Comment
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058303000301 |
| Published date | 01 September 1983 |
| Date | 01 September 1983 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
81
Probation
Journal
Published
by
the
National
Association
of
Probation
Officers
Hon
Editor:
Nigel
Stone
Editorial
Advisory
Board:
Laurence
V.
Coates,
Jenny
Kirkpatrick
(ex
officio),
Sue
Priestley,
David
Reaich,
Peter
Simpson,
Andy
Stelman
Price
£ 1.25
(free
to
members)
COMMENT
Tyrannosaurus
At
the
same
time
that
we
learnt
of the
erstwhile
existence
of
enormous
reptiles
in
Thornton
Heath,
long
before
probation
officers
roamed
the
Earth,
another
dinosaur
was
being
exhumed
in
Parliament,
in
the
debate
on
capital
punishment.
Once
again
we
have
been
invited
to
opt
for
exterminatory
penology,
in
the
ultimate
manifestation
of
the
punitive
obsession.
The
advance
intense
interest
in
the
issue
provided
a
public
summer
school
on
penal
engineering
and,
as
in
the
subsequent
debate,
the
weight
of
the
argument
was
heavily
one-sided.
The
Prison
Officers’
Association
made
a
bullish
call
for
execution
as
an
option
for
a
range
of
serious
crimes,
but
otherwise
abolition
has
been
adopted
by
virtually
the
entire
penal
establishment.
Even
the
newspaper
which
supported
Our
Lads
argued
that
the
death
penalty
would
turn
’a
civilized
society
into
a
brutal
and
brutalized
nation’.
During
the
debate,
the
arguments
tended
to
follow
utilitarian
rather
than
moral
themes,
the
retentionists
persisting
in
their
dogged
belief
in
deterrence
and
their
wish
for
renewed
virility
in
the
penal
system.
The
issue,
implicitly
at
least,
was
about
wider
penal
politics,
with
one
side
seeing
capital
punishment
as
’an
essential
element
in
the
return
to
a
firm
approach
to
crime
and
the
criminal’,
and
others
viewing
abolition
as
a
contribution
to
’more
rational
discussion
about
crime’.
The
punitive
tendency
may
have
lost
the
battle,
but
could
win
a
greater
hold
in
the
wider
war
of
penal
reform.
In
the
post-mortem
after
the
vote,
Louis
Blom-
Cooper
QC
has
suggested
that
despite
the
considerable
flow
of
words
’reform
has
been
effected
without
any
impact
on
a
public
bewildered
by
the
studied
ignorance
of
its
perceived
needs
and
desires’ .’
In
the
process
of
criminal
law
reform
’the
ordinary
citizen
has
remained
stubbornly
resistant
to
rational
arguments
emanating
from
limited
sections
of the
press’
and
various
pressure
groups.
Whether
reformers
have
been
guilty
of
public
neglect
or
not,
or
such
notions
of
public
entrenchment
are
fair
(see
The
British
Crime
Survey2)
the
question
how
to
get
purchase
on
making
progressive
penal
policy
a
populist
cause
is
intriguing
and
unanswered.
Post-election
speculation
about
the
succession
to
Mr
Whitelaw
centred
on
Norman
Tebbit
whom,
it
was
suggested,
might
well
trans-
cend
the
curse
of
Queen
Anne’s
Gate
and,
as
a
non-establishment
Home
Secretary,
be
able
to
deal
more
robustly
with
such
holy
cows
as judical
freedom
and
idiosyncracy.
Perhaps.
There
is
little
evidence,
meanwhile,
that a Labour
Secretary
of
State
would
be
able
to
distinguish
a
radical
stance
to
combat
the
prevailing
sluggish
consensus.
Lost
Labour
Such
short-comings
are
dwarfed
by
a
more
substantial
sharp-clawed
megalosaur
which
has
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