Crime and justice special: Is prison always the answer?
Scotland’s penal system is failing, says Karyn Mccluskey, chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, who starts our three-part special on crime and justice by calling for a new approach to help break the cycle of offending
How many times have you made a new year’s resolution? How many times have you tried to lose weight, stop smoking, stop biting your nails? Imagine trying to do this whilst in the midst of mental health issues, financial strife, homelessness, violence, chaos and fear. Now imagine that, instead of trying to stop biting your nails, you’re trying to come off heroin. Or you’re an alcoholic. Or you’re trying to get a job. Or escape a dangerous situation.
Change isn’t easy, for anyone – but it’s a lot easier for many of us.
Prochaska & Diclemente’s stages of change model maps a process that will feel very familiar to anyone who has tried to stop or start anything. There are six stages of change, from thinking about it to actually making the change and maintaining new patterns of behaviour. But relapse, when you fall back into old patterns of behaviour, is also a recognised part of this process – just like your new year’s resolution of attending the gym. Each time you pass through the cycle, you learn from each relapse and measuring the gaps between relapses is as significant a milestone as taking action to change.
What would our justice system look like if we treated the people passing in and out of it through the lens of this model of change? We would surely begin the process of justice from a different perspective. Rather than asking, what have you done and what should we do with you? We might ask, why are you here? What has happened to you? What is your life like? And what do you need? Yes, personal responsibility is important, as is repaying the debt that crime has on society, but the justice system shouldn’t be about making things worse. And like any process, it should be based upon the best evidence of what works and constantly innovating to improve outcomes and objectives. In justice, this includes supporting victims and helping them overcome the damage done to them, but it must also mean enabling the person who’s offended to become as full a member of the community as they can be, as soon as they can be. To work, pay their taxes, look after their kids – contribute, just as we all do. Denying people the opportunity to re-join society isn’t just morally offensive, it’s economically untenable.
Is Scotland’s justice system doing this? The reams of evidence about the inability of the prison system to effect change on those who are in for short periods for less serious crimes, compiled and collated by academics for decades, has struggled to complete the journey into policy. Elish Angiolini, when opening the new Justice centre in North Lanarkshire last year, said: “It’s time to change our approach… women who are enslaved to drugs won’t be helped by a three month prison sentence…we will look back in 60 years and be ashamed.” This applies as much to men in our systems. Our neighbours in England and Wales are contending with growing violence inside their prisons and across the UK, the prison population has continued to rise – our incarceration rate being slightly less than England and Wales is nothing to pat ourselves on the back for, especially as it is many times more than much of Europe and all of Scandinavia.
And yet, there is the sense that there is a desire for change. The Scottish Government plans to extend the presumption against short-term prison sentences to a year and increasingly talks about a greater reliance on sentences served in the community. The benefits of community justice and its aims of repairing harm, addressing offending behaviour and supporting reintegration are often extolled cross-party (in private, if not always in the press) and its effectiveness in reducing reoffending is accepted by all in the sector and beyond. Indeed, the very existence of Community Justice Scotland could be seen as a statement of intent.
But none of this is even close to being enough. Polling shows the Scottish public has an instinct for prevention and rehabilitation and yet are unconvinced about community justice. Why?
It might be because community justice is complex and nuanced and it’s much easier to understand locking a cell door. Or perhaps it’s because when we consider justice, our thinking
We must also understand that many of the people in the justice system are some of our most damaged – and sometimes damaging – citizens
gets muddy and, rather than assessing effectiveness, we become bogged down in preoccupations about punishment and retribution. About how much and how hard it should be. And perhaps also, we in the justice sector have spent too long talking to ourselves rather than taking the community with us.
This has brought us to a place where our public discourse sorts those in the justice system into criminals and victims and their crimes as inherent and intractable failures – rather than behaviours that can be changed. But we must also understand that many of the people in the justice system are some of our most damaged – and sometimes damaging – citizens. That addiction, mental health and learning difficulties are rife, that those who are care-experienced are overrepresented, that neglect, poverty and inequality are an integral part of the demographic we so often demand imprisonment for – even when we know it will only make things worse.
Does this seem too hard? A tanker too difficult to turn around?
I always did like a challenge. And besides, I know that Scotland can do better – I’ve seen us rethink problems which we were told were impossible to fix. When I was at the Violence Reduction Unit I saw the exemplary effort given by people from education, health, justice, the third sector, the public sector, the private sector, local communities, the media – all for the cause of making things better. I saw what happens when a movement starts and people decide to change and do, not just talk. And now, nearly two decades on, the world looks to us and asks ‘how did you do it?’.
Scotland could transform how it approaches justice – but that means doing something big and bold. The world is watching. We won’t make Scotland safer by tinkering around the edges or with half-hearted measures. We have to involve everyone because it affects all of us. So my question is, what kind of Scotland do you want to live in?
● Karyn Mccluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, which plays a central role in Scotland’s justice system. The organisation provides advice to Ministers and local government leaders on how public services, third sector and other partners work together to prevent and reduce further offending.