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Crime and punishment (1)

01 January 1991

Crime and punishment
artdoc July=1994

`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.

Statewatch, vol 4 no 3, May-June 1994