A PRESUMPTION AGAINST IMPRISONMENT Social Order and Social Values
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July 2014 A PRESUMPTION AGAINST IMPRISONMENT Social Order and Social Values A Presumption Against Imprisonment Social Order and Social Values July 2014 THE BRITISH ACADEMY 10 –11 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AH www.britishacademy.ac.uk Registered Charity: Number 233176 © The British Academy 2014 Published July 2014 ISBN 978-0-85672-615-6 Designed by Soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk Printed by Kube 3 Contents Acknowledgements 4 The Authors 5 Foreword by the Rt Hon. the Lord Woolf 9 Executive Summary 15 Introduction 21 Part I: Where We Are Now and How We Got Here 26 Part II: Why Our Imprisonment Policies Should Change 52 Part III: Strategies for Reducing the Prison Population 86 Annex: Key Events and Documents 106 4 A Presumption Against Imprisonment // British Academy Acknowledgements This Report has been produced under the aegis of the British Academy’s programme of public policy activities. Written by members of a steering group set up by the Academy, those with authorial responsibility for the various parts of the Report are Rob Allen, Andrew Ashworth, Roger Cotterrell, Andrew Coyle, Antony Duff, Nicola Lacey, Alison Liebling and Rod Morgan. Other members of the steering group, who offered helpful advice at various stages in the production of the Report, were Tony Bot- toms, Brenda Hale and Paul Rock. As a serving judge, Brenda Hale takes no view on the opinions expressed in the Report. The Foreword was written by the Rt Hon. Lord Woolf; and the Report was edited and the Executive Summary written by Les Newby and Nicky Denison, independent consultants and writers on society, economy and the environment. Grateful thanks are due to several members of the British Academy staff for their help during the discussion and writing of the Report: Helen Haggart, Emma McKay, Daisy Picking, Chris Potter, Anandini Yoganathan, Jamiesha Majevadia; to the three anonymous referees who provided valuable comments on the penultimate draft; to James Chalmers for comments on and corrections to the Scottish sections of the Report; and to Ailbhe O’Loughlin for her help with the final checking and updating of the statistics in the Report. British Academy // A Presumption Against Imprisonment 5 The Authors ROB ALLEN is an independent researcher and consultant and co-Direc- tor of Justice and Prisons (www.justiceandprisons.org). He was Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS) at King’s College London from 2005 until 2010, undertaking research on the practice of imprisonment and assisting prison systems to comply with international standards. Prior to joining ICPS in March 2005, he ran Rethinking Crime and Punishment, an initiative set up by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to inform public attitudes to prison and alternatives. Rob was previously director of research and development at Nacro. He was a member of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales from 1998 to 2006 and a specialist adviser to the House of Commons Justice Select Committee in the last Parliament. ANDREW ASHWORTH has taught at the universities of Manchester and King’s College London and from 1997 to 2013 was the Vinerian Professor of English Law in the University of Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1993, was made Queen’s Counsel honoris causa in 1997 and received the CBE in 2009. He was editor of the Criminal Law Review from 1975 to 1998 and continues to contribute commentaries to that journal. From 1989 to 1992 he was chairman of the Select Committee of the Council of Europe’s inquiry ‘Consistency in Sentencing’. In 1999 he was appointed a member of the Sentencing Advisory Panel, and chairman from 2007 to 2010. He has written books on English criminal law, the English criminal process, on European hu- man rights law and on sentencing. ROGER COTTERRELL is Anniversary Professor of Legal Theory at Queen Mary University of London. He holds academic qualifications in law and sociology and his primary research and publications have been in the fields of legal theory and the sociology of law. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Lithuanian, 6 A Presumption Against Imprisonment // British Academy Chinese, Korean, Russian, Polish and Arabic. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005 and of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2014. He has been a trustee of the Law and Society Association (US) and in 2013 was awarded the Socio-Legal Studies Association’s prize for contributions to the socio-legal community. His books include Living Law: Studies in Legal and Social Theory (2008), Law, Culture and Society (2006), The Politics of Jurisprudence (2nd edn, 2003), Émile Durkheim: Law in a Moral Domain (1999), Law’s Community (1995), and The Soci- ology of Law (2nd edn, 1992). ANDREW COYLE, CMG, PHD, FKC, is Emeritus Professor of Prison Studies, King’s College London, and Visiting Professor, the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. He was founding Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies and is a Fellow of King’s College London. He previously worked for 25 years at a senior level in the United Kingdom Prison Services. He is a prisons adviser to the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and several national governments. He was one of the principal drafters of the European Prison Rules (2006) and drafted the Council of Europe Code of Ethics for Prison Staff (2012). His handbook A Human Rights Approach to Prison Manage- ment has been translated into 18 languages and is in its second edition (2009). In 2012 Andrew undertook a review of arrangements for the independent monitoring of prisons in Scotland at the request of the Scottish Government. ANTONY DUFF was educated at Oxford and taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Stirling until 2009; he is now Professor Emeritus there, and holds a half-time position in the University of Min- nesota Law School, where he helped to set up the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has an honorary D. Jur. from the University of Oslo. He has published books on criminal punishment (Trials and Punishments, 1986; Punishment, Communication, and Com- munity, 2001), the structures of criminal liability (Intention, Agency, and Criminal Liability, 1990; Criminal Attempts, 1996; Answering for Crime, 2007), and the criminal process (The Trial on Trial, co-authored, 2007). He recently led the AHRC-funded projects ‘The Trial on Trial’ and ‘Criminali- zation’, and is currently working on a book, The Realm of the Criminal Law. NICOLA LACEY FBA is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy at the London School of Economics. From 2010 until 2013 she British Academy // A Presumption Against Imprisonment 7 was Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. She has held a number of visiting appointments, most recently at Harvard Law School and at New York University Law School. She is an Honorary Fellow of New College Oxford and of University College Oxford. Nicola works on criminal law and criminal justice, with a particular focus on comparative and historical scholarship. Her current projects embrace the develop- ment of criminal responsibility since the 18th century; the philosophy and psychology of punishment; and the comparative political economy of punishment. Her publications include Women, Crime and Character: From Moll Flanders to Tess of the d’Urbervilles (2008); The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democ- racies (2008); and A Life of HLA Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream (2004). ALISON LIEBLING is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Director of the Prisons Research Centre, University of Cambridge. She has carried out extensive empirical research on young offender throughcare, suicides in prison, staff-prisoner relationships, the work of prison officers, small units for difficult prisoners, incentives and earned privileges, prison privatization, secure training centres, govern- ing prisons, and measuring the quality of prison life. She has published several books, including Suicides in Prison (1992), Prisons and their Moral Performance (2004), The Prison Officer (2nd edition, 2011) and The Effects of Imprisonment (with Shadd Maruna, 2005). She has published widely in criminological journals. She recently completed a repeat of a study of staff–prisoner relationships at Whitemoor Prison first conducted in 1998, and was awarded an ESRC Transforming Social Science grant in June 2013 to explore the location and building of trust in two high security settings. ROD MORGAN is Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at the University of Bristol and Visiting Professor at the Universities of Cardiff and Sussex. He was formerly Chief Inspector of Probation for England and Wales (2001–14), Chairman of the Youth Justice Board (2004–7) and advisor to the five criminal justice inspectorates for England and Wales (2008–12). He is the author of many books and articles on aspects of criminal justice ranging from policing to sentencing to international human rights and from 1994 to 2012 was co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology (5th edition, 2012). He frequently acts as an expert witness on custodial conditions in extradition proceedings and is currently working on a book on accountability and the inspection of 8 A Presumption Against Imprisonment // British Academy criminal justice services. He is trustee or advisor to several organisa- tions promoting the arts and other positive activities for children and young people in trouble. British Academy // A Presumption Against Imprisonment 9 Foreword by the Rt Hon. the Lord Woolf The publication of this Report is to be warmly welcomed. It should be read by anyone interested in the well-being of our criminal justice system.