CRIME AND IMPRISONMENT

In my blog of 6 Jan 2025 I promised to talk a little more on the criminality of our peoples.

We bemoan the size of the prison population, that imprisonment is inhumane, that prisons are 'an academy of crime', that we send far too many people to prison blah blah blah!

Whilst I won't comment on the first three arguments regarding imprisonment, I concede there is a legitimate cause for concern regarding how  prisoners are treated, especially with the dearth of any meaningful rehabilitation programs, but I do take issue with the accepted article of faith that we send far too many people to prison.

Let us look and consider some official UK and EU statistics.

In the UK 1 in 74 crimes results in imprisonment but in France 1 in 55 crimes results in imprisonment. Thus France imprisons 35% more of its criminals than does the UK.

But the UK prison population is about  88, 000, or 141 per 100,000 whilst in France it is only about 68,000, or 102 per 100,000.

Hold on, France sends 35% more of its criminals to prison, but has a smaller number and proportion of its citizens in jail - that doesn't add up.

No it doesn't  and it's these figures which are touted about by the bleeding-heart liberals and such as the Howard League for Penal Reform to denigrate our so-called cruel sentencing regime.

Let us consider another uncomfortable fact, again taken from official UK Government and EU statistics:

The UK crime rate is 6.52 million crimes or 1 in 10 of the population of 66 million and in France the rate is 3.77 million crimes or 1 in 20 of the population of 76  million - thus we in the UK commit twice as much crime as do the French but we send 35% less of our criminals to prison!

Our overburdened prison system is not as a result of courts sending too many people to jail - the unpleasant truth is we commit far too much crime and letting prisoners out early, the over-use of suspended sentences and all the other hoops the courts jump through to avoid jailing criminals will solve nothing.

Until we, as a society, face up the problem of our  tendency to criminality we will not solve the 'prison problem' - we simply can't build enough prisons to do so.

If you doubt our predilection to break the law consider this - in Germany people wait patiently at a pedestrian crossing until the little green man pops up, even at 2 in the morning where there isn't a car to be seen for half a mile, because to cross against the lights is unlawful.

We on the other hand treat such crossings as a challenge and gleefully dance between the queuing cars, totally ignoring the lights.

And this is on the basis that less than 5% of committed crime results in a conviction, let alone imprisonment - God help us if the police actually caught more criminals rather than interviewing people for alleged 'non-crime hate incidents'.