Is our criminal justice system working?

Fennel There used to be one in Shaftesbury and Portland harbour too. I think they may have been cafés though. Day release and run as a not-for-profit I think.

From the dreaded Daily Mail, an example of what prison can achieve:
"Cardiff – The Clink
The Clink, explains Time Out, can be found at HMP Cardiff, where prisoners training to work in the hospitality industry turn top-quality local Welsh produce into fine dining dishes. It adds: ‘Run by The Clink Charity, this isn’t just a place to eat great food, it is a place that is doing great things too.’"
But notice it's run by a charity.

I agree Alexa. I also think that feeling a belonging to some kind of society is important. If you have respect for others, I suspect you're less likely to do something which harms them. I don't think it helps when people can see those at the very top of the tree (eg the government) getting away with flouting the law or at the very least, finding loopholes.

I know that's a very simplistic view and there are multiple reasons for criminal activity.

Davidhs, there is need for training. Some criminals benefit from training as becoming an efficient and respected worker or sportsman generally makes people happy. I expect your employees benefit from the training you provide.

Training and its benefits are insufficient to sort criminality or even to be a good all-round worker.To distinguish between right and wrong takes good judgement, including empathy,and the ability to research facts. These skills are got from education not training. For instance if you were to delegate your training programme you'd want your delegate to understand more about ethics than a set of rules.

Whistleblowers get treated deplorably in a lot of cases, and I think that whistleblowing is doing exactly as you're told.

Any occupation where you are accountable for others health and wellbeing should have very, very robust policies and procedures about how to, and making clear it is expected that you tell.

I don't have any direct knowledge of the prison system and, fortunately, I've had very little experience of crime, so I've kept off this thread.

However, I don't agree with this idea that children should be brought up to obey their elders no matter what.

Children and teenagers have always rebelled to an extent. They challenge, whether we like it or not. Rather than be told to do as they're told, anybody in authority (whether parent, teacher or employer) should be prepared to justify their position.

I've had plenty of experience of observing the interactions between children and parents. The worst behaved children are usually the ones whose parents just tell them to shut up, drag them or even hit them. What kind of role model is that? Other parents have firm guidelines, but listen to their children and explain why things are as they are. The children who tended to commit crimes (and I knew a few of them) were those who felt that traditional society norms weren't for them.

On a slightly different note ... I've often read criticisms of people in large organisations just doing as they're told. Shouldn't there be some kind of system for people to whistle blow or make suggestions about how the system could be better run? I'm thinking in particular of NHS workers and civil servants who complain about inefficiency, but just do as they're told. Is it that some people are being trained to be robotic and subservient?

Sorry for the long, somewhat off-topic rant, but I do think that reducing crime is about more than just banging people up in as unpleasant conditions as possible.

As parent a grandparent and an employer the very last thing I want is a CHILD to challenge the system I want them to obey the rules, the laws, and when they come to work, turn up on time and do the job the way I want it done. I can train them, sometimes, it can be done in a week, if it’s an apprenticeship it may take several years. For a new employee they fit in with the system or they or they find another job and most companies will be the same.

If the general view amongst grandparents is that children should challenge the system no wonder we are in the current mess, we have record rates of criminality, indiscipline, depression, suicide and hopelessness amongst children. A caring parent makes sure that their children respect the boundaries and learn why the rules are there, when they are older and have gained experience they can make decisions of their own.

At some stage they go into employment where there is a new set of rules to be followed, the sanction there is, break the rules and you’re sacked. This comes as a shock to many because they have gone through home, school and college breaking as many rules as possible without consequences, then suddenly it dawns on them, there are consequences!.

The best way to help children is to treat them as children, not a small adults, to gain experience and make rational decisions, if adults set a bad example and teach children that it is OK to break the law and challenge authority what hope is there for improving society.

crystal tips, thanks for posting this personal experience. So called 'white collar' crimes do bring heavy sentences on to first time offenders. I agree, it's a total waste of public money to incarcerate people who don't pose an ongoing risk to others. The accountant I knew (not personally) who committed a fraud which didn't involve big money or multiple victims got three years. He lost his family and of course, could never work in anything that involved money in the future - that, alongside community punishment would have been a better response.

The news on line this morning reports that 62% of women released from one of our largest women's prisons are homeless. They're being given tents and sleeping bags as an alternative to accommodation. This is a private prison. Crystaltips reference to private prisons, getting rid of experienced staff, no longer searching cells, lack of education, ore drugs, phones etc are spot on.

I have positive (if poignant) memories of visiting parents in prison, who would have genuine pride in the certificates they'd received for remaining drug free, for attending literacy and numeracy classes. These weren't 'white collar' prisoners, they were the hopeless shop lifting women and their partners. One man had committed a series of robberies and was dirty, dishevelled and desperate when I met him pre sentence. Six months later, he had several drug free certificates and was proud to be attending literacy Classes, certificates shown to me. Surely we are better spending our money effectively.

I have a friend whose husband was given a 3 year sentence for a non violent “white collar crime”, it was a first offence. He pleaded guilty. He was in his sixties. He spent most of the first year in a high security prison as there was no room anywhere else. Locked up 23 hours a day because there were too few staff. To my mind this was a total waste of taxpayers money. He would have been better paying his debt to society by community work or helping other inmates with basic education. The biggest failing in the prison system is cutting back of experienced staff and expecting private providers to run prisons. Getting rid of experienced staff to save money has led to overcrowding, lack of education, more drugs and phones available as they don’t search cells any more. Closing family and youth services in the name of austerity as well has led to an increase in crime of all kinds - theft and knife crime included. Just making prisons as horrible as possible doesn’t reduce crime. Most prisoners lack basic education and many come from the care system. Many have drug, alcohol, mental health issues. These problems should be addressed if you want to reduce crime. These are not cured by inhumane treatment.

I completed an online course some time ago on justice, mercy, and mass incarceration. They looked specifically at U.S. prisons, but there were a few points that resonated with me.

1. The justice system, at least in the U.S., is pretty biased towards people of visible minorities. This doesn't necessarily mean that all involved in law enforcement and the justice system are racist! There are many possible reasons for this.

2. There's a strong link between incarceration and poverty. Many, many people locked up in the U.S. are actually awaiting trial - they haven't been convicted of anything. One of the issues with this is that it's very impoverishing to a lot of families. Some people will simply decide that it's better for them to accept a plea deal because at least they will know when they're free to leave prison. The current system of money bail simply doesn't work for many people because they can't raise the money required to pay the bail. (I am not sure if it works similarly in the UK, but in the U.S. there are usually two or three ways you can get bail, unless the judge puts a restriction such as a cash-only bail. One way is that you can put up cash. Most people can't do that as it's too expensive. A second way is to put up a property bond, i.e. your home will have a lien on it if you don't show up. Works, but only if you own your home. A third way is to use a bail bonds company. You pay them 10% of the bail, which they keep as their usage fee. In exchange, they say that they'll be liable for the full bail money if you don't show up to court. If you don't show up, often called a "failure to appear", they send a bond enforcement agent, more commonly known as a bounty hunter, after you to bring you in. The problem here is that depending on what your bail is, 10% can still be quite a bit of money. Let's say you got $30,000 worth of bail - would be maybe about L25,000. 10% of that is still a lot of money, which many families can't afford to part with, especially because you won't get it back.) The issue with accepting a plea bargain, though, is that you'll have a permanent criminal record. This can make it more difficult for a person to apply for employment in the future.

3. There's a strong link between being incarcerated and going on to commit other crimes. This can happen for a variety of reasons. For some people, crime is all they know, because they don't have marketable skills. They may have substance use problems. They may be involved in street work (e.g. working in the sex trade). Often these problems can continue in prison. People can also learn from more experienced criminals, which can increase their involvement in criminal behaviour once they're released.

4. For some people, if they have exceptionally long custodial sentences, they can become so institutionalized that they literally can't function on their own. I have heard of cases where people were released after a lengthy sentence and were re-arrested sometimes days or even hours later. They had been in the prison environment for so long that they simply didn't know how to function outside it. So, they committed another crime so they could be put back into the system as that was what they knew.

Again, I can't speak to the UK specifically, as this was focused on the U.S. However, I strongly suspect that many of the issues that are observed in U.S. prisons are also problems in UK prisons as well.

Davidhs - sometimes we should all be fighting the system.
Some systems are, unfortunately, inherently wrong.

I still have no idea where your supermarket worker and everyone being controlled by robots comes from.

I do not believe -and you are unlikely to convince me - that teaching children to obey societies rules, especially the more antediluvian ones will stop the becoming criminals. I do believe that teaching them to reason, challenge and empathise with others is far more likely to make them stop and think.

What are your suggestions for improving standards of behaviour Davidhs

We’ve moved on to tomorrow’s world OK, a world run by robots will be even worse, there will be a very few developing systems, the majority will be serving the robots as happens in car factories today.

When that happens life will be even more structured because robots don’t have emotions or discretion you follow the program, when you are using the self checkout or online banking if you don’t follow the program you fail, unless someone rescues you.

Every industry has complex regulations formulated by a few at the top everyone else just obeys the regulations. A few of us turn out to be entrepreneurs or self employed or even market traders where we can think freely, most of us are going to be doing work controlled by others including robots

Most parents and most children work with the system and obey the rules and laws but there is a number who make great efforts to fight against the system, much more should be done to improve standards of behavior.

Where does working in a supermarket come into how you bring up children for tomorrow's world Davidhs? The jobs you describe will cease to exist as they are robotised. Just as we have seen in the modern car factories where the unskilled and semi-skilled work is being automated. It is the same with the clerical work so many found paid so well in the 60s. When did you last see an advert for a secretary?

The reason people could work in these jobs is that education was better than ever before for most people. Now people need a different type of education to succeed in their working lives which includes their parents teaching children how to think, how to reason.

There will be some work at this level but most of it will be running the machinery and computers that do it. To do that people - our grandchildren - have to be able to think for themselves, change course quickly and solve problems. The level of that head office person you describe will be where most of the work is, that and developing systems.

Even in areas like the legal world, repetitious work is moving on to computers. In medicine, technology is being used more and more. Why would you want a child to grow up without the opportunity to achieve the best they can? That means learning to think for themselves and understand why some things are important and others not; not just doing them because your grandfather said you should.

@ Eloethan I agree with your views.
And from the other side, of the 'offender' how many of us who drive a car, have thanked God for just avoiding a fatal accident. Partly for the life of the other person, and partly for the potential prison sentence.
Twice happened to me - I don't drive now.
I bet most of us have done something in our lives which could have led to serious consequences.

And, by the way, we have been burgled too, my daughter and son have been mugged, bikes, handbags and debit cards stolen, etc, etc. But I still want a prison system that doesn't treat people like dirt and which has a much greater emphasis on support and rehabilitation.

Ngaio I wonder what the job was of the people you know who worked in prisons. There is plenty of evidence to show at least some of the drugs that make their way into prisons do so via prison officers, some of whom are evidently just as willing to break the law as the people they are guarding.

Referring to people who don't believe long prison terms and harsh conditions are right or effective as "bleeding heart liberals" is the sort of insult that typically appears when this sort of issue is discussed. It is the usual cheap shot and adds nothing to the debate.

It's suggested by some that prison is in no way as dreadful as the aforementioned "bleeding heart liberals" have claimed. That being the case, how is it that Peter Clarke, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, recently expressed grave concern as to the sharp rise in prisoner suicide and self-harm over the last year or so. He went to say that in some jails there was no effective strategy to reducing self-harm, describing a visit to one prison where numerous cell bells – designed for inmates to indicate they need emergency help – were being ignored by officers. He said:

“I said to the senior officer who I was with, ‘Don’t you think that those officers sitting in the office there might like to step out and see what’s going on?’ I found it astonishing and very depressing,” said Mr Clarke.

He described living conditions as “appalling” - rubbish being left lying around and frequent sightings of ​rats, pigeons and cockroaches on the wings. In one case, an inmate was living in a cell in which the blood of another prisoner, who had self-harmed two days previously, had not been cleaned from the floor."

Doesn't sound cushy to me.

“Now there are a lot fewer rules and our grandchildren need to be taught how to think for themselves and navigate society as it changes.”

No, no, no I have no idea where you get that from, there are far more rules and regulations than there ever used to be and far less scope for individual initiative.
Think of a supermarket routine, till staff follow a certain routine for each customer, shelf stackers follow a set pattern they are told where to place each item and how to price it. The manager of that store is trained how to recruit staff, how to handle customers and every other managerial duty, stock is reordered by computer according to sales. Only at head office level is individual creativeness debated and agreed, all the other employees beneath carry out directions from above. Employees may not understand why they do it that way, in the case of a supermarket chain there will be a very good reason for every action.

Anyone who works for a large organization follows company policy, they may have some discretion, most don’t.

Annie I didn't say it was equal. I have no idea where you get that from. I have explained further and if you still don't understand or choose not to there is little I can do to help or would want to.

I am glad you feel such a superior being in the bringing up of children, it must give you great comfort to feel so right about this. I might differ from that opinion but it is of little relevance unless either your children or mine ended up in prison, as drug takers or anything else along those lines. My children have not and nor have any of my friends and they have grown up being able to reason when it comes to right or wrong and not just accept old fashioned societal dictatorship.

If our criminal justice system was working we would not have the highest prison population in western Europe.

Prisons are understaffed and overused. The purpose of sentencing offenders is punishment, deterrance, rehabilitation to prevent reoffending and protection of the public.

Protection of the public is the only good reason to imprison and many who are a danger to the public should be in secure mental health facilities. All the other purposes of sentencing can be better achieved by other non custodial sentences.

Still doesn’t equal pulling your forelock and doffing your cap.

Good behaviour needs googling ?

Setting rules in the home , home by 10.00pm needs googling ?

I prefer boundaries to rules, and sadly many children don’t have boundaries .

Ngaio1 and Alexa I have been burgled. I do not feel like this.

Ngaio1 - Please don’t take as fact anything that an offender says to his girlfriend! There is a lot of bravado goes on around the prison life.

How does teaching good behaviour and obeying the rules = pulling your forelock and doffing your cap?

Because we have moved and need to move from teaching the end to teaching the means. You would be better teaching reflection, analysis and the ability to research just as we are doing in the subjects that are taught. Life is moving and changing too fast to learn the answer to everything.

We used to live in a slower moving, unchanging society where our grandparents could hope that a set of rules could keep you safe. We taught our children to understand why and when it was important to apply those rules and why and when it wasn't. Now there are a lot fewer rules and our grandchildren need to be taught how to think for themselves and navigate society as it changes.

Tugging forelocks is a really silly comment, it’s about accepting reasonable discipline, or is that wrong?
Parenting and schooling is about boundaries, respect for others and educating children to be honest, useful members of society and we are failing badly. One big problem young people have entering work is doing what they are told, assuming they have turned up on time. Or is some bleeding heart liberal going to say we should allow children to express themselves however they wish and be free to abuse others at will.

We must make sure behavior improves and stop children breaking laws and rules because once they have been in prison finding any kind of work is so much harder