The one profession to get results on recidivism has been sacrificed to Labour's desire to lock up criminals in private prisonsUK: Patrick Carter is one of Downing Street's thinkers. He was asked to work out a way of streamlining the prison system at a time when the population has reached a record 76,000 and is estimated to hit 93,000 by the end of the decade.
But ever since Downing Street published the Carter review on the new National Offender Management Service (Noms) last winter, the criminal justice community has searched in vain for the evidence base and the business case.
Carter proposed the merger of two professional cultures: prison, which warehouses criminals and probation, which works on how and why offenders offend. To cut custodial sentences he proposed a sentencing regime designed to keep less serious offenders in the community - a scheme expected to fail under pressure from the tabloids and, therefore, Downing Street itself.
Noms is based on an ethic of efficiency and competition, unburdened by professional judgment and public service. But what evidence supports Noms? Judy McKnight is the general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, a union whose members, unusually, address the life and times of their clients - criminals - as part of their professional politics, and she has been told that we are not allowed to know.
She asked the Open Government Unit to give the business case for this new monster agency. That was in January. It took until May and the Freedom of Information Act to get a reply. The Open Government Unit said, yes, Noms is controversial and, yes, data is available; but, no, she can't have it. Disclosure would "impinge on the space needed by the government to debate all relevant issues"; it would "lead to speculation on the way Noms is being established", and this could "lead to a decline in support for the policy".
That fear is no doubt cemented by scepticism in the Home Office which, according to leaks, is afraid that the £4bn merger of the two services "faces a high risk of failure". It gets worse. According to the Open Government Unit, disclosure could "jeopardise" Noms by undermining the confidence not only of staff but of the judiciary. "Such prejudice" would be "detrimental to the public interest." "Business cases" may be revised and rejected but must not be revealed, says the unit. Why? Because public debate would "compromise" the procurement programme.
Ah, so it might deter the private sector. Carter proposed simultaneous integration and fragmentation of prison and probation. Scotland had a public debate and preferred a collegial, multi-disciplinary model. But England got a three-week consultation - over Christmas - and a merger. Management of the mega corrections agency would be informed by technical rather than professional values, and would be open to "contestability" - Carter code for privatisation. This will bury the small but sometimes beautiful probation service, probably the most feminised of the criminal-justice professions, and one of the most successful, into the large and largely unsuccessful prison system.
Noms's mission is to reduce re-offending, but custody yields a 60% recidivism rate. And putting more and more people in prison actually puts public safety at risk, says Professor Michael Jacobson, New York's former chief probation officer. He has been in Britain this month arguing that, contrary to myth, the city's crime was cut in the 1990s not by prison but by community punishment and probation. So, why privatise probation, rather than focus on reforming the big but unsuccessful prison service? We are left to guess - and my guess is that the government's view of what works with offenders has become that nothing works, that criminals are part of a larger residuum with criminal tendencies, and if we can't make them earn a legal living wage, and we can't kill them, all we can do is control them. So, criminal justice replaces social justice.
What sponsors crime, the kind of crime that drives communities crazy, is a dangerous kind of knowledge because it tells us so much about what people do with power and powerlessness, what can change and what it costs to create change; and not least what it is about men's culture - most offenders being men - that connects them to cultures of crime. The government bankrolled a research programme on crime and punishment, but that unpublished review has not been allowed to enlighten public debate about the cultures and causes of crime, and the possibilities and limits of change. Not-knowingness encourages the prevailing prejudice that nothing works and therefore public safety can only be gained by curfew, control and containment: if we can't cut their hands off, or their willies, or their heads, then lock 'em up and throw away the key.
This is the orientation that lurks behind the preference for a managerial and technical - rather than professional and public-service - response to crime and punishment. This approach empties the debate of the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness, suggests Richard Garside, the director of the Crime and Society Foundation. Tagging can be done by anyone, Tesco or Group 4. Super-prisons, by the efficiency logic, are better value for money than smaller prisons, and Group 4 can do prison just as well as Her Majesty. Containment is less challenging than addressing offenders' circumstances, the cultures and causes of crime.
The profession associated with change rather than containment is, of course, probation. But it has been disdained as public-service and "soft", even though it has delivered the most creative and challenging work with offenders to reduce recidivism. Pessimism begets prison and privatisation, and that is why the business case - if it exists - must stay secret. But there is hope; the Home Office, after all, has a new, nice team in Charles Clarke, Fiona McTaggart and Baroness Scotland, all thinking people. It is to be hoped that they're not entirely persuaded by the pessimists.
By Beatrix Campbell posted 8 July 05
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