[Ramrod]

January 25, 2004 (The Times)

There are times when it becomes clear that the pendulum has swung too far. It happened in Britain in the 1970s, when weak politicians and overpowerful trade unions dragged the country to near disaster. And it has happened again in recent years in the balance between criminals and victims. Tony Blair promised in his most famous soundbite to be tough on crime and tough on the causes. The reality, as everybody knows, is quite different. Detection rates for most crimes in Britain are low and violent crime keeps increasing. Victims of burglary know the futility of trying to get the police to come out, let alone try to catch the criminal. The main function of police officers seems to be to provide the victim with an insurance number. Even when criminals are caught (and they have to be unlucky), punishments handed out by the courts are often lenient.
Why is there this schism between what most people regard as natural justice and what is actually happening? The truth, as Charles Murray, the American social scientist, revealed last week in this newspaper after extensive interviews, is that the legal establishment is irrevocably liberal and does not believe that prison works. He discovered that these views are so entrenched that Mr Blairââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s idea of getting †œtough on crimeââ‚ƚ¬Ã‚ÂÂÂ� was never an option. Today Mr Murray takes his theme further. What is the appropriate response of the criminal justice system to a violent mugger or serial burglar? Is it to understand what drives him to his crime and to find his hidden motives? The criminal justice elite would say yes, preferring to focus on the prime ministerââ‚à ƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s †œcauses of crimeââ‚ƚ¬Ã‚ÂÂÂ�. But some people become criminals, some do not. There is no hard and fast rule, even among siblings. While it is both morally rewarding and financially sensible to head young people away from crime, the state must be prepared to punish those who harm others. The audience for BBC Radio 4â₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢s Today programme shocked the corporationâââ€Å ¡Ã‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s sensibilities by calling for a †œTony Martin lawââ‚Âà ‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ÂÂ�, which would give householders the right to use any means necessary to defend their homes. The Today audience was reflecting a growing view of a public that is exasperated by police inaction, feeble sentencing and a system so far tilted in favour of the criminal as to provide no deterrent.


A retribution-based criminal justice system would go a long way towards correcting this imbalance. It does not mean that every criminal would go to prison. The retribution for minor crimes should be relatively mild punishments †� indeed, new evidence suggests that too many motorists guilty of minor offences are being sent to prison. But a graffiti vandal caught spraying paint on a park bench, for example, would be made to clean several park benches. The important thing is that he would not go unpunished. The one certain direction of causation is that minor offences lead to major ones. David Blunkett, the home secretary, is under fire because he wants to increase the prison population by a few thousand. Mr Murray points out that if crimes carried the same degree of prison-based retribution as 50 years ago, the prison population would have to increase by 200,000. Prison works, to coin a phrase familiar to the Tory leader who was vilified when he was home secretary. If that means building more prisons to protect victims, so be it.

There will be many who criticise Mr Murray's proposals. Allowing juries access to a suspect's record might stop repeat offenders going free, but would there be sufficient safeguards to prevent too easy a route to convictions? There will be those who say that increasing the prison population would simply create schools for crime. That provides criminals with an easy way to blackmail society ÃÃâ€*’â€Ë Å“ "If you put me in prison, I'll just become a worse criminal." To which the answer is: "Not while you're inside you won't."

The thing about retribution-based criminal justice, about genuinely getting tough on crime, is that it works. In New York and now Los Angeles, crime has been reduced by zero tolerance policing and tough sentences. People in Britain are crying out for that to happen here. And they are not getting it from our criminal justice system.