Persuading the Public: Penal Reform, Prevention and Victim Support
| Date | 01 September 1983 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026455058303000309 |
| Author | Clive Soley M. P. |
| Published date | 01 September 1983 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
104
Persuading
the
Public:
Penal
Reform,
Prevention
and
Victim
Support
Clive
Soley
M.P.
(formerly
Senior
Probation
Officer,
Inner
London)
An
edited
version
of
an
address
to
the
Lake
District
Branch
Conference
’The
Shape
of
Things
to
Come’.
A
probation
officer
—
turned —
politician
considers
the
prospects
for
penal
change.
Penal
reform
is
rarely,
if ever,
popular.
Nothing
brings
that
home
to
you
more
than
when
you
switch
from
being
a
Probation
Officer
to
being
an
MP
in
an
area
with
a
high
crime
rate.
My
constituents,
by
and
large,
want
harsher
penalties
and
they
don’t
want
explanations
about
crime
or
why
an
individual
has
particular
problems
which
may
have
led
them
to
offend.
If you
want
the’ shape
of things
to
come’ to
include
major
penal
reform
then
at
the
same
time
as
you
press
for
those
reforms
you
must
talk
about
two
other
key
issues
-
the
prevention
of crime,
and
support
for victims.
Failure
to
do
that
will
leave
politicians
to
face
the
harsher
attitudes
of
the
public
at
large
without
having
effective
counter-arguments.
Victorian
values?
In
times
of
economic
distress
people
move
towards
the
right
of the
political
spectrum.
They
seek
shelter
with
authoritarian
leadership
and
they
hark
back
to
some
golden
age
in
their
memories
or
in
the
history
books.
Right-wing
governments
cannot
only
benefit
from
this,
but
they
can
also
fall
prey
to
it.
I
think
of
the
glib
talk
recently
by
the
Prime
Minister
and
her
Cabinet
colleagues
about
returning
to
Victorian
values.
It
seems
to
me
that
in
the
second
half of the
20th
century
such
talk
-
whether
directed
at
family
behaviour
or
general
socio-economic
behaviour -
is
at
best
irrelevant
and
at
worst
ignorant
and
misguided.
A
political
leader
is
better
advised
to
try
and
resolve
present-day
problems
and
to
lay
good
foundations
for
future
generations
than
to
try
and
recreate
assumed
and
doubtfully
identified
values
from
the
past
in
the
vague
hope
that
they
might
solve
current
problems.
I
become
more
cynical
when
I
hear
talk
of stripping
professionals
of their
power
to
take
decisions
for,
and
on
behalf
of,
individuals
and
families
at
the
same
time
as
the
Government
is
legislating
for
the
Probation
Service
and
others
to
have
powers
which
many
in
the
Service
think
are
excessive
and
unnecessary.
Unemployment
High
unemployment
is
a
factor
in
the
causation
of
crime,
and
also
in
explaining
the
size
of
the
prison
population.
It
may
be
difficult
to
find
conclusive
proof
of this,
but
I
think
it
is
impossible
not
to
recognise
a
link,
however
complex
and
subtle.
The
former
Home
Sectretary,
William
Whitelaw,
agrees
with
me,
or
at
least
he
used
to.
In
a
debate
on
law
and
order
in
the
House
of
Commons
on
27th
February
1978,
and
speaking
on
unemployment
among
youngsters
he
said,
’let
no-one have
any
doubt
about the
dangerthathas
created
m
terms
of
crime
of
all
sorts,
violence
and
vandalism.
If boy
and
girls
do
not
obtain jobs
when
they
leave
school,
they
feel
that
society
has
no
need
of them.
If they
feel that
society
has
no
need
of them.
If they
feel
that,
they
do
not
see
any
reason
why
they
should
take
part
in
that
society
and
comply
with
its
rules.
That
is
what is
happening,
and
wherever
we
sit
in
this
House,
that
is
what
we
have
to
recognise’ .
And
Box
and Hale
(in
Crime
andSociaIJustice,
July
1982)
cite
nine
studies
where
there
is
a
consensus
that
unemployment
is
related
to
imprisonment,
independent
of
the
crime
rate.
They
go
on
to
say,
’a
simple
way
of
reporting
this
result ...
would be
to
say
that,
after
controlling
for
other
relevant
factors,
an
increase
of
1,000
in
the
number
of
un-
employed
will
lead,
on
the
average,
to
more
than
10
people
receiving
prison
sentences’.
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