The Inner Temple Yearbook 2021–2022
Social Context of the Law: Prison Reform
SOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE LAW:
PRISON REFORM From a panel discussion delivered via webinar on 2 February 2021 between the Rev’d Jonathan Aitken and Chris Daw QC, moderated by Master Libby Purves.
Libby Purves: Our two speakers this evening have experience of prison from every possible side. Jonathan Aitken has been an MP and a cabinet minister and has himself served time. He has authored reports for the Centre for Social Justice on prison reform, and now Jonathan is a prison chaplain at Pentonville and honorary chaplain to Christians in government. Chris Daw QC is the author of Justice on Trial, a book laying out where we fail, and have been failing for many years, in prison policy. He is a leading criminal defence barrister and has looked into the faces of people most of us would shy away from and has listened to arguments in real life which would raise eyebrows and disbelief if they turned up in a television play. Sir, the floor is yours.
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Chris Daw: For me, our criminal justice system, and the way we deal with criminal acts and criminal activity as a society, is not only a very important part of our civil society, but it is also probably the one that we get the most wrong. When I go to court, as a lawyer I am duty-bound to do the best I can for my clients, to follow my instructions, and to assist the court and the administration of justice, but time and again I asked myself, “What’s the point of this case?” My book was intended to put justice on trial. I start the book by talking about the history of crime and punishment. One of the things that marked out systems of justice in early societies was that moralistic and religious view that punishment and vengeance should be an intrinsic aim. And sadly, those core themes of vengeance and punishment have pervaded almost every system of justice ever since. And they still do, in the sense that we have seen in this country over the last two or three decades an enormous increase in the use of imprisonment, in particular the length of sentences and the number of prisoners. And much of that has been in response to public demand for vengeance and punishment for offenders, particularly violent offenders, but also drug offenders. So, I begin the book properly with the subject of prison. And the conclusion I have come to about prisons, having travelled and researched the subject in some detail, is that they are almost entirely unfit for purpose. If the purpose of the criminal justice system is to reduce the amount of crime, to reduce the amount of repeat offending by those who commit crimes, then prison is diametrically opposite to policy and strategy that you would use if you were applying the evidence of what works and what does not work. And that is even if you set aside the inhumane way so many in prisoners all over the world are treated.
The conclusion I have come to about prisons, having travelled and researched the subject in some detail, is that they are almost entirely unfit for purpose. If the purpose of the criminal justice system is to reduce the amount of crime, to reduce the amount of repeat offending by those who commit crimes, then prison is diametrically opposite to policy and strategy that you would use if you were applying the evidence of what works and what does not work. Prisons just do not work. But another thing that does not work is drug prohibition. Today, millions and millions of people all over the world consume drugs of one kind or other. And it is only really in the last 50 years or so that we have begun to treat that activity as one of the most important elements of our criminal justice system, and one of the most important sources of prisoners for the prison system. All I have ever seen across all that criminal justice enforcement activity, and all those prosecutions, is a dramatic increase in drug consumption, a reduction in the cost of drugs on the street, and an enormous increase in drug-related violence and murder – all of it, in my conclusion, a result of the prohibition that we have engaged in, and the enforcement and lengthy prison sentences for drug offences. I have no doubt whatsoever, based on the evidence, that prohibition of drugs is damaging and wrong for our society. The final two topics are kind of interlinked. The first of these is that one of the chapters of the book is called Why Children Are Never Criminals. I have no doubt that the way we treat young people who become embroiled in our criminal justice system is counterproductive – in the sense that it actually increases criminality over the long term. I strongly believe that it breaches the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that we treat our children in the criminal justice system in this country in a way that is inhumane, and contrary therefore to international law. We must do something radically different and stop criminalising children. The biggest mistake we make is in categorising people as either good or evil, rather than looking at why acts are committed, and what could be done in the long term to reduce the amount of crime in our society. By having this binary analysis of individuals, we contribute to the never-ending cycle of criminality by a certain group of people, most of whom have been severely damaged in their childhood and severely damaged by addiction and mental health problems.
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