Shaun Bailey: We must intervene early to stop re-offending

The public see prison as punishment, whereas professionals see it as rehabilitation. We need both
25 March 2014
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

As this paper reported yesterday, last year 554 offenders with at least 50 previous convictions walked out of prison and back on to London’s streets, only to re-offend. Our prison system is trapped in a cycle that is letting down the public, as well as those who, with the right support, would most likely not re-offend. Instead, they cost the nation around £13 billion annually. Something needs to change.

The public see prison as punishment, whereas professionals see it as rehabilitation. We need both. And there are three pillars that could halt the current cycle: prevention, education and hi-tech probation.

In terms of prevention, we need a youth criminal justice system that young people respect. This involves meaningful intervention early on that affects both the offenders and their parents directly.

My 25 years working alongside young people have shown me that most of them involved with the criminal justice system have no respect for it. Then prison, after being let off repeatedly, comes as a massive shock. But often their criminal career could have ended with their first brush with the law.

There needs to be more meaningful punishment for their first offence. Their first interaction with the justice system needs to be uncomfortable enough for them to not want to go anywhere near it again, but equally to leave their future unscathed in a way that the current system does not.

Next, education: we should be using custodial sentences to compel offenders to study and gain qualifications. This is the one time we have real leverage to make them learn. We should be asking providers such as the further education colleges to set up shop in prison. How can we motivate offenders to engage? Link it directly to length of sentence.

There has been much talk of the voluntary sector fulfilling a role in probation, but where they could also have an impact is in preparing prisoners for work. Many charities offer this support, such as the excellent SPEAR in Hammersmith.

A significant proportion of our prison population also suffers from mental health problems. If these issues are a significant factor in a person’s offending behaviour, this needs to be supported by appropriate professionals, not the police and probation system, and while these people are in prison.

Lastly, we need hi-tech probation. In London alone, the probation service supervises up to 45,000 people. We could get much more bang for our buck if we used smart tagging technology. The tags give better detection rates for those re-offending: they send an alert if a person is somewhere they are not meant to be.

Read More

As an experiment, I wore a smart tag for a week and showed it to many of the young people I was working with. Their resounding comment was that the tag would disrupt gang activity. If you’re wearing a tag, you can’t be anywhere near a gang. Imagine what this would mean for re-offending rates.

To those who ask how we would pay for all this, I would say that a short burst of investment up front to get these initiatives in place would be swiftly repaid in lowering re-offending costs. Someone once said, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. If that’s the case, we need to get tough with the criminal justice system.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in