“Long Prison sentences stop people from committing crimes.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?
In theory, the purpose of imprisonment is to protect society by separating offenders who are in the position to threaten the lives and personal security of other members of society. The secondary aim of incarceration is to condemn behaviour that the community views as highly abhorrent and which constitutes a serious violation of the most basic of human values. [1] One would initially think that lengthening prison sentences would heavily reduce or even stop individuals from committing heinous crimes, and there is even multiple pieces of research that agree with the idea to a certain extent. However, much evidence, that has caused no small amount of surprise, has been discovered on the topic disproving the theory as well.
On one hand, research conducted by academics using data released by the Ministry of Justice under freedom of information requests to track the effectiveness of penal policy and recorded crime across the 43 forces in England and Wales between 1993-2008 at Birmingham University have established that prison was particularly effective in lessening property crime when aimed at serious and repeat offenders, wherein an increase of average sentence length of one month for burglaries (from 15.4 to 16.4 months) would reduce burglaries in the following year by 4,800 cases, from an annual total of 962, 700. For fraud, an increase in sentences of one month (from 9.7 to 10.7 months) would result in a decrease of 4700 offences annually, out of 242,400. The report declares this to be “a substantial effect, especially when we consider that the length of sentence usually corresponds to approximately half the actual time spent in custody”. [2]
The study also approximates that a policy of forcibly compelling offenders into serving a higher proportion of their sentences within prison would result in a further dramatic effect on slashing crime, partially because more convicts would be behind bars longer. If offenders were made to serve 2/3 of their sentences in custody, rather than the half currently implemented, it suggests that the number of recorded burglaries would be reduced by 21,000 and number of frauds would similarly decreases by 11.000.[2]
On the other hand, looking at the deterrence aspect, long prison sentences do not do much at all. A review by Steven Durlauf and Daniel Nagin from the University of Wisconsin and Carnegie Mellon University respectively discovered little proof that criminals responded to crueller sentencing, but contrarily found much more solid evidence that increasing the certainty of punishment deterred crime. This matters for policy, as it proposes that incarcerating the vast numbers of people in jail is not only costly, but also is ineffective as a deterrent. Similarly, a new working paper presented by Giovanni Mastrobuoni and David Rivers from the Universities of Essex and West Ontario respectively, at the Royal Economic Society annual conference provided new evidence that there was more to it; criminals do value the future, but significantly less than the average person. Harsher sentences work as a deterrent, but only up to a certain point. [3] Research carried out by Birmingham University academics also comes to the same conclusion that tougher prison sentences reduce crime, and that during periods when the police detect more offences, the overall crime rate tends to drop, inferring that levels of police activity and staffing have a direct impact on criminal activity. [2]
Nevertheless, an article written by Paul McDowell, the ex-governor of Brixton prison with nearly 20 years in the prison service, directly opposes the apparent effects proposed by the study carried out in Birmingham University that longer prison sentences reduce or even stop crime from occurring at all. In his experience at Nacro, the role prison plays in these cases is to delay the next offence from occurring. A slightly longer sentence just means a slightly longer delay in reoffending. Other pieces of research, such as the one released by the National Research Council on mass incarceration in the United States, have already established that short-prison sentences do not lessen reoffending, especially for serious repeat offenders; and that lengthy prison sentences are redundant as a method of deterring crime. He then proposes that getting to the root of offending behaviour would be a better alternative to radically reduce crime instead. [4][5]
Taking a look from another countries’ perspective, the white paper on crimes released by Japan’s National Police Agency shows that convicts who are released early from prison on parole are less likely to commit additional offenses than those released after serving their full sentences, which is incredibly interesting as the paper blatantly opposes the proposal that longer sentences may be the way forward in stopping crime. According to the paper, the authorities related to law enforcement investigated 242, 486 people last year in connection with criminal offenses, excluding traffic violations. Of them, 139, 848 were first-time offenders, and the remaining 122, 638 were recidivists. The number of multiple offenders have been decreasing since 2007, falling by 5.7% in 2013 from 2012. The number of first-time offenders has been declining at a rapid rate with the 2013 figure representing a 10.9% year-on-year fall. The report also shows that of the 39.5% of convicts released from prison in 2009 were imprisoned again within 5 years, with the rate varying between those released after serving their full sentence (50%) and those released on parole (28.7%).[6]
In early May, 2015, Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had announced the overall recidivism level in Malaysia to be among the best in Asia, at a rate of 7.6% whereas other countries remain at levels around 25-35%. According to the Malaysian Prisons Department assistant commissioner, Abdul Kadir Jailani Ismail, the number of prisoners who were repeat offenders had been decreasing, forming only 8% of the total prisoners, compared to 30% five years ago, as reported to Bernama in January, 2015. However, prisons and long prison sentences played no part in this decrease in recidivism, but rather a revamped community rehabilitation programme that started in 2011 was responsible for the change. An education programme collaboration between the Prisons Department and Open University Malaysia that is a part of the overall rehabilitation programme was found to have a very positive effect on the inmates, in that 100% of the people who took it have not been involved in any criminal activities once they are out of prison, which provides a convincing argument that long prison sentences may not be beneficial to reducing crime. [7]
In my personal opinion, when prisoners are sent to prison after being convicted of a crime, it does physically prevent them from committing crimes as they are forcibly confined, prevented access to and alienated from the outside world in that sense. However, I think the only purpose long prison sentences serve is to delay the crimes serious reoffenders will commit. Offenders sentenced to long prison sentences are more likely than not to be victims of greedy privatised countries of the prison industrial complex more concerned with making a profit than in actually reducing crime, so it is highly unsurprising that longer sentences are ineffective at reducing crime. Furthermore, when a convict is sentenced to a log prison sentence, the more time other members of society have to realise this and attach a negative stigma upon the offender, which makes it harder for the offender to reintegrate into society, get a job, and even avoid discrimination. When the offender cannot achieve any of these things due to this, the only avenue left open to them to attain their money and basic needs is through crime as they cannot achieve this through any other method, which results in an increase in crime instead. With all these pieces of evidence going against longer sentences stopping crime, it is easy to say I strongly disagree. [8]