The Monument Fellowship CRIME AND CONSEQUENCE What should happen to people who commit criminal offences? Edited by Anne Fox & Alison Frater “I can’t think of a better book on a more important subject.” Freddy Gray, Deputy Editor, The Spectator The Monument Fellowship CRIME AND CONSEQUENCE What should happen to people who commit criminal offences? Edited by Anne Fox & Alison Frater CONTENTS Acknowledgements viii Foreword Michael Spurr x The Monument Trust into the future Mark Woodruff xiii Introduction: Crime and Consequences Anne Fox and Alison Frater 1 Section 1 What happens to people who commit criminal offences – facts & figures 5 Section 2 Unintended consequences 15 Righting Wrongs: The need for dialogue Fergus McNeill 17 Rehabilitation – A new perspective for a new era Lisa Rowles and Kieran McCartan 21 Toward better punishment Phil Bowen 30 Punishing the most vulnerable Sophie Gibson 37 Exploring learning history to inform sentence practice Mark Humphries 45 The fallacy of rehabilitation E.R. Smyth 51 iii The case for custody The Tartan Con 57 Relationships are essential for rehabilitation Lord Farmer 61 Conscience is learnt through shame Gerard Lemos 68 British prisoners abroad Pauline Crowe 76 (Love and) Respect David McGuire 83 Applying Montessori principles to rehabilitation Nati Beltrán 88 ‘Tough on crime’ – why beliefs shape policy Penelope Gibbs with Anne Fox and Roma Hooper 97 Crime: A sign of our failure to organise for the common good Teresa Parker 103 Taking people seriously: Debating matters beyond bars Jacob Reynolds 107 More or less? Rob Allen 113 The business case for employing people who have committed criminal offences Anne Fox in conversation with Darren Burns, National Recruitment Ambassador, Timpson & Head of the Timpson Foundation 120 Criminals in your family and in your society Bruce Child 128 Writing about the perspective of children whose parents are imprisoned Lucy Baldwin 130 Who defines what is a crime? Dr John Davies 137 iv Why the ‘Why’ matters Judge Alex Calabrese and Amanda Berman 140 Developing a new sense of purpose: The role and value of access to arts and culture Richard Ings 149 The relationship between public attitudes, policy decisions by government and scrutiny by parliament Gemma Buckland 154 The ability to heal people within our current system Edwina Grosvenor 161 Section 3 Answering the question creatively 165 Construction of a criminal (poem) Talia Jay 167 Our voices should be heard (poetry, plays, text) Clean Break members 168 Crime and expectation (poem) Ashleigh Nugent 180 Creating identity through the arts Re/creations collective: Kristianne Drake, Xavier Fiddes and Dr Ronda Gowland-Pryde 183 The play is the thing Blackash collective 193 Killing the morning David Kendall 206 Making it out of prison – designing for change through ‘making’ Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe 212 An alarm for every occasion Sean Bw Parker 218 Section 4 Alternatives to prison 219 v Diverting children from the criminal justice system Carmen Robin-D’Cruz 221 What? Do you mean no prisons? Charlotte Weinberg and Deborah H. Drake 227 Putting the community back into payback Dave Nicholson 234 Child to parent violence Restorative solutions Gary Stephenson 241 The case for decriminalisation Mark Alexander 249 Encourage or punish? The view of a prisoner Steve Shill 252 Change our attitude, change our approach Neil Wilson 254 Let the punishment fit the criminal Ben Leapman 256 Section 5 Images from ‘Another Me’ and ‘A Feeling We All Share’ – Koestler Arts exhibitions in 2019 259 Section 6 Not all crimes and not all who commit them are the same 269 Offences committed by women: Recognise the role of abuse Dame Vera Baird 271 Older men in prison: time to think differently? Louise Ridley 274 What should happen to people who commit murder? Ben Crewe, Susie Hulley, Serena Wright 281 The impact of criminal records from our youth: The case for change Anne Fox in conversation with Christopher Stacey, co-director of Unlock 288 vi What should happen to people who commit sexual offences? Lynn Saunders and Belinda Winder 296 Young people, arts and justice Alison Frater 301 You’re never really free until your mind is free Dawn Harrison 305 People with speech, language and communication needs: Are courts fair? Kim Turner 311 Crime and criminalising young people Anne Fox in conversation with Enver Solomon – CEO, Just for Kids Law 316 Transgender in the 21st Century prison system Sarah-Jane Baker 326 Hate crime: Restorative solutions Tehmina Kazi 329 What should happen to Muslim women who commit criminal offences? Sofia Buncy 338 Tackling the criminalisation of childhood neurodevelopmental disability Professor Nathan Hughes 344 Saints and Sinners: UK veterans in the criminal justice system Tony Wright 350 All equal before the law Simon Kenny 357 What should happen to people who commit criminal offences?: Exploring the issues Sarah Turvey 359 Contributors 363 References 379 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This collective volume has been a collective effort and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Clinks and the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance work wherever possible in partnership with others, we believe together we can achieve much more than we ever could alone. We are grateful to the Monument Fellowship for the opportunity to curate this year’s book and for access to their networks and contacts from whom the contributions were sourced. Mark Woodruff and the trustees of The Woolbeding Charity, formerly The Monument Trust have provided unstinting support for our own work and for the joint work of the Monument Fellowship. We are delighted to be able to continue to add to the impressive legacy of the Trust which invested in so many innovations to improve outcomes for people at risk of entry to or already in the criminal justice system, over so many years. We are indebted to those individuals and organisations who have contributed to this volume from their professional and lived experience. We are also grateful to those who have supported them to do so, including the wonderfully helpful Paula Harriott and Soruche Saajedi of the Prisoner Policy Network at the Prison Reform Trust. They spread the word and made it possible for this volume to benefit from contributions from their network members, people currently in prison. Thanks also go to prison staff and friends and family of people in prison who made it easier for drafts to be sent back and forth. Thanks also go to Matthew Halliday also of the Prison Reform viii Acknowledgements Trust for reproduction of the graphs from Prison: the facts – Bromley Briefings Summer 2019, to Sally Taylor, Fiona Curran, Jo Tapp and the team at Koestler Arts for the reproduction of stunning images from the 2019 UK exhibitions ‘Another Me’ and ‘A Feeling We All Share’ and Sarah Turvey of Prison Reading Groups for the guide to exploring the issues in the book which we’ve been able to include. Thanks, as with anything we do, are owed to the Clinks staff – especially working in admin, communications and National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance roles. For this project we relied on really helpful and professional external support from the brilliant Claire Annals, for copyediting and proofreading, Mick and Tom Keates for design and Brian Parish for print. They’ve brought all the hard work together in a volume we hope you’ll enjoy reading and will recommend to others. ix FOREWORD Michael Spurr Last year we moved to live in a village for the first time and a few weeks ago I gave a talk for the local community in the village Church entitled ‘Reflections on Crime and Punishment’. The talk was well attended and from the feedback – well received. It wasn’t a talk to promote a particular agenda or to explicitly present a point of view but rather I simply presented facts about the realities of the Criminal Justice System today and reflections on changes that have occurred over the 36 years I have worked in it. It’s fair to say that most people came along knowing very little about the system and went away surprised and a little shocked about what they learned They weren’t aware, for example, that sentences today are much longer, harsher and more punitive than at any time since the abolition of capital punishment 50 years ago; they weren’t aware of what actually constitutes a custodial sentence, release arrangements or the licence restrictions placed on individuals following release; and they were amazed by the fact that there are over 7000 prisoners in custody for breach of those licence conditions. This wasn’t really a surprise. Most people have limited contact with the Criminal Justice System and for entirely understandable reasons give it little thought. The complexities of sentencing in particular are a mystery (including to many who work within the system!) and the execution of the sentence and its impact on individuals is routinely misunderstood or misrepresented in the media. But this isn’t a healthy position for our society. x Foreword Over the last two decades there has been a marked shift to what Professor Anthony Bottoms describes as ‘popular punitiveness’. Only a few days ago the Prime Minister promised to bring forward legislation in the Queens Speech to toughen sentences for serious crime. An urgent review of Sentencing is currently being conducted by the Ministry of Justice but the direction of this review and the outcome required has clearly been set already Of course in any civilised society crime has to be dealt with and most people (including me and almost all offenders I’ve worked with) accept this must include retribution for the offence. Punishment is necessary and important but it should be proportionate (the ‘just deserts’-principle).