portrayals, concluding that ministers needed to set sentencing policy in an “emotionally-charged context, often coming under pressure to increase prison sentences within the aftermath of single, high-profile offences, with a rhetoric only of punishment and an absence of any narrative about what works by way of constructing stronger and safer communities. There is little public understanding of the alternatives to prison and the way these alternatives will help to scale back crime by reducing offending. All this makes evidence-based policy-making particularly difficult in criminal justice.”
Polling by YouGov cited within the report indicates that, over the past five years, between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the general public have believed that sentences will not be tough enough; the truth is, sentences have develop into longer. “This could suggest”, it says, “that either there may be inexhaustible public demand for longer prison sentences or that, whatever politicians do, public perception is unmoveable.”
The report backs a proposal made by the House of Commons’ Justice Committee for an independent expert panel to advise on sentencing, monitor the financial sustainability of the prison system, and keep the general public informed. “This proposal will not be intended to undermine the decision-making of ministers,” it concludes. “Rather, it goals to assist them go where the evidence points when there is gigantic pressure to do otherwise.”
