Which is more effective - punishment by imprisonment or with in the community?

Created by: 266648

WHICH IS MORE EFFECTIVE – PUNISHMENT BY IMPRISOMENT OR WITHIN THE COMMUNITY?

Student Number: 266648

The National Probation Service is an organisation within the criminal justice system that works with offenders on and before their release from prison and also as a monitoring service for offenders who have not been given a custodial sentence. The roots of the probation service go back to the nineteenth century where clergy members took responsibility for young offenders to prevent them entering the prison system. Many changes have been made over the years, moving from the ‘advise, assist and befriend’ notion to the present day position of enforcement.

Prison has an important role to play in protecting the community against the most dangerous offenders and in punishing the most serious crimes. But research and experience have shown the many disadvantages of over using imprisonment. Imprisonment can harm the chances people have to make amends and fulfil their potential as citizens when released back into the community. By definition prison limits the opportunities people have to contribute to civil society and democratic life. In theory, prison could provide its captive audience with decent education, training and employment opportunities. With one or two notable exceptions in the form of resettlement prisons, such opportunities are not provided on anything like the scale required. Most prisoners therefore leave prison no better equipped to fit into society than when they entered it. Some leave a good deal worse off.

In the literature on effectiveness, community based programmes have shown more positive results than custody based ones. Drug problems, problems with employment, accommodation and finances are all linked to reconviction. These are much more likely to be resolved through casework, treatment or other assistance in the community than through what is often the experience of being warehoused in a prison.

It is common sense that the only guarantee of protecting the community from an offender during the period of a sentence is a custodial sentence. It has been calculated that over a quarter of offenders serving Community Sentences will have re-offended at least once by the time an offender has served an average length sentence. The majority of offences are minor ones.

For offenders who present a risk of serious harm, prison is quite properly used. Prison provides absolute protection from an individual only for the duration of the sentence. This will not always mean protection from crime. It was suggested to the Home Affairs Select Committee in 1998 that demands for drugs from people inside prison results in crime outside.

The Home Office collects information on serious offences allegedly committed by offenders under supervision by the Probation service. In 2000, among those serving community sentences 103 convictions for very serious crimes were reported-about one in sixteen hundred of those starting sentences in that year.

Community Supervision may provide better longer- term protection. If prison has not done anything to change offending behaviour, it cannot be said in the long term, to protect the public. If Community Sentences are effective at weaning offenders away from a criminal lifestyle, they may, in many cases offer the most effective long-term protection ...

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It has been shown that even allowing for selection effects, prisoners released early under parole supervision are reconvicted less than those serving the whole sentence.

Some community sentences offer more intensive supervision than others. Probation hostels can offer 24 hour monitoring at 50-66%% of the cost of prison. There are just over 100 hostels providing 2,200 places.

There are four main types of community sentence: Community Rehabilitation orders, which involve close supervision by an officer and are tailored to included appropriate accredited programmes to help with particular problems or patterns of behaviour, Community Punishment – this is an alternative to imprisonment, which involves up to 240 hours of unpaid community work, a combination of these is a Community Punishment and Rehabilitation Order, and finally Drug Treatment and Testing Orders where the offender has a request in his order to receive treatment for a long standing drug dependence which necessitates criminal behaviours. In a Home Office press release on October 28th, an Enhanced Community Punishment Order was introduced which directly addresses anti-social behaviour, poor thinking skills and poor employment skills. Announcing this national roll out, Eithne Wallis, director general of the probation service said:

“Each year offenders have to do seven million hours of rigorous work for their community as their punishment. It is strictly applied and enforced. As well as being a tough punishment, it cuts crime. It gives offenders new skills that change anti-social behaviour, makes meaningful amends to local communities and is designed to reduce re-offending by building on best practice and lessons learnt”

Community orders require a lot of dedication from the offender to actually succeed. If the offender misses two appointments, programmes or days at work, or breaches their drug treatment and testing order, occupational guidelines state the probation officer has to enforce the order and send them back to Court for reassessment, which could result in them being sent to prison instead. Community punishment makes demands on offenders’ time, makes specific expectations of engagement and behaviour backed up by breach. Rigorous community programmes can be more challenging and demanding than a short prison sentence where nothing is expected of the offender. National Standards set out the required frequency of contact between supervising officer and offender and action to be taken in cases of unacceptable failure to comply.

Many members of the public of course believe prisons to be the most effective form of punishment for offenders but the following are accounts from prisoners and offenders on community punishment. In the journal Criminal Justice Matters, an anonymous account was written by a UK prisoner serving five and a half years entitled Prison: A view from the inside. The next two quotes taken from this article help to demonstrate the hopelessness prisoners feel, what is missing from the system and highlights possible advantages to serving a community sentence.

“Prolonged prison makes future criminality more viable – detachment from social groups, institutionalisation, eroding of self-esteem all impact the already reduced alternatives of an ex-con”

“Beyond the punishment of prison, true reform depends on helping resolve personal problems, providing useful skills/training for real jobs and support beyond the gate… dumping offenders outside with everything lost and nothing to offer but a criminal record to employers only perpetuates crime”. (Pg 24 –25)

The program ‘Think First’ is just one of the accredited programmes run by the probation service provides an answer to many of the problems listed above. Working closely in groups, offenders are encouraged to learn problem solving skills and attitudes to become more effective members of the community, and giving them the opportunity to rehearse for real life situations. Many offenders will also have the chance to learn more practical skills through the supervised work they carry out as part of their sentence such as landscaping and gardening, painting and decorating and carpentry, which will stand them in better stead for finding work. Offenders are also helped to improve their basic skills – literacy and numeracy as part of the rehabilitation process.

Another telling article was published in April 2003 in The Observer newspaper. Paul Rossendale was on probation when he wrote his account of his life so far and experience of prisons:

“I was terrified when I first went to prison, but I got used to it. It wasn’t scary, it wasn’t a deterrent, it was just boring…As soon as I got out I went back to my old ways…. Sometimes I actually preferred being in prison. It’s just a way of life. You don’t have any responsibilities, everything is done for you”

“I (later) got 18 months probation to include a six month R&R programme. A lot of the time doing R&R I wished I was back in jail because that was a lot easier…it’s definitely not an easy ride at all”

“You get to see how the victim feels, and the chain of people your crime affects. There were twelve in the (R&R) group, but some breached their contracts and went back to prison, so the group went down to nine”

As James Maguire points out in his book What Works? Reducing Re-offending (1995) that community sentences operated according to certain principles will have a positive effect on recidivism, whereas those that have strong punitive elements can increase recidivism by some twenty five percent, and G McIvor (1992) found that Community Service resulted in lower reconviction rates if the offender had an understanding of the purpose of the work, had direct contact with the beneficiary and could acquire new skills.

The probation service is an integral part of the law enforcement community and should not be thought of as an opponent to the punishment system, rather an aide or collaborator. The Home Office say there is no discernible difference between reconviction rates for custody and community penalties. 56% of prisoners discharged from prison and commencing community penalties in 1995 were reconvicted within two years.

Reconviction rates do vary by type of order. 2-year rates for probation and combination orders were 59% and 60% respectively considerably higher than the 52% for community service. Reconviction rates for prisoners released after short sentences of up to 12 months were higher (60%) than those for longer-term prisoners.

Actual re-offending may be higher than that which is measured by reconviction rates. Crude measures of reconviction do not allow distinctions to be made between the seriousness of types of offence.

Some individual projects report markedly better rates. The Home Office Select Committee concluded that some evidence suggests that the most successful forms of community sentence can reduce re-offending more effectively than prison. Since then, the most effective community supervision programmes have been shown to reduce offending 15% more than a prison sentence. As has been demonstrated, community punishments are often just as ‘hard to do’ and sometimes harder as the offender is made to address their behaviour head on, rather than languishing in a prison cell surrounded by other offenders passing on their knowledge – a school of crime and disorder? So in response to the question of which is more effective – Imprisonment or Community Punishment the answer must be they are both as effective as each other depending on the individual offenders and their crime, because just as nobody fits in the same shoe, no one punishment can be the most effective solution for every offender, and people should be and are evaluated individually on conviction to ensure the best option for him or her is the sentence handed out.