Week 1: Prison

Prison sentances are the best way to protect the public from knife crime.

For:

• Prison protects the public from knife crime becuase you cannot commit crimes whilst in prison.
• The threat of prison makes offenders think twice before committing a crime.
• Prison breaks up gangs.
• As prison numbers have increased, violent crime figures have decreased.
• Criminals need to be punished for their crime. Need to send out the message that crime pays.

Against:

• Still lots of people on the streets who could be committing knife crime.
• Prison does not stop a new generation of people growing up into knife culture.
• Prison isn't harsh enough:
• Offenders get used to prison
• Seen by some as a holiday camp
• Too many luxuries in prison
• Prison food is more nutricious than school dinners!
• Crimes are committed from within prison: 
• Including knife crime!
• Prison ignores the causes of crime
• More money should be spent on prevention methods. 
• Prison is a waste of money - it would be cheaper to invest in reducing the causes of crime.
• Glammourisation of prison within gang/youth culture. 
• Reoffending rates are high: prison doesn't work!
• Prison is not the right place for 16/17 year olds.
• May not consider the consequences when in 'the heat of the moment'.

Disucssion:

The causes of knife crime:

• Gang culture
• Poverty
• Crime as a means to make money
• Knife crime associated drug culture
• Working class or the Underclass more likely to be involoved in knife crime
• Rich people can also commit knife crime, but they are less likely to.
• Black males more likely to be involved in knife crime in the USA, knife crime not as racialised in the UK.

Conclusion:

The justice system needs prison in order to protect the public from knife crime. Prison works. However, reoffending rates show that prison is not enough and needs to be accompined by rehabilitation methods in order to protect the public from further attacks. The government need to invest in preventing the causes of crime if they are truly going to protect the public from knife crime.

Key terms:

• Re-offending rates: The amount of offenders who go on to commit another crime.
• Recidivism: another word for re-offending. 
• Rehabilitation: Programs designed to change the behaviour that has lead an offender to crime.
• Situational crime prevention: Based on the notion that people will commit crime when the [economic or social] benefits of crime outweigh the [economic or social] cost crime. Popular with Criminologist Clarke. 
• Intervention: Policy designed to prevent those most at risk of being involved in crime turning to crime. 
• Risk factors: the domestic and social factors which are statically more likely to result in future offending.
• Underclass: Term used by the New Right to describe a group below the working class, at the bottom of the social hierarchy, whose lifestyles do not fit in with societies norms; they live off benefits, have unstable families, and no desire to change e.g. the long term unemployed. Originally used by the Sociologist Charles Murray (1988).
• Moral panic: An activity or social group whose threat to society's values is sensationalised by the media creating a sense of anxiety amongst the general populations e.g. knife crime. 'Folk devils' are often part of the moral panic. 

BBC news; October 2011. Prison for knife crime teenagers:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15472884

The Guardian; Prison system failing to tackle reoffending, says Ken Clarke:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/07/prison-failing-tackle-reoffending-ken-clarke?INTCMP=SRCH

The Guardian; December 2010. Convicted offenders committed 510,000 crimes within a year:
"http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/oct/27/convicted-offenders-crime-figures

Daily Mail; October 2010. Warning to Ken CLarke over cutting jail places as 8% fall in crime 'shows prison works':
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322438/Warning-Ken-Clarke-cutting-prison-places-8-fall-crime-shows-prison-works.html

Theories, Studies, and Stats:

• Gillis and Nafekh (2005): The impact of community based employment on offender reintegration: Content analysis of data from Canada's offenders' Offenders' Management System, using a matched pairs design ( matched for gender, risk level, release year, sentence length, family/marital relations, substance abuse, emotional orientation, community functioning and attitudes).Offenders who were put on an employment based programme were less likely to re-offend. 
•  Ministry of Justice reoffending figures: http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/statistics-and-data/reoffending/proven-reoffending-jan-dec09.pdf
• Types of rehabilitation:
• Cognitive behavioural therepy (CBT)
• Cann: Impact of cognitive skills programmes in reducing re-conviction
• Foucault: the state seeking to control people through their minds. This is a shift from the pre-moden world where the state tried to control people through their bodies.
• Reasoning and rehabilitation (R&R)
• Anger management, e.g. CALM
• Ireland: Investigation of whether anger management programmes work with a group of young male offenders.
• Clarke (1992): situational crime prevention.  Make it more difficult to attack somebody.
• Inititives:
• Target hanrdening
• BUT, Garland (2001) says that this ignores the causes of crime
• Leads to crime displacement? – i.e. crime would still happen, but somewhere else
• Community safety/crime reduction:
• Intervention
• Farrington: positivistic research approach – longitudinal study comparing young males with a criminal record, and young men without a criminal record.
• Risk factors linked to early offending:
• Low income and poor housing
• Living in run down neighbourhoods
• High degree of impulsiveness and hyperactivity
• Low school attainment
• Poor parental supervision with harh and erratic discipline
• Parental conflict and lone parent families
• So changing these factors would prevent crime
• Rodgers (2008): social policy interventions introduced since 1998 e.g. improving schools, anti-crime measures as much as they were to improve the lives of the poor and marginalized.
• Community
• Government should strengthen communitites to prevent crime and anti-social behaviour
• E.g. Home start  -volunteers help families who are deemed to have problems
• Garland (2001):
• Expressive strategy: crime central to politics. Important to create a perception that crime levels are reducing – more important than actually reducing crime.
• Adaptive strategy: early intervention for at risk groups to prevent crime.