This Isn't Justice, It's Stupidity

The wash basket is full

It’s a chore, but it needs doing. You load the washing machine and now you have a choice, you can choose the Big Bad Powder or the Softy Soft Soap. The first goes on a ‘super-duper long wash’ cycle and the latter on a ‘quick wash.’

The first costs £8 per load, the second £1.

Which do you choose?

The sensible answer would be to save money and choose the Softly Soft Soap. But we don’t. We go for the Big Bad Powder — every time. We like big and bad when it comes to justice. In terms of cost, it’s a stupid decision. And it gets worse.

No matter how many times we stick our dirty clothes in the super-duper long wash cycle with the Big Bad Powder, it still comes out dirty. It doesn’t do its job.

As a cleaning agent, the Big Bad Powder is as much use as dog poo. Your socks are still smelly, your shirt still stained. All that tumbling creates holes in your sweater, threads spin loose and colours fade to beige.

Despite this, we persist. Come wash day, we pay the extra to get a worse job. And the only thing we get out of it is the satisfaction that those obnoxious smelling dirty clothes are out of our sight for an hour or two.

It’s madness. What’s the saying?

“The definition of insanity is…”

I have an unpopular opinion

I was a police officer for over thirty years, so it might surprise you — I think we send criminals to prison too often and for too long. Actually, I don’t think, I know.

Some people believe the idea that the longer the sentence, the bigger the deterrence. If that were true, why are so many people locked up for life? The evidence shows the reverse is true.

We need to think again about how we rehabilitate offenders — it would be a good idea to at least try.

In the UK, it costs £73,000 a year to keep a prisoner in jail. But that isn’t the total cost.

Prison prepares an inmate to be a more prolific criminal. The actual costs are much more in terms of policing, legal aid, courts, unemployment benefits, offspring, education, and social care. And that doesn't take into account the physical and mental costs to future victims.

It is estimated the life cycle of a recidivist offender costs the country £6.5m. In the USA it is worse. At any moment in time, the American criminal justice system has almost 2.3 million people incarcerated.

It costs the American taxpayer $80 billion every year. Of all the prisoners on planet earth, one-quarter is in jail in the USA.

It’s a huge number.

There are a quarter of a million correctional officers to cater to a prison population that is seven times the average number jailed in Europe, and sentences in the USA can be much longer.

Recidivism in the United States is 70% within 5 years. Simply put, 70% of freed inmates find themselves arrested again within five years.

In the UK those figures are worse, 75% of ex-inmates re-offend within nine years of release, and 39.3% within the first twelve months.

There is an alternative

Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world, currently 20%.

Their criminal justice system focuses on the restorative process and rehabilitating prisoners. Correctional facilities focus on the root cause of offending and the education of the offender.

Why doesn’t the UK use it?

In 2001, the UK government funded a £7 million seven-year research programme into restorative justice.

The evidence showed that 85% of victims who took part were satisfied with the process. Restorative justice meets the needs of victims and reduces the frequency of re-offending.

There is an overwhelming economic case for restorative justice too.

Restorative justice reduced the frequency of re-offending, leading to £8 in savings to the criminal justice system for every £1 spent. Using restorative justice can save money by diverting people away from prosecution and by reducing re-offending

Analysis by the Restorative Justice Council and Victim Support demonstrated that providing restorative justice in 70,000 cases involving adult offenders would deliver £185 million in cashable cost savings to the public purse in the first two years, these savings were through reductions in re-offending alone.

It would pay the cost of implementing the scheme back in the first year, and during the course of two parliaments, society would benefit by saving over £1 billion.

Why has it been ignored?

Politicians pander to the public. They don’t want to be seen to be soft on crime. They know the facts, they have read the reports, but rather than educate and explain, they take the easy option.

In your next election, when your candidate trots out, ‘We are the party to be tough on crime,’ then you go ahead and vote for him — you will be flushing your money down the drain.

They aren’t being tough on crime, they are being ‘easy on stupidity’.

And while we are emptying our wallets down the toilet bowl, we are also dolloping injustice onto the plates of the poor, the mentally ill, and minorities. They get tossed into the wash with the Big Bad Powder, whether they need it or not.

The Takeaway

You wouldn’t keep using the Big Bad Powder in a faulty washing machine if it didn’t work. But your justice system is akin to paying over the odds to a laundrette and accepting your clothes back in a dirtier condition.

You pay your government fantastic amounts of money to incarcerate your criminals. This comes out of your pocket and is effectively fraud. You are being deceived into believing that being tough on crime works, it doesn’t.

The greater cost is to the victims of repeat offenders: your friends, your family, your community. More than all the mismanagement of your money, this is why you should care.

Crime is an emotive topic. Every contemptible act hits the headlines and has us screaming for justice. Rightly so, we should be outraged.

Evil people should be vilified and we should be kept safe from them. But the best way is through early education, restorative processes, and delivering on the research.

Prevention is better than cure.