[The Economist]

                            Crime and punishment

IN MANY countries around the world, policy towards crime is turning
harsher. The reason is not hard to see. Popular fear of crime, and
especially of violent crime, has grown in recent years (faster in many
places than crime itself). Politicians are responding to demands that
something, preferably something bold, be done about it. In itself, this is
nothing new: periodic shifts in attitudes to crime and to policy on crime
are familiar enough. But the extent of the current shift, reflecting the
scale of the perceived problem, seems greater than before.
     It is striking, for instance, that so many left-of-centre politicians
have fallen into line. They might once have cautioned against "brutal" and
"ill-considered" punitive measures (as they would have called them). Now,
many favour "get-tough" policies with a zeal at least equal to that of
right-wingers. In America, a Democratic president has supported "three
strikes" laws, now adopted in many states and for federal cases, which
impose mandatory sentences of 25 years to life on criminals convicted of a
third felony. In Britain, where the Tories have proposed a less drastic
form of mandatory sentencing for violent criminals, and claim with great
fervour that "prison works", Labour has responded with cautious quibbles
rather than outright hostility--and this week unveiled a proposal (echoing
another American initiative) to introduce curfews for children. Just now,
left-of-centre politicians regard it as political suicide to seem "soft on
crime".
     This makes it harder than ever to conduct an intelligent debate on
crime and punishment. The traditional quarrel between the two rival
camps--"liberals" emphasising rehabilitation, the social roots of crime and
the rights of the accused, and "conservatives" emphasising deterrence,
retribution and the rights of victims--never shed much light, it is true.
But even an uncomprehending exchange of views is better than no exchange of
views. Instead of debate, there is a growing, unexamined consensus among
politicians that the popular demand for greater severity, for sending more
people to prison for longer, must be appeased. Yet the evidence (see page)
suggests that such an approach will fail, may even make matters worse--and
all at great expense.

Too much and too little
Taken at face value, America's experience seems to suggest otherwise. It is
sometimes claimed that a trend towards much sterner sentencing in the
United States has gone hand in hand with falling crime. Many sorts of crime
have indeed declined in America of late, but much the likeliest cause is
changes in the country's demographic make-up. Young men commit
disproportionately many crimes; when their numbers dip in relation to the
population at large, as they have, crime dips too. (A new surge of young
males is on its way.) Those who cite America in praise of tougher
sentencing ought to reflect instead on the fact that their model now
imprisons seven times more people, in relation to its population, than do
European countries, on average; and that it nonetheless suffers a very much
higher rate of violent crime, notably murder, than any comparably
prosperous nation.
     These distinctively American phenomena--incarceration and lethal
violence--have much to do with two other ways in which America is unusual:
drugs and guns. This fact suggests some altogether different remedies. One
is to decriminalise drugs, a policy long advocated by The Economist. The
best argument for such a policy is that it would make America (and other
countries) safer, by denying many of its violent criminals their main
incentive to harm others. On this, to be sure, voters will take some
convincing: the case, though sound, is by no means obvious. But the other
clear candidate for change--sweeping reform of America's gun laws--is
something most voters already appear to want. Unfortunately, their
political leaders seem unable to deliver it.
     Even if crime in America could be made in these ways to resemble crime
in other countries, the idea that currently guides many governments, not
just America's, would remain to be addressed. That is, does prison work?
     Nobody would expect the crime rate to drop if the prisons were
emptied: in that sense, at any rate, prison does work. But it does not
follow that a policy of more incarceration, indiscriminately applied, makes
sense. The extraordinary cost of keeping somebody locked up is clear; the
corresponding benefits, at the margin, are less so. There is no persuasive
evidence that greater imprisonment acts as a significant deterrent to
would-be criminals. For most crimes, rates of detection are so low that the
risk of facing punishment, mild or severe, may seem too small to worry
about. As for rehabilitation, rates of recidivism vary according to the
prison regime, but in no case lend support to the view that prison makes
good citizens; often, a harder, better connected and more professional
law-breaker emerges than the one who went in.
     These points suggest that society should be extremely reluctant to
lock people up. At the same time, however, "liberals" are wrong to ignore,
as they nearly always do, another reason for incarceration: that, as
somebody once put it, a criminal in jail cannot rape your sister. It may be
that protection, more than any crude desire for revenge, is why popular
opinion generally favours getting tough. And in this, popular opinion is
surely right: protecting society is a better reason to deny somebody his
liberty than the prospect of deterrence, rehabilitation or, for that
matter, retribution.
     This suggests a different direction for penal policy, one that needs
to be carefully contrasted with "three strikes" in its various guises.
Because prison costs a fortune, deters not very well, and may build a more
effective sort of criminal, let it be a last resort: aim to send fewer (in
America, vastly fewer) people to jail in the first place. Explore
other--cheaper, more effective--possibilities first. Try special courts for
drug offenders (if you balk at decriminalisation); use fines, confiscation
of property, electronic tagging, community service, and so on. At the same
time, however, be willing to impose longer sentences (in Britain's case,
much longer) on some persistent, and especially on violent, offenders who
have shown that they will remain a threat to others. The principal
rationale for imprisonment in such a regime is public safety: this
justifies avoiding short (and counter-productive) spells of imprisonment
for many offenders as readily as it justifies longer sentences for the
smaller number of dangerous ones.
     It hardly needs saying that, to have much hope of succeeding, a
comprehensive anti-crime policy must go far beyond ideas about criminal
justice. Punishment of whatever sort counts for less in the end than
whether jobs are available for young men who might otherwise turn to crime,
whether schools have equipped them with the skills they will need to make a
legitimate living, and so on. But imprisonment, and how to use it, does
matter. It must be made to work better.

  The Economist Home Page   -   Search   -   Contents   -   Next article

   ⌐ Copyright 1996 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All Rights Reserved