Whenever I give any sort of public talk then I make it clear that I am not only open to a Q and A, but that if I'm daft enough to insert my life into the public eye then the questions that can be asked can be as personal as people care to imagine. Thankfully, few take full advantage of that offer!
At Exeter University last week, though, someone came up to me at the end. During my talk I had pointed out that people have universal human needs and will struggle to fulfil those needs; and if denied legitimate, peaceful avenues of doing so then this struggle may become violent. My interlocutor sidled up, gathered their nerve and asked a question many may have been thinking - why should we care about the needs of those such as myself who have denied the needs of others? The words "murdering bastard" were not mentioned, but lay in the air as if they could leap into existence at any moment.
It was a fair question. A question that many would ask, and an equal number would answer for themselves... My immediate answer is, why add harm to the harm already committed? To what end?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Are you referring to the human needs theory?
ReplyDeleteI was.
ReplyDeletePrince Harry admited Murder last week! btw Ben, did you see the Trevor McDonald Death Row program last week? I have always been against the death penalty, but the fella who said he wanted to rape a woman, but then chose to murder her and her 4 year old, Trevor did have a point when he said, you can see why some people would favor it.
ReplyDeleteAnon @9.55
DeleteMurder in war is difficult to prove and usually legally sanctioned. Harry did not admit murder.
Re: Trev. That also suggests that two wrongs somehow make a right!!
If the purpose of the ultimate sanction is to deter others, it still doesn't work, (Texas would have the lowest homicide rate in the US if that was the case).
Chuck
I meant killing someone in war is usually legally sanctioned. Murder in war however is another kettle of fish.
DeleteChuck
Horrible crimes - and that was skin crawling - do recolt us and there can be an instinctive reaction to expunge that person from our consciousness by the means of execution. There may be an instinctive reaction to hurt those who hurt us....but it doesn't follow that such instincts are either useful to society as a whole nor that they should be translated into public policy.
Delete"Why add harm to the harm already committed?"
ReplyDeletePresumably by " harm" you mean the harm caused by the denial of some human needs that are caused by imprisonment?
How could society continue to function if that principle was applied across the board? Would we let predatory paedophiles continue to prey on children in case we harm them by locking them up? Terrorists? Etc etc etc...
Human needs do exist, but so does personal responsibility for living within societal bounds of acceptable norms of behaviour; once you decide to cross that rubicon your claim to human needs becomes less legitimate than that of those who don't cross the line.
Inner vision
IV,
DeleteI understand where you are coming from but one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. You mention deciding to step over the societal bounds of acceptable norms and behaviour, (a classical stance that insists everyone in society is equal and therefore all are equal in their decision making process). I (and many others) would suggest that this is not usually the case. The vast majority of serious violent crime is not a product of a rational decision. Rather, it can be expressive and impulsive, based on the moment and the situation. Therefore in any just society, human needs should not be relinquished entirely, incarcerated or not.
Chuck
@ Chuck
DeleteYou're quite right; of course human needs shouldn't be relinquished entirely whether incarcerated or not.
What I said was once the rubicon is crossed and imprisonment ensues ( regardless of the precursors to or reasons for the offence committed) that individual's claim to them being granted is less legitimate than the claim of those who don't cross that line.
It stands to reason that all 5 basic human needs as identified by Maslow et al are compromised by imprisonment, but that fact shouldn't be a reason to abolish prisons, otherwise where would we end up?? Probably living in a society that resembles Somalia where the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of the gun ( not Ben Gunn btw) and survival of the fittest is the norm, where everyone's human needs are compromised regardless of their actions.....
Inner vision
Both predatory paedophiles and terrorism can be controlled without imprisonment. Its a lzay answer society chooses to deal with difficult challenges.
DeleteCome on Ben; that's a really trite answer.. Who would ( or should) put up with someone like Huntley or Richard Reid living next door to them?
DeleteIV
Trite? What about the experience of Circles Of Support and Accountability dealing with high risk sex offenders in Canada?
DeleteIf Harold Shipmen gave you an antibiotic for an infection, would it be less of a cure?
ReplyDeleteThere is a worrying trend instigated by the Marxist-Feminists, to insist upon a principle to be backed up by a personality; whilst they simultaneously denigrate all men's 'opinions' as mere trifles, or worse. The Julian Assange case heroically exposed this trend of moral relativism.
If the views of men, and their principles, are ignored by the bigots of this new orthodoxy, then the alternative narrative of our democracy will come exclusively from the untouchable Nomenklatura presiding over the all governing bureaucracy.
I think Ben answers the question in his own post when he states: Why add harm to the harm already committed? It would be wrong to say it is purposeless to do so and to punish, but it is right to question the reason and sense of this.
ReplyDeleteI should have been clearer. I meant, why add the harm that is caused to the prisoner and society by imprisonment to the harm already caused by the crime itself?
ReplyDeleteBecause imprisonment adds nothing positive to an already bad situation. nothing. It reduces the criminals life to rubble, improves the victims lot not bone iota, and generally degrades society. That is the harm I meant.
If human needs are innate, then legitimate expectation doesn't come into it. People will struggle to fulfil them, and if prisons suppress them then conflict and "deviant" behaviour is inevitable. Not a clever system.
The issue of murder in war means a study of Just Cause and Just Means - its ferociously complicated, legally and morally.
ReplyDeleteTo my mind the issue is not whether Prince Harry committed murder – it would hardly be of the first degree if you consider the mind behind the act – but that the media seem to regard his killing as a rite of passage or a feather in his cap. I find this primitive attitude quite disgusting in the context of the precious debate about crime and just retribution.
DeleteIdeally, the harm caused by the crime has to be reflected in the harm imposed by society on the perpetrator, or the rule of law ends up meaning not very much that’s useful.
ReplyDeleteThe ideal is compromised enough already, without anyone arguing too strongly about fact that the perp during imprisonment will be harmed. Of course he will be harmed.
Much better to ensure that convictions are safe and punishments are reasonable, rather than undermining the whole endeavour by asking folks to focus on the harm done to the prisoner.
Strive for fairness and decency during charging, trial and subsequent punishment, of course….. but the fact that the prisoner will be harmed by his imprisonment cannot feature very highly in the crim justice equation, because that would be risible, offensive, wrong-headed, and just plain comic to just about everyone.
Your conception of "the rule of law" is confined to criminal justice. What of restorative justice?
ReplyDeleteWhy? I thought you were merely god like, not a god.... Are you now suggesting that you can restore life to your victim?
DeleteIf not, how could restorative justice work in cases such as yours? Unless if course you would propose an eye for an eye, in which case you wouldn't be blogging, you'd be dust as us your victim ......
Bored now....
DeleteNo, not bored... Just outmanoeuvred
DeleteNope. Just wondering why you bothered to troll when you could have explored restorative justice properly, rather than your silly version of it. Oh well, your loss to learn, just so you could take a cheap shot. Ho hum.
DeleteVery well; please explain how restorative justice could work in a murder case - how can justice be achieved, redemption achieved for the perpetrator, the desire for justice and/or vengeance be granted to the victims family etc... Over to you wise one.
DeleteNot a cheap shot, a serious question. And once you've glibly answered it please provided us with that pearl of wisdom please outline your realistic alternative to imprisonment in general, because all I see on this blog are numerous utterances from you proclaiming that prison doesn't work and is terribly damaging to all but not one single hint of a viable alternative
Um, restorative justice, Circles of Support and Accountability.... I could spoonfeed you, but to be honest we both know you could follow these up but aren't here for that are you? So, learn as you wish, or not. Bye.
DeleteSo no answer other than a deft sidestep to shift the emphasis of the debate away from your own intellectual bankruptcy? Quelle surprise!!!
DeleteOf course I'm aware of the principles of RJ and the very limited success of COSA in its very very limited settings, but as you point out I'm not here to be spoon fed, nor am I here to be force fed by a born again pseudo intellectual penologist.
What I am here for is to hear your suggestions for a viable alternative to imprisonment that provides justice, safeguards the public, provides a deterrent to criminality, maintains the human needs of those imprisoned and if possible turns water into wine. I suspect that you won't have a response, and that leads me to believe therefore that what we currently have is the least worse option....
Over to you
i would love top help you, but for two problems.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I discuss issues on my timetable, not yours. And more importantly, as a "pseudo intellectual penologist" then my words are not worth squat - so why bother?
Well ok Ben ... If you're here to discuss issues on your timescale, when might you discuss your alternatives to imprisonment with us? This week, this month? This year? ?
DeleteTo slip into prison vernacular for a moment all you seem to do is chat shit... You've got a hell of a lot to say about how wrong prison is, but based on the evidence put forward by you thus far, bugger all to offer in the way of improving things ...
Maybe your interlocutor at Exeter University would have bee better off asking you about your ideas for such improvements rather than asking you about the one subject you major in - how awfully cruel prison is!!!
as a "pseudo intellectual penologist" then my words are not worth squat - so why bother?
ReplyDelete1) because you know you want to
Delete2) because you love to have the last word
3) maybe there isn't a 3 because you really don't have an alternative ..... Oops!! The crowd are starting to see through the emperors new robes, in as much as when you were inside your observations about the privations and quirks of prison life were informative and occasionally amusing. Now you're out here amongst us all you've got nothing of relevance and certainly nothing original to say about prison.
Or have you?
Sorry, I'd entertain your questions if you were genuine but you're just a spiteful little troll.
ReplyDeleteI daresay you will keep returning to the blog you dismiss and spit bile at, which is an oddly fascinating insight into your psychopatghology.
PS - note the change I made to the subtitle of the blog on release? And the Google stats? No....?
Goodnight all.
Dogs don't spit, Ben, they dribble....
DeleteThanks for posting up the reference to Circles, Ben. I wasn't aware of this scheme and I've just spent some time digging up information about them. It's fascinating. I think initiatives such as this could be the future.
DeleteIt seems that anonymous had a bee in his her bonnet about the author of the blog, but the questions he or she posed are valid ones and are completely salient with regard to your espoused position as a campaigner/reformer Ben.
DeleteWhich I suppose begs the $64000 question - can you suggest a workable alternative to imprisonment?
It's s question that's stymied me for the past 30 odd years and I'm still bereft of ideas!!
As last nights angry person says " over to you"
Inner vision
IV,
DeleteIf I may, I'd like to contribute to this as the idea of prison abolition fascinates me. In response to your comments, first you have to ask: do we need an alternative? I suspect you are thinking in institutionalised terms, which is why you ask Ben to provide an 'alternative' to prison, whereas a more constructive response to bad and anti-social behaviour might take a completely 'de-institutionalised' form.
Circles are perhaps a nascent example of this: the community itself addresses anti-social behaviour (in which case, it's sex offenders only but the idea could easily be expanded to other types of offences). These Circles operate with an element of institutionalisation in that it seems offenders undertake to work with a Circle under conditions of probation and so have the ever-present threat of re-incarceration should there be concerns about their attitude, conduct or response, nevertheless it's not difficult to see how the idea could develop into a variety of full and incomplete 'alternatives' to incarceration.
Perhaps the question should be: What's the workable alternative to 'the form' of imprisonment that we currently have (and is clearly not working) now....
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteYes Darby, and I'm completely with you in that there are carceral alternatives that are less destructive than prison - for instance, many jurisdictions use home curfew far more than we do for non-violent criminals. But I would still look at this slightly differently in I am also referring to the concept of 'deinstitutionalisation', which I think takes us beyond the carceral mentality into 'alternatives' that in fact remove the concept of prison entirely from our vocabulary.
DeleteInteresting, but I can't envisage there never being a need for imprisonment for some types of criminals.. Furthermore I wouldn't want to!! Imagine if those who have been convicted of the most heinous vile crimes were allowed to retain their place in society, anarchy would ensue pretty quickly I think
DeleteInner vision
The idea of creating a "better" prison doesn't hold my attention in the sense that - by definition - prisons merely increase the sum of human and social harm. The best that could be achieved is to minimize that harm, but it is structurally embedded in the very idea of prison.
ReplyDeleteThe experience of Circles demonstrates that very high risk people can be dealt with in the community; and the experience of restorative justice shows that there can be an effective response to crime that doesn't increase social harm. Together, these suggest that there are responses to crime that don't require prison.
Inner Vision, if you just don't want to envisage a non prison based response, or believe it will lead to anarchy, then I suggest you look around and open your mind. Or there is no debate here with you.
So it's your way or the highway? That's not how debates work Ben.
ReplyDeleteThat aside, what I said was that I wouldn't want to envisage a non custodial based system for some types of prisoners; you have to accept that some - not many, but nevertheless some - offenders are too dangerous to be allowed a place in society, and if they were allowed to live within society ie not imprisoned then society would deal with them ruthlessly, hence my point about anarchy
Inner vision
Why can't you resist the urge to be mendacious? And then you wonder why I characterise prison managers in certain ways.... There can be no debate because you don't want to envisage a solution other than prison. That's your drawing a line under debate, not I, but in your nasty HMPS way you just had to spin it differently.
DeleteAnd your factually wrong. In Canada high risk sex offenders in Circles were both protected from the community and the community protected from them. I've raised Circles often enough for you to maybe take the effort to Google, but you chose not to and come out with ill-informed statements.
So, as high risk individuals can be kept in the community safely, are you now able to consider a non-prison solution to crime, or are you resistant on principle?
Robert Maudsley, Colin Ireland, Denis Neilson, David Copeland, Ian Huntley, Roy Whiting etc etc etc
DeleteI'm not being mendacious,; nothing I said in my post was nasty or had a HMPS twist on it, all I said was that some offenders crimes are so heinous that they are rightfully excluded from society.
I had previously agreed that prison in and if itself is a damaging concept that does indeed harm prisoners and certainly impacts adversely on their human needs, but am arguing that in some cases it is a necessary evil that there probably isn't a viable alternative to.
Now which part of this post will you take exception to ? It's content, it's author or both?
Furthermore, I'd be obliged if your could inject a little less condescension in your reply than you did in your previous response, that's assuming that you do deign to respond.... Debate? An exchange of viewpoints and arguments. Edict? Whatever Ben says!!
Inner vision
Stop it. Just stop. You said that you don't want to envisage a non-prison solution, which kills the debate. Then accuse me of only debating on my terms. In the screwed-up world of prison staff thinking that makes sense. But to the rest of us, its nonsence and mendacious.
DeleteI want you to pick a position and stick to it. In one post you argue that high risk offenders cannot be safely held in the community, which is why you favour prison. Now you seem to be saying that they should be in prison on principle. Please indicate which stance you adopt, because the former continues the debate whilst the latter doesn't allow for it.
You want to debate, good. Then when were discussing alternatives to prison don't post comments saying that you refuse to envisage it.
Now, just what is your position?
I never said that they should be in prison solely on principle; I said that their crimes are so heinous that they should be excluded from society. I also said that society wouldn't tolerate their presence, and I said that society should be protected from prisoners.
DeleteThat's why I said that I couldn't envisage an alternative to imprisonment that would be viable in all cases.
Is that clear enough?
Inner vision
PS great spat you're having with the anonymous below. Maybe he/she does have a point about your low tolerance of dissent?
No, he just doesn't seem capable of posting sans personal jibes. That's not dissent, its Trolling.
DeleteI remain confused by your position. Are you saying "that their crimes are so heinous that they should be excluded from society", that is, on principle? Or that it would be too dangerous in practice not to imprison them?
Aaah ... We're getting there; I'm saying that in a minority of cases BOTH apply!!!
DeleteInner vision
Ah, thanks, now I see where you're coming from.
DeleteBut doesn't that - in some cases - preclude debate about alternatives to imprisonment? Which leaves us where we came in, believe.
And to what end are these people who, lets say, could be dealt with in the community then held in prison? Why?
I don't make the rules Ben; society does!
DeleteOf course I believe that there are thousands of people in prison who could be safely managed in the community, as I equally believe that three are many people who are in prison and damned well ought to be.
Where I differ from you is that I can't see an alternative to prison that would work in the case of those who are exceptionally dangerous or those whom society simply would not tolerate in their midst.
Inner vision
Here's my problem with that. The Canadian experience with high risk sex offenders shows that dangerous people can be kept safely in the community.
DeleteHigh risk prisoners cannot be kept in the community safely ---cos they're high risk.
ReplyDeleteBen’s an expert on being imprisoned, but there is evidence throughout his blog that he’s not an expert on anything more general than his own confinement.
The die-hard fans here hope he is, he himself seems to hope so too ---but oh dear! When engaged he resorts to flinging a few of his favourite intellectual labels at the offender…then if dissenter doesn’t shuffle away, it’ll be implied that he’s thick and/or intellectually too lazy to keep up with Ben etc etc. And now we have mendacious dished up out of nowhere, too. (lol)
More dissent than that, has Ben disappearing.
There is lively dissent here all right. But that’s a problem only for Ben and the groupies….not for everyone else.
A bit more sparkle and intellectual broad-mindedness from Ben would be the solution… Although I can’t say it’s totally boring to see him aggressively dissing and flouncing, it is all a bit blood sportish.
God - your just so bloody repetitive and boring! Goodbye.
DeleteAs a matter of fact, to aid the debate, I should point out that high risk offenders can - and have - been dealt with safely in the community.
DeleteI refer you to the Canadian experience of Circles of Support and Accountability which protected high risk sex offenders from the community, and protected the community from them.
In the UK the legal framework of Circles is different and they are not permitted to deal with the higher risk criminals.
Circles 'reduce' the risk of repeat offending, but that's not good enough. Do you really believe Ian Huntley could be safely managed in 'the community' (newsflash: there is no such thing as a communiy - there are men, and women, and children, and families. Ask the Chapman and Wells families how they'd feel of Mr H were to be released into some Mickey Mouse arrangement. Children's rights are paramount, and far outweigh the rights of those who rape, kill and desecrate them.
DeleteYes, high risk sexual predators can - and have been - safely managed in the community. The word "community" implies an aggregate of those individuals who comprise that community - men, women , children. The families of the victims you mentioned won't want those men in the community under any circumstances, but I say that they - and other victims - should not allow personal views to warp the criminal justice system.
DeleteEverybody's rights are paramount.
yes……. as soon as anyone persists in trying to get more out of Ben intellectually than an exchange of labels ------- he’s off (usually in a flurry of ad hominem).
ReplyDeletev poor show
Yawn...... Must go watch paint dry. Has more variety than your comments.
DeleteIf you want to engage, feel free to be civil and abandon the ad hominem jibes.. Until then, you fall under the label of Troll.
And one weirdly obsessed with a guy you obviously dislike. Nurse!
What can one say?
ReplyDeleteYou're outa your depth, kid. Don't worry about it. Life's like that.
That's the funny bit - I'm doing really fantastically well! And it's really, really, pissing you off, isn't it? :) Which is why you continue to return with your jibes - that's all you've got.
DeleteEven funnier - If I'm of no consequence, why do I sooooo get under your skin?
Please keep it up. Loving the attention :) :) :)
Whenever I pick a row over on Twitter with some of the madder obsessives, one of my Followers sends me a picture. The caption is, "Don't feed the haters. You are not the Fuckwit whisperer." Just saying....
DeleteNot at all! I wish you well.
ReplyDeleteJust because someone doesn't express admiration for everything you try to do, doesn't (without more) constitute 'jibery', now does it?
I've been here when Inner Vision and Jim Brown have manfully tried to get more out of you than (to me) you seem to have.
You haven't reacted well, to say the least.
In the interests of avoiding confusion and promotion of fair labelling ----I am Geoff from now on.
and no one has said you're of no consequence, except yourself. And therein lies the problem, maybe.
Ah, free psychoanalysis as well.
DeleteI don't ever ask for admiration. Follow me for minutes on Twitter and you will see that. It is a characterisation of me you have created, not one I have required. When people agree, I can get bored very, very quickly.
Disagree all you like. People often do. But what you do is lace your comments with spiteful jibes, all personal and unrelated to the thread. That is the definition of trolling.
Should you post comments that are bereft of bile then I will treat them like any other and respond as my whim takes me. Until then, Geoff, you are a Troll.
All the above is confusing!! At last an Anonymous has given a name - any name will do - helps the likes of me keep track of the comments. I have always tended to ignore the Anonymous comments being unable to understand why someone could not make up a name just to accept responsibility for their own comments and to clarify for the rest of us how many people are commenting.
DeleteReally dislike the comments that are personal and rude to both Ben and others - surely we each can be civil, polite and knowledgeable about what one wants to comment about. In my view Ben's comments are his and we are invited to respond to them if we want - this can be done courteously and with respect without resorting to some of the sarcasm etc as above.
Incidentally to this particular blog - remember the Indeterminate sentence - well I know personally of several people who received a less than 18 months tariff and are still in prison 6 years beyond the 18 months. These people must be able to be managed safely in the community - but am not hearing an outcry from anyone about the injustice of that. Of course, some prisoners could be managed by a properly run probation/community service without putting the public at serious risk. Open your hearts to this and look seriously at other ways of managing people that does no further harm. Circles are a wonderful group and their aims and philosophies could be used more extensively.
Ben: Pot. Kettle. Black. From an outsider's perspective, and one who wish you every success, I have to tell you it's you who keep throwing your toys out the pram. None of the above commenters are trolls, but you know that already. And they have tried very hard to engage you in a serious debate, while you've been evasive, insulting and repetitive. It isn't wholly your fault that you are out of your depth, but you are. And you don't even seem able to comprehend how bizarre and offensive your responses are.
DeleteYour pet scheme for managing high risk offenders is insanely risky; What's to stop a paedophile pretend he wants to join a 'circle',just so they can get out and hunt up more victims? What's to stop him finding a likeminded chum in the community so they can join forces and hunt in their own little pack? Is it worth sacrificing even one child to achieve a better life for criminals? If you do think that, you truly have no clue whatsoever. Your integrity is dead in the water, and you are a very dangerous man.
Um, have you read the comments littered with snide personal jibes? No? Or you just don't see them? I respond to people as they talk to me - personal digs are responded to with contempt. If I offend you - tough. The drive to avoid leaving anyone feeling offended is the kiss of death to debate and progress.
DeleteMy "pet scheme" has a proven track record, which just a few moments Googling would have shown you. You've chosen not to inform yourself, yet feel free to pile into the debate. Interesting.
Your last sentence leaves me feeling rather sad, frustrated, and to be frank disinclined to disentangle your comment to form a longer response. You may not like the Circles idea, but to know nothing about it and then question my integrity and call me dangerous is a personal comment that leaves me.....disengaged.
And if you really, really want to protect children - take them away from their homes, where the friends and family who will most often kill them live. Because for every Huntley, there is a hundred nasty uncles, mothers and daddies who kill their kids.
Oh well then!
ReplyDeleteI never said that they should be in prison solely on principle; I said that their crimes are so heinous that they should be excluded from society. I also said that society wouldn't tolerate their presence, and I said that society should be protected from prisoners.
DeleteThat's why I said that I couldn't envisage an alternative to imprisonment that would be viable in all cases.
Is that clear enough?
Inner vision
PS great spat you're having with Geoff . Maybe he/she does have a point about your low tolerance of dissent?
My tolerance for debate is endless. My tolerance for personal jibes in every comment engages me far less. Pity you cannot see the difference.
ReplyDeleteI am still unclear about your position, because you seem to be saying some people should be in prison due to the heinous nature of their crimes; and also that people sometimes need to be there in terms of practicality - ie, that they cannot be dealt with in the community safely.
A question may clarify, if you could indulge me a little further. If the people who committed horrible crimes could, in principle, be dealt with safely in the community then would you accept that? Or would you still insist they remained in prison?
Look at it from another angle.. Lets say we put a notorious child killer in the community and he or she then gets killed by some kind of vigilantism or revenge attack has society been served better or worse than if that person had been left in prison despite the fact that imprisonment had impinged on their human needs?
DeleteWhat I'm saying is that a principled argument about this is irrelevant because as long as we have a society we will have acceptable norms if behaviour which will be enshrined in laws etc, and as long as we have laws we will have transgressors, as long as we have both if these elements we will have sanctions of some sort or another, the ultimate sanction in this country is imprisonment and no I can't see any alternative that could ever totally replace it
Inner vision
But such offenders can, and have been, handled in the community, including notorious child killers. As a matter of practicality, it is possible.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, would you sanction it, or still insist on prison? And why?
You started this post by arguing that prison adds harm and related that harm to human needs theory, if someone of such high risk was being managed in the community then in order to safeguard the community ( which I think would be impossible in some cases) then their relative freedoms would have to be so severely curtailed that their human needs - especially self actuation - would be as equally harmed as they would if that person was actually in prison IMO.
ReplyDeleteTherefore I suppose that I'd argue ( as a member if society, not as a HMPS manager) in favour of the imprisonment option.
But as well as that there's a bigger debate lying just beneath this one; Sykes states that prison serves 3 main purposes, reparation, deterrence and retribution, although I think that there are many more.
Have you considered the fact that perhaps a large proportion if society actually favours imprisonment as our chosen form of punishment? God knows it was a long journey to get to here from public hangings and quarterings and transportations etc . Maybe what we have is the best that we are going to get ?
Inner vision
IV,
ReplyDeleteYou suggest prisons might enjoy popular assent. Prisons can be seen as democratic institutions in the narrow sense that they offer an antithesis to a rights-based civil society. Most people (including yourself) see (or conceive of) prison as a suitable environment of punishment because in prison the civil society is subverted and rights are deprived. So, in a sense, prison is as much an ideological construction as anything else. In our case, prison is a construction of a democratic society. Whereas in the Middle Ages to Early Modern Period the ideological construction of punishment was corporal in nature due to the heavy importance of religion in the way people conceived of society, from the Industrial Era onwards there was a gradual need to develop a 'mass' system of punishment more suitable to urban 'democratic' populations. So instead of attacking the individual's corporal integrity, punishment became a matter of attacking the individual's civic integrity, if you see what I mean.
Five hundred years ago, if a group of us had got together and started debating public flogging for stealing apples, you'd be saying: "But Ben, the public want public flogging and Lord knows it was a long journey to get to here from hot iron branding and the rack, etc. Maybe public flogging is the best we are going to get?"
The truth is that prison is a modern invention - and I mean Modern. It is just an invented punishment to suit a particular era that has now gone. The choice we have is either to stop warehousing criminals and go back to an era of austere prison regimes with shorter sentences but tougher conditions OR we recognise prison is a largely outdated solution and we look at alternatives. Of course, you are right to point out that there may always be a small minority of offenders who have to be detained. No rational person in this type of debate would deny you are right about that. But then, what are we debating IV? If you acknowledge there is a solution for everyone else, then the only controversy we are left with is of relatively minor importance: i.e. what to do with a small hardcore of about 30 evil people plus some particularly nasty paedophiles. Ben says we need not lock up even those people. I agree, you don't, but we can all agree that we MIGHT have to detain such people in some way, so there's a risk here that we are just going to fall into semantics. I suppose the only other constructive thing that could be said about this is that you can only really get to a 'post-carceral' system by creating a 'post-carceral society'. That observation risks being labelled trite, but I think it is fundamentally true. The real problem here is that society itself is a prison and the prisons are just 'prisons within a prison'.
What strikes me about this discussion is how we have, in Ben Gunn, someone who is perfectly reasonable, moderate and intelligent, and therefore living proof that even someone convicted of the worst crime can lead a responsible life. That kind of demolishes the prison argument doesn't it? I mean, why could Ben not have been released 30 years ago? In fact, why is it, IV, that you think locking-up is a solution to people who have done harm to other people?
@ TT Rogers
ReplyDeleteThat was an astonishingly well written and informative post .. Until the last paragraph!! Lol
Ill reflect on all that you've said; it has intrigued me and has got my old cogs whirring, on the surface I think you might be right!
As for the last paragraph, you're wrong to assume that I think locking people up is a panacea; I've never said that, and certainly don't think that Ben needed to be detained for as long as he was, but that's a whole new topic!!
Thanks for considering what I posted.
Inner vision
IV,
ReplyDeleteI'm not claiming that you have asserted prison as a panacea. No serious person would suggest it is, and I know you haven't. I used the term 'solution', which has a similar but not quite the same meaning. What I am asking - and I happen to think this is the central question you need to answer - is why you think locking people up is a solution to persons who cause harm to other persons? That is the one question you need to answer above all others.
In a sense, that question goes back to Ben's distinction earlier between prison as a utilitarian or expedient solution for risk on the one hand and on the other prison as a satisfaction of principled attitudes to wrong-doing. I would suggest that, of the two, the latter holds greater sway in the public mind. Think about it: no-one seriously thinks we need to keep murderers, rapists and apple thieves locked-up for their whole natural lives, otherwise why is Ben on the loose? And if we can release Ben, then why not Ian Brady, say, or Peter Sutcliffe? I am not suggesting the cases are the same - that would be naive - but what is the principled difference in terms of this debate? What do you think locking Ben up for 32 years solved? Why is it a solution?
The simple answer to your first question is that if you lock up someone who causes harm to others you reduce the risk that he or she may do so again whilst locked up .. I know that you will immediately suggest that they may continue to inflict harm whilst in custody onto other prisoners or staff but that risk can be mitigated far more effectively in a controlled environment than it could if that person had not been removed from society ..
DeleteInner vision
As for the second part of your post, this is where we get into subjective territory. Of course some people do think that murderers rapists and apple thieves should be locked away for ever!! Ok, most of them read the Daily Mail and also have probably never had any contact with an apple thief let alone any other offender, but their opinions are as relevant as yours mine or Bens and they hold the right to have an opinion by dint of being members if our society just as we are.
DeleteAs far as the very last point goes, I suspect that you're being fatuous just because you can.. Despite the fact that Brady and Sutcliffe are actually patients and not prisoners are you really suggesting that they could be released into society and pose no risk?
Inner vision
IV,
DeleteYour reply at 9.34 p.m. seems a slightly confused to me, almost as if you're debating the question with yourself. I asked you what does prison solve. You reply by saying that it stops criminals causing harm to others, yet in the same breath you acknowledge that in fact this is not necessarily the case because prisoners may inflict harm while in custody - and of course, we all know that many do.
Of course, I will not be silly about this and try and suggest that prison does not provide some relief against violence and bad behaviour in society by locking certain people up. Clearly it does and it would be silly of me to deny this, but equally it would be wrong to pretend that prison can offer a long-term solution to this given that the violence or bad behaviour continues in prison and then (in about 70% of cases currently) outside prison when the ex-criminal goes back into society. Not much of a solution, is it?
Finally, you also talk of prison as a 'controlled environment'. I see no reason why most criminals could not be managed in controlled environments in the community. Do you? Why do we still need prisons - a Victorian institution - to do this? The workplace is a controlled environment. A family is a controlled environment. A social club is a controlled environment. Perhaps the best way to 'rehabilitate' and reform a criminal is to help him find love, respect and discipline in the community he already knows with the help of friends and family, and perhaps volunteers, who are willing to give him remonstration and support. Why should the state do it, at taxpayers' expense, and in a cruel setting that will leave the individual psychologically-damaged, humiliated and resentful?
By the way, if anyone wants an excuse to punch their computer screen, then follow the link below and watch a bunch of irritating, immature, smug, self-satisfied, neo-Blairite half-wits explain their job warehousing society's rejects:-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.justice.gov.uk/jobs/prisons/on-offer/graduate-programme/prison-environment/prison-leader-profiles
My favourite is the idiotic woman who keeps shifting her feet and spouting inanities like an arts and crafts student at a pot party.
This is all very well, TT, but what about the elephant in the room (punishment)? People being people, and only human, do require to see some sort of proportionate quid pro quo at the end of whatever balancing exercise society indulges in when imposing ‘justice’ on the individual transgressor. I think that we all sign up to a sort of implicit contract with society at birth…for mutual protection. To that extent society is a prison. But a benign one. Some people decide that life for them is better by not adhering to their side of the contract. Some of them cause very very serious harm. Some don’t. Those that do, must be seen to be punished. Harm needs to befall them. This wouldn’t be satisfied by the heroin dealer, robber, rapist, killer, et al being seen to be out and about almost as usual! A minimalist approach to criminalisation itself is obviously good. But a too-minimalist approach to punishment would encounter difficulty when folks in general began to see perps not being suitably banged up.
ReplyDeleteyes Foucault is a good read re just how and why punishment has evolved. But I noticed that some degree of corporeality has ALWAYS been required by one’s fellow citizens when it comes to punishment. From grossly overt violations of the body (amputation….branding …whipping etc etc), to the less obvious today (where we can recognise a holistic approach to the understanding of this sort of thing). For today’s imprisonment is very much an assault on the mind-body duality, just as has always been required by society for the purposes of punishment. That has not changed. And to not imprison for the serious offences won’t cut it, I’m afraid. At least not for the vast majority of society. People nowadays, just as did their ancestors, need to see a physical punishment. That, these days, is imprisonment (and imprisonment will never go away…unless and until there is a regression to the physical punishments of the obviously gross kind).
So, to my mind, there has to be a detriment for the serious perp, and that detriment has to be physical ---because that imperative for the physical hasn’t changed. History says so, rather than the opposite. Despite Foucault. Imprisonment satisfies this. Treatment in the community doesn’t.
How else to explain the apparent race to the bottom in Stateside practice. The bottom is 'everyone', and they're just more open about it over there. Maybe.
Don’t blame me, it’s society lol.
geoff
Where's Ben gone? Where's Darby? Where's Jill, or Sophie or Fenrir???
DeleteThink they've all bottled it and ran away cos TT and IV and Geoff have the floor and are displaying more intellect than they've all got between them !!!
Pmsl
Sorry to disappoint - Fenrir has been abroad, working.
DeleteI have one issue with the Prison Punishment brigade - the number of people that do not understand that it is prison, the lack of liberty, that is the only punishment. The idea that prisoners should have to work for nothing, or next to nothing, should have to pay for their bed and board, should be denied access to facilities, the vote, the media, etc is clearly all to do with punishment, and all wrong.
Moreover, the elephant in the prison, so to speak, is not the lifers, the IPP's, the long termers,. the high risk and the dangerous. No, the elephant in the room is the 20,000 people held in prison on remand, of whom half, statistically, are going to either be found not guilty or be given an effectively non-custodial sentence.
Regardless of how many prison spaces are needed for the mad, bad and dangerous to know, the system wastes over 9000 spaces a day, on average, by jailing innocent men, and subjecting them to the same punishment as the guilty.
So, when considering the "detriment to the perp" consider that Prison has never been used just for that - it's a place to warehouse the inconvenient truth, that some people are not satisfied to be subdued by society's rules, and some people are not considered welcome in society because of what it is claimed they did, even when it is proven they didn't.
And as to the time Ben did over tariff - I am firmly of the view that he was fitted up for Murder from the start, and that Manslaughter was the appropriate charge. After all, Venables only did 8 years before parole for a sadistic, pre-planned killing.
Your point about prisoners held on remand is disingenuous to say the least...
DeleteMost remand prisoners are remanded because they have previously offended whilst on bail, or on license from previous sentences, or previously breached non custodial sentences, attempted to interfere with witnesses victims and attempted to subvert forthcoming trials . A significant number are remanded because they pose a real risk of flight etc etc
Geoff,
DeleteI like that little touch at the end of "Don't blame me, it's society". Droll.
I accept the internal logic of your observations: the criminal justice system acts as a displaced form of retribution, ensuring that the community-at-large does not seek revenge of its own (a baser form of retribution) against criminals. OK, fine, but I think this overstates the case for punishment. It's really an attempt to rationalise doing something that would otherwise serve no constructive purpose. Sort of like flogging a dead horse. "Hey Percy, why are you flogging the apple scrumper?" "So that the villagers don't flog him." It's a queer idea, but through centuries of practice (most of it enforced), it has gained currency and its own internal logic, even the imprimatur of academic respectability.
Do people really want punishment as much as you think they do? I suspect the old trope that most people have reactionary views is not really very accurate, but in any case, I think we need to start by acknowledging that those very few cases that excite the strongest emotions, such as the Ian Bradys or the Fred Wests, are unhelpful to this discussion. At a deep (probably primeaval) level, nearly-all of us struggle with our emotions over such cases, and nearly-all of us accept that, even in a non-carceral society, such people would have to be subject to significant restraints on their liberty, in fact most probably some form of close detention that resembles today's prisons.
It's also probably not very useful in this discussion to occupy ourselves with non-violent criminals and suspects on remand for such offences. Even the die-hards who believe that non-violent criminals should be locked-up would probably acknowledge in an honest debate that there is considerable slippage in the concept of incarceration as it applies to people who are not a physical threat in society. It becomes harder to justify imprisoning, say, people who have committed frauds, especially if imprisonment prevents them from restituting their victims.
The real issue here, I think, is how society responds to people who are a physical threat to others or who have caused physical harm to others: typically, murderers and those who commit other homicides, rapists, paedophiles, terrorists, armed robbers, burglars, people who commit serious assaults, and those suspected of such offences.
When looking at such criminals, the assumption is that prison should be the default punishment, and barring strong or exceptional mitigation, an immediate sentence of imprisonment is the only sensible option. My question is: what is such a sentence meant to solve? Note: I am not asking why such a sentence might be imposed, a subtly different question, and a question we can all speculate on forever without moving forward. What I am asking is what does prison solve?
My suspicion is that this question is unanswerable in any coherent sense because prison actually solves nothing. The truth is almost given away by Geoff. In his post, he comes very close to telling us this by explaining that an important reason for incarceration is the quid pro quo of principled retribution. That we still have these vile establishments is not because they serve any constructive purpose, but because people want prisoners to be punished.
@Anon 10.36pm, we came so close to a discussion that avoided petty jibes. And then you just couldn't contain yourself. Read and learn....
DeleteI am here; just have little of use to add. Reading, though. To be honest, it's just set me off on a train of thought along the lines of the coming and so-called biological hurricane. I think the future debate (albeit some time off yet) will be on what actually constitutes criminal responsibility in a society (difficult to imagine) whose self-knowledge is based on a fundamentally different understanding of the extent of free will. So I'd only go off-topic anyway. Sorry, Anonymous!
DeleteAnon, 10.36: Where's Ben?
ReplyDeleteBen left you to talk amongst yourselves whilst we went to the pictures to see Lincoln!
Ed.
Welcome back, Ben - you wouldn't mind posting-up a review of the film at some point, would you? I'd like to know whether I should bother to go and see it.
DeleteIt's a good film, Lisa any I went to see it earlier (Orange Wednesdays).
DeleteI think it's karma that we both watched Lincoln IN Lincoln tonight :-)
Anonymous 10:36 PM
ReplyDeleteI never claimed to be an intellect....just an ex-inmate!
So, whilst I was away at the pictures, it seems to have been settled that there are potential alternatives to imprisonment, but that they are probably unacceptable socially and politically.
ReplyDeleteWhich shifts the debate somewhat, doesn't it? From why we use prison, to why don't we consider the alternatives? It isn't that "criminal justice" is hard-wired into our psychology, because - as has been pointed out - AngloSaxon justice was more restorative than anything else. The present obsession with retribution (pointless or not) is a historical blip in the progress of human society.
For me, then, the issue becomes one of not only highlighting the sheer wastefulness and stupidity of prison but also arguing for the alternatives.
That's the rest of my life sorted then.....
And Lincoln....if you like politics, its great. If you don't, you will wither and die in your seat.
Ah, well Ben I'm a junkie for politics so I suppose I'll go see it.
DeleteI can't dispute your other comments. It seems to me that none of the apologists for the prison system are able to tell us what prison solves.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteNO fecking spam! Grrrrr.
Delete