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Crime: Reoffending

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Baroness on securing this debate and on the splendid speech with which she introduced it. I have a few comments on this very complex area from, what I hope at least is, a Christian perspective. First, the exercise of justice, sentencing and punishment, reflects a judgment on events, in terms of determining a difference between right and wrong. We should never forget that. The Prime Minister said that he wanted to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Providing that the emphasis is on both sides of that statement, it seems to me to be entirely right. We need to avoid any dewy eyed innocence about how our society is or any society will be. I think it was DK Chesterton who said that original sin was the only Christian doctrine which had been empirically demonstrated. Justice is a serious matter. We may have abolished the death penalty, and rightly so in my view, but all that we do is avoid any de facto return to it, because if justice breaks down you end up with armed patrols or vigilante action. The exercise of justice and judgment in our society is a point at which the dignity of our society is most emphasised. One of the problems is that we have developed over the years, and particularly in the past 20 years, an underclass which has become very stubbornly ingrained with crime. When you are in that underclass, intersecting with the justice system can in its own bizarre way be seen to almost confer a certain dignity on those who are offenders. We had a debate recently in the House on ASBOs and on a report which said that in some sections of our young people an ASBO is almost a badge of honour. Recognising that is simply recognising the dynamics of having an underclass in our society, and the wrong response would be to rack up the punishments. That will add to the problems rather than take them away. Secondly, sentencing pronounces a judgment on events which is, in a sense, a determination of what I would call ““the wisdom for the future””—the best for both the offender and society taken together. A great deal derives from the Criminal Justice Act 2003. I wonder whether there was some tension in that very good Act between the establishment of automatic or minimum sentences and the rebasing of community punishment orders with all the different options available. It seems to me you only really match up those two if you recognise that judges should have a proper discretion in the exercise of judgment. One thing I have noticed—this has been confirmed by talking to judges who I know well—is that they often feel these days that their discretion is more limited, partly because of the public pressures which have been brought to bear. That can have a bad effect on minorities in our society. I take, for example, the way women have been affected in the criminal justice system in recent years. I rely here on an excellent publication by the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales a couple of years ago calledA Place of Redemption. In 2003, more women were sent to prison for shoplifting than for any other crime. Many women are in prison because of financial problems and there is a higher level of mental disorder among women compared with men in prison. In 1991, 8 per cent of women convicted of motoring crimes went to prison; in 2001 it was up to 40 per cent. Those are astonishing figures. The effect on families and children of sending women to prison can be devastating. I am told that only 5 per cent of children of women who go to prison can remain in the home in which they have been until their mother went to prison. In any given year, about 18,000 children are separated from their mother because their mother is given a custodial sentence. It seems at least worth asking whether a proper emphasis on the equality of the sexes in our age has not led to a false interchangeability, as it were, in how they have been treated by the justice system. That point was made in a memorable lecture by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, our only female Lord Justice of Appeal, last year. Only giving judges proper discretion and trusting their wisdom will enable some of the more subtle points in exercise of that judgment to come through. In Christian terms, justice must always be tempered by mercy. Only when you put justice and mercy together do you get a wise exercise of judgment. In that connection, we should resist giving in too much to a victim culture. I am all for proper support of victims in all sorts of ways, but the views of victims should not be allowed to distort the exercise of justice in our society. We have been creeping in that direction, which is almost going back to a retaliatory view of the exercise of justice. It was Gregory the Great, a Pope 1,500 years ago, who said that God visits unruly societies with harsh Governments. We have become a more unruly society. In 1940, the prison population was 10,000. Today it is 80,000. One way or another, we have become a more unruly society and the tendency then is for more harsh government. To some extent, that is unavoidable because of the dynamics, but it must be fought lest we give in to improper popular pressures. We must recognise the existence of the underclass and in everything we do seek to ameliorate that great change in our society in the past 25 years.