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Crime and punishment

01 May 1994

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"Perhaps the single biggest intervention affecting the level of crime and criminality might be the ability to offer the next generation of young people better prospects of realistic full- time employment than we appear to have been able to offer this one".

This is a quotation from the Home Office, whose ministerial staff publicly and vocally disavow any connection between unemployment and crime. It comes from a draft paper (never, apparently, delivered) prepared for a seminar on law and order. The paper cited the conclusion of 397 separate research studies on young offenders, which demonstrated that programmes offering employment cut recidivism by a third. The same seminar, called "What works?" was told by a clinical psychologist) that prison increased offending by 30%.

Questioned about the startling disparity between current policy and the paper, the Home Office emphasised that the paper was a very early draft, and designed for an "occasion in which free and open thinking was encouraged". In the wake of the leak, Home Secretary Michael Howard conceded in a speech to the Institute of Directors that "previous offenders who get jobs are less likely to re-offend".

Independent 8 27.4.94; Independent on Sunday 10.4.94 24.4.94; Guardian 23.4.94.

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