Creating a safer Criminal Justice System
This is a blog by our Communications and Campaigns Manager, Keeva Baxter.
Last week I spoke at a Research Symposium on the topic of ‘A safer criminal justice system’. The event, hosted by the Criminal Justice Alliance in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University and Metropolis, explored the key question of how we can make the criminal justice system safer for the people who go through it.
The panel I was a part of was about ‘Victims and Safeguarding’, and I was joined by the CEO of children’s charity SAFE and Professor Michelle McManus. The panel explored the following questions:
Reducing the number of victims should be a clear benchmark for making society safer. How can we achieve this?
What are the key earlier interventions the system is currently missing and how can these be developed and supported?
From my perspective, there are two ways to reduce the number of victims, by ultimately reducing the number of crimes committed. Firstly we need to reduce reoffending and secondly we need to focus on prevention.
Reducing reoffending
We know that currently reoffending is high, with the latest figures putting it at 27.5%, an increase from the previous period. When it comes to young people, it is even higher, standing at 31.6%. And this number almost doubles again when it comes to those serving a custodial sentence under 12 months. Therefore, we know that a large number of victims are the result of offences committed by people who are trapped in a ‘cycle of crime’, repeating past behaviour.
In order to break this cycle and reduce reoffending, and ultimately reduce the number of victims, we need to provide meaningful rehabilitation for those who have committed crimes. The current system of releasing people from custody often with no money, no employment, no home, no network of support, and expecting them to change, is not working. Poverty, mental health, addiction and lack of opportunity play a huge part in people’s return to prison. We therefore need a holistic network of support that enables people to turn their lives around and move forwards.
Restorative Justice also has a key part to play in reducing reoffending. We know from past research that it can reduce reoffending rates by between 14 and 27% as it enables people who have caused harm to see the human impact of their actions, address the causes of their behaviour and find positive ways to move forwards. For James, he went from “being one of Birmingham’s most prolific offenders to now working alongside the police”. Part of this transformation was meeting shop-owners that he had stolen from, hearing first hand about the harm that retail crime causes and being listened to for the first time. “It just made me feel like a human being. Because I felt worthless… I felt a sense of like, if this person can forgive me, maybe other people can.” James was motivated to turn his life around, and now supports others facing addiction to turn away from offending.
Prevention
On top of reducing reoffending rates, to cut the number of victims of crime we have to use preventative measures to stop first time offences and help divert people from the cycle of criminalisation. One way to do this is to help people see the harm caused by crime, which can be done through Restorative Justice. For example, by supporting young people who have been anti-social in their local area to see how this harms the community, and helping them find alternative ways to spend their time before it escalates and they become justice-involved.
Utilising restorative practices can also help give people (particularly young people) the tools they need to manage conflict without resorting to violence or aggression, such as dialogue, empathy and listening.
By addressing reoffending and promoting preventative measures, in part through Restorative Justice, we will reduce the number of crimes and in turn the number of victims. However, it is impossible to address the question of reducing victims of crime without acknowledging the challenges with the question itself. Firstly, reducing the number of victims could be a misleading metric to pursue. As we strive towards rebuilding the public’s trust in police and the court system, reporting rates could go up meaning the number of victims will appear to increase rather than decrease – but this is a good thing. Policymakers must be aware that numbers of victims in the eyes of the justice system is not currently representative of the number of victims in reality and if this gap were to close, the focus should be on how many achieve ‘justice’ rather than purely the number of reports. Ultimately, we want to ensure that reporting is high, but the number of actual crimes goes down.
Some other key points raised in our session included the importance of language and labelling, as often rhetoric around the justice system relies on the binary labels of victim and offender. These can be damaging, self-fulfilling and also fail to acknowledge the nuance that many ‘offenders’ have been victims of crime repeatedly throughout their life.
We also discussed how we need to move away from the Government’s reliance on a punitive approach to satisfy the demands of the public. We need to strive for meaningful ‘justice’ by asking the people involved what their needs are, rather than making an assumption on their behalf. Many successive Governments have been afraid to appear ‘soft on crime’ so have continued to prioritise longer, harsher, custodial sentences, which we know are ineffective in creating change.
Timescales were also mentioned, with delays to court dates leaving many people, including children, waiting over five years for their case to appear in court. SAFE have created a powerful video on the effect this can have.
Overall it was a fascinating day, with a range of conversations about how the current justice system is not fit for purpose and what can be done to address it. Whilst we have a long way to go, it is encouraging to get a lecture hall full of people determined to make this change. A big thank you to those who put on the event and contributed to it, we look forward to seeing what comes from these conversations.