“The first, long-standing means of depicting us as penal sadists is by asserting that the prison
population is higher in England and Wales than elsewhere (the comparisons are primarily with Western Europe). The impression is created by calculating the prison population as a proportion of the general population, hence assuming that the frailest grandparent and the youngest baby are as likely to commit crime as the young adult. It is like expressing prostate cancer sufferers as a proportion of the population of men and women combined, rather than of men, the only people with prostate glands. When one calculates the prison population in relation to the number of crimes recorded, the impression of harsh sentencing disappears.”

This is a false argument, indeed prison populations is often presented as a proportion of the general population. However, I have not seen any suggestion that the method of calculating imprisonment rates is any different in any of the countries with which England and Wales are compared. Therefore unless there is some unique demographic difference between the countries, the comparison stands.

I have never seen the ‘assumption’ that the very elderly and very young are as likely to commit crime as the young adult. I have, however, seen statistics that show that people aged 60 and over are now the fastest growing age group in the prison estate and that the number of prisoners aged 60 and over rose by 148% between 1998 and 2008:

• NOMS, Safer Custody News, January/February 2008
• Ministry of Justice (2009) Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2008, London: Ministry of Justice

Also, in 2008/9 377 children aged 10-17 with no previous convictions received a custodial sentence:

• Hansard HC, 7 December 2009

So as Professor Pease says, we should not assume that there is an elderly or pre-school crime wave. However, we should not also assume that the very young or very old do not end up in prisons. Furthermore, this line of thinking sidesteps the view that if you were to calculate the statistics differently and only look at 21-35 year olds, England and Wales would still, in all likelihood, come out with the highest rates of imprisonment in Western Europe.

“The second means of making community sentences equal to imprisonment in terms of public
protection is simple. It is by comparing reconviction rates in a way which takes out the primary effect of imprisonment, i.e. the temporary respite from crime which society enjoys when some of those who offend against it are absent. Published reconviction rates are invariably calculated from the time of sentence for community sanctions, and from the point of release for custody. For example, suppose one offender receives a community penalty. On the same day, another receives a prison sentence, meaning he will spend one year inside. Suppose both are convicted an average of three times a year. After one year, the person who got the community sanction will have been convicted three times, and the prisoner (assuming prison security is adequate) zero times. After two years, the ex-prisoner will have racked up a total of three convictions since his sentence. The person on the community sentence will have racked up six. The way reconviction rates are calculated means that these two people will be regarded as equal successes (or failures). The one year of respite that prison gave the community is simply spirited out of reconviction statistics, leaving the impression that imprisonment and community sentences are equivalent purveyors of public protection.”

This is a hugely over-simplified use of an example to illustrate what is a much more complicated multi-dimensional problem? What happens to those two ‘example’ individuals after two years? Do they just disappear off the face of the planet, or die, or what? And what happens to the individual who is in prison whilst he is in there and after he comes out? What about ten years down the line when the person who got the prison sentence has been in and out of jail continually?

The individual sent to prison, if he has employment, will probably lose it. If he has his own accommodation, he will probably lose it. His associations with family and friends, if they are present pre-sentence, will be compromised, particularly if he is sent to a prison far away from where he normally resides. If he has an intimate relationship, there is a good chance it will end. If he is attending any course of study or training, it will be interrupted or ended. If he has mental health problems, they could get worse. If he has problems with substance abuse, they are unlikely to improve due to the wide availability of drugs in prisons.

Furthermore his conviction remains ‘unspent’ for ten years, rather than five years for the person with the community order. This means that not only will he find it harder to find work upon release and have to pay more for insurance on any home or vehicle that he has, but that he will have this problem for twice as long as someone on a community sentence.

Professor Pease makes the example taking a very narrow perspective that if a person is in jail they cannot commit crime and therefore the cost to society in terms of the crime they would have committed in the community is saved. True, this saving does exist. However, the long term societal effects of imprisonment are much, much wider than those that he examines and include for former prisoners:

• Greater potential for long-term unemployment
• Potentially greater use of social housing and pressure on the agencies responsible for delivering this and other resettlement needs
• Potentially greater use of healthcare services (mental healthcare)
• Potentially longer-term drug and alcohol dependency (than someone who is given assistance to address this through community sentencing)

I could go on…so I will:

• The emotional and mental health impact on partners/family/friends/children of having the offender separated from them by imprisonment
• The subsequent increased use healthcare and social services by these people
• The economic impact on these groups of having to pay increased home insurance premiums for longer periods.

I think you get the idea.

This report really needed to consider that ‘criminals’ do not exist in complete isolation from the rest of society. They use public services, they have associations with other people in society that also use these services and imprisonment means that both the offender and all these other people are more likely to use these service more frequently. Weigh up the cost of that with the short term impact of stopping a person offending for a short period whilst in prison and suddenly the savings that Professor Pease identifies do not look very impressive against robust community sentencing.