Will McMahon In 1993 the prison population was around 40,000, in 1997 60,000, by the summer of 2005 it had reached 80,000. Now John Reid has decided that more prison places should be built - 8,000 more. Office projections suggest that the population could reach 106,000 in 2013. On current trends this figure will be achieved.
When Reid was recently interviewed Radio 4's Today programme he countered the penal reform argument that prison rates are too high in Britain by adopting a line of argument developed by Civitas - a right wing think tank hostile to penal reform.
Reid suggested that the correct measure of imprisonment rates should be the proportion of crime recorded, not the population of the country because a country with a high level of crime would expect to put more people in jail.
On this basis it is possible to argue that England and Wales is lenient in its use of prison. It we compare the number of prisoners to the number of recorded crimes, the EU average was 17.7 and the figure for England and Wales was 12.7.
In fact, 9 out of 15 EU countries had rates of imprisonment for every 1,000 crimes that were the same or higher.
was higher, Spain much higher and Germany the same. In other words, we are not locking enough people
This is a misleading argument. Police recorded crime rates are so notorious v unreliable as a measure of the true level of crime in society. Drawing strong conclusions about crime levels from those the public could be bothered to report to the police, or the police chose to detect, is akin to drawing conclusions about the health of a neighbourhood from a visit to the local accident and emergency department. Cross convansons are notonousy difficult.
Another argument offered up by Government to defend ine sleep incrcase in prison figures is that half of all crime is committed by 100,000 persistent offenders - a suspiciously round figure that makes the problem of crime appear solvable.
Presumably if you can work out who the 100,000 are, then keeping them inside or under surveillance outside should do the trick.
Labour claims that most of Reid suggested that the correct measure
of imprisonment rates should be the proportion of crime
recorded, not the
population the 100,000 can be found in the 'dysfunctional families' residing in working class estates mired in poverty.
An analysis by the Crime and Society Foundation (www.crimeandsociety.org.uk ) shows that the 100,000 persistent offenders estimate is based on conviction records, not overall offending patterns.
Even a Home Office study from earlier this year estimated that there were more prolific offenders in the gen eral population.
Academic research shows that over five million people are involved in the smuggling alcohol and over four million people buy bootleg CDs alone. work that does not attract VAT, the widespread and mention the un-investigated total of state, corporate and white collar crime and it becomes clear that crime and criminality is far more widespread and common than the reassuring myths of a small criminal hardcore would have us believe.
It is plainly false to claim that such a group, if indeed it exists, is responsible for half of all crime.
Moreover, if prison is a solution to criminal behavlour ten we are well on tne way to gulag Britannia hardly an enticing prospect for supposedly Labour Government.
The focus on criminal justice interventions to reduce crime in any case distracts from the far more signficant
One likely impact of the increased gap between rich and poor since the late 1970s, for instance, has been the Increasedl vulnerability crime and harm among the poorest in society.
Research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published in 2000 suggested that than half a million serious and 7,500 people would not di each year were the government to implement a modest redistribution of wealth from rich to poor.
Murder rates are also suband purchase of cigarettes and ject to broader social and economic factors. Danny Dorling, a professor of geograAdd in the cash in hand phy at Sheffield University, has analysed homicides from being murdered was poverty. The risk decreased for the rich.
The rise in murder victims
was concentrated almost
exclusively in men of working age living in the poorest parts
of Britain who grew up in the
era of mass unemployment
that was the 1980s. The rising
homicide rates during the
1980s and 1990s were the
result of profound and lasting
social, economic and political
changes.
This makes for an uncomfortable evidence base for
New Labour. Having failed to
impact meaningful on poverty
levels and increasing rates of
social inequality because of an
adherence to the economics of
globalisation the Government
has found itself focused
instead on locking up greater
numbers of poor people, the
prime victims of neo-liberalmany of whom have
mental health problems and
low literacy levels and come
from areas laid waste to since
the early 1980s. • Will McMahon is the
acting Director of the Crime
and Society Foundation at
King's College London