International Centre for Prison Studies

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International Centre for Prison Studies
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ADSW ConferenceDunblane20 November
2003Joining up Criminal Justice
ServicesScotland in an International
ContextProfessor Andrew Coyle
International Centre for Prison Studies
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Comparative use of imprisonment in Europe?
Imprisonment rate (per 100,000 of general
population)
? Statistics extracted from World Prison Brief
Online (www.prisonstudies.org), produced and
maintained by the International Centre for Prison
Studies. All prison population statistics are for
2003 with the exception of Italy (September
2002), The Netherlands (September 2001), the
Republic of Ireland (April 2002), Belgium
(September 2001), Greece (December 2002), Sweden
(October 2002), Finland (December 2002), Denmark
(September 2001) and Norway (September 2001).
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• Compared to the general population prisoners are
• 13 times more likely to have been in care as a
  child
• 10 times more likely to have been a regular
  truant from school
• 13 times more likely to have been unemployed
• 2.5 times more likely to have a family member who
  has been convicted of a criminal offence
• 6 times more likely to have been a young father
• 15 times more likely to be HIV positive.
• Source Social Exclusion Unit, Reducing
  Re-offending by Ex-prisoners, 2000

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• Profile of prisoners
• 80 have the writing skills of an 11 year old
• 65 have the numeracy skills of an 11 year old
• 50 have the reading skills of an 11 year old
• 70 used drugs before coming to prison
• 70 suffer from at least two mental disorders
• 20 of male prisoners have previously attempted
  suicide
• 37 of women prisoners have attempted suicide.
• Source Social Exclusion Unit, Reducing
  Re-offending by Ex-prisoners, 2000

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• Finland and Scotland
• Similarities
• Small Northern European countries with
• concentrated urban communities
• large sparsely populated areas
• a tradition of strong welfare
• Populations
• Finland 5.2 million
• Scotland 5.08 million

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• Finland and Scotland
• One difference
• Number of people in prison (December 2002)
• Finland 3617 (70 per 100,000)
• Scotland 6,424 (126 per 100,000)

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• Decreasing use of imprisonment in Finland
• 1950 187 per 100,000
• 1960 154
• 1970 113
• 1980 106
• 1990 69
• 2000 55

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• How did this come about?
• Clear political will and consensus to bring down
  the prisoner rate
• Involved key politicians, government officials
  and academics
• The judiciary was closely involved in developing
  these changes and in a number of respects
  sentencing policy changed in advance of new
  legislation
• Crime control has never been a party political
  issue in election campaigns
• The role of the media has been of crucial
  importance

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• A simplified sentencing system
• Fine
• Imprisonment
• Unconditional 14 days to 12 years or life
• Conditional
• Up to 8 months converted to community service
• Up to 2 years can be suspended with conditions
• 50 of all prison sentences are conditional

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• Most important consideration
• In Finland, the criminal justice system is not
  seen as a major source for social control

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• Criminal Sanctions Agency
• Goals
• To contribute to security in society by
  maintaining a lawful and safe system of
  enforcement of sanctions
• To assist in reducing recidivism by endeavouring
  to break the cycle of social exclusion that
  reproduces crime

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• Creating genuine alternatives to custody
• Close involvement of the judiciary
• Keep it simple
• Target who they are for, either by length of
  sentence or by type of offence
• Have a simple but effective mechanism for
  implementing them
• Explain the nature of these sentences and their
  purpose to the public
• Keep their use under regular review

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Learning from other UK experiences

• The Criminal and Probation Statistics indicate
  that over the last decade offenders who would
  formerly have been fined are today receiving
  community penalties and, through a similar
  process of ratcheting up, short custodial
  sentences have increasingly displaced community
  penalties.
• The proportion of offenders supervised by the
  Probation Service, who are first time or summary
  offenders, has increased and the proportion
  convicted of serious indictable offences or who
  have previously been sentenced to imprisonment,
  has fallen.
• Which is to say that the Probation Service
  caseloads of recent years are silting up with
  lower risk offenders.
• Professor Rod Morgan
• HM Chief Inspector of Probation for England and
  Wales

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• There is a clear case for local authorities to
  engage with the custodial services, not least
  because prison and re-offending impose costs on
  local government itself. Thus, children may have
  to be taken into care disrupted family
  relationships can lead to behavioural problems
  and ultimately to offending. If we can assist in
  placing people in work and so cut re-offending by
  between a third and a half, or if we can help
  people into stable accommodation and so reduce
  the risk of re-offending by a fifth, there are
  significant potential savings to be made. These
  are not peripheral issues. They are part of the
  responsibility of Councils to reduce crime and
  disorder through the multi-agency approach set
  out in the Crime Disorder Act. Councils
  therefore need to assess the needs of those from
  their communities who are in custody and who are
  likely to return, and to plan for that return.
• Sir Jeremy Beecham, Chair of the Local
  Government Association

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• Redeploy Illinois
• Counties agree to cut numbers of juveniles they
  send to prison by 25
• They draw up a plan showing how they will use
  funds to create community-based alternatives to
  prison
• The state gives the counties the funds it saves
  by having a reduced number of juvenile prisoners
• Reclaim Ohio
• Juvenile offenders in state prisons
• 1995 3,410
• 2002 1,840
• State savings distributed to counties
• 1996 17.1 million
• 2002 33.9 million

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• Final thoughts
• Criminal justice has an important but very narrow
  role to play in creating and nurturing a safe and
  just society.
• Criminal justice systems can be used to underpin
  and help to support the values of a society.
• They cannot be used as a substitute for these
  values.

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International Centre for Prison Studies