The Gazette 1974

be rejected and distorted, society's defects and shO TI ' comings can be hidden. Instead of trying to eradicate crime we should be satisfied to diminish the frequenC) of behaviour which is acknowledged as being partic"~ larly damaging to society. The irratIonal fear that rna~~ people have of crime and crimmals is not justified. t seems that many have a stereotyped picture of ~e criminal as being a maraudmg VIOlent person, lurk1l1g in the shadows, waiting to pounce on completely inn o' cent and unsuspecting bystanders. This is just not the case with the majority of criminals. Only about 17 per cent of the prisoners in 1971 were convicted of offen~s against the person. The offences which result in e greatest number of convictions are the property offe~c~ of simple larceny and housebreaking and shopbreak1ng· Only eight people were convicted of murder and ~aJl' slaughter in 1971. Furthermore, in many of these cnIJIe~ of violence the offender and the victims were previouS)) known to each other. Marvin Wolfgang in his PatterTl) of Criminal Homicide has pointed out that only 12 p~r cent of the homicides in his study of homicides IU Philadelphia were committed by strangers-and in ~e over two-thirds of them there was a pre-existing victl~: offender relationship. Rather similar findings were d~ closed in England by Gibson and Klein. 'f e President's Commission on Crime in the V.S.· points out that the risks of serious attack fro~ strangers in the street is only half as great a: the risk of such attacks from spouses, family rnefll bers and friends and that the closer the relationshIp th~ greater the hazard. Thirdly, as Nigel Walker poiOts out, "the anti-social use of vehicles in Norther! Ireland is a much more important source ? death, bereavement, physical suffering and dl~: ablement than any intentional form of violen,c e e -yet people are far more paranoic about cn J11 d than about car accidents. Also, it could be argue that the community is economically injured far rn o; by, for instance, the speculator and the tax dodger W 0 exploit the community for their own ends, than by a l ; offender who steals something from a shop--yet the fir~1 is held out to us by society as a model of what we a could become and the second is thrown in jail to atOOe for his sin. I However, even if we accept that the aim of the pe na , system should be to control and reduce criminal beh~ viour prison is certainly the most expensive, waste,ft!· cruel and probably least effectIve method of so dOI~g· It is impossible to prove that pnson is a more effectiVe deterrent than any other sanction, either on the offen~e; who has been processed through it, or on poten UlI s offenders. In a survey carried out by Willcock in 19 6 the majority of the 808 youths he questioned put f ea : of imprisonment as only fourth in the list of co~see quences which would deter them from comml ttlJl · crime. The effect on his family's opinion, the possible loss of a job, the shame of appearing in Court were considered greater deterrents. Secondly, before aO~ I , ·e sanction can become a deterrent the person must be Ie". that if he commits the crime there is a reasonable pOSSI; bility that firstly, he will be caught, and secondly th~. the particular sanction will be applied to him. It I· . e' generally accepted that approximately half the cnIJl i committed are not even reported to the police, and °e those that are less than one-half are traced to th. offender. Finally, of course, not all convicted offender No deterrent effect in prison

should atone by suffering for their offences" to the more enlightened view of the Gladstone Committee that: "Prison treatment should be designed to maintain, stimulate or awaken the higher susceptibilities of pris– oners and turn them out of prison better men and women than when they came in." It has also been maintained that to the extent that prison deters poten– tial offenders from engaging in criminal activity, it pro– tects society. While our present prison system is largely based on the concept of retribution-in fact Mr. Cooney himself has admitted as much in a recent television interview-very few people today will seriously argue that retribution alone is a sufficient justification for prison. The 1962 Interdepartmental Committee on Prisons had as its recommendation that "prisons should have as their aim the final rehabilitation of the offen– der" . Nigel Walker in his book Sentencing Policy in a Rational Society points out that since no human being has the attributes of the legendary recording angel, capable of looking into men's minds, it is impossible to decide on a form or degree of punishment appropriate to a particular offence. I t has sometimes been suggested by some that we can "improve" offenders by punishing them. This, of course, has never been proved, but even if we accept the argument for a moment, it is obvious that before he can be improved, the offender himself must accept the punishment as just retribution. If we follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion we arrive at the absurd position that as Walker states "a man with a tender conscience will have to undergo a more severe punishment than a man who does not admit that he deserves his punishment". Finally, there is implicit in the concept of retribution a view of the criminal as 'being somehow different than other people. On the contrary, crime is an integral part of our society and indeed of any society. The protection of society The other main justification for imprisonment is that it serves to protect society by somehow reducing the incidence of crime. Crime is thus seen as something to be eradicated-something which threatens the bulwark of society and is likely, if not stamped out, to tear our society asunder. This view constitutes the greatest single obstacle to penal reform. Crime, like any other form of deviance, has a positive as well as a negative role to play in society. Emile Durkheim, the famous criminologist, was the first to make this point. He claimed that crime is not an abnormal but a normal part of our society "bound up:' as he said "with the fundamental conditions of all social life and by that very fact it is useful". Another criminologist, Cohen, has given examples of some of the useful functions that crime can play in society-for instance, it helps to clarify the rules on which society is built, it serves the useful purpose, from society's point of view, of uniting the group against the deviant (this is the scapegoating process familiar to us all), it can act as a safety valve for frustrations, etc., or it can act as a warning signal to society that something is radically wrong. The scapegoating process can be seen in the remark of Lord Denning that "punish– ment inflicted for grave crimes should reflect the revul– sion felt by the great majority of citizens for them". When deviance acts as a warning signal Leslie Wilkins has pointed out, that by isolating criminals in jails, and therefore ensuring that information regarding them can

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