Venkat Raman
Auckland, August 1, 2023
Labour MP Michael Wood touched on a sensitive issue during an interview with Indian Newslink last week (please read the story on the front page of this issue). He agreed with the need to address the issue of rising crime in the retail industry (particularly in dairies and convenience stores owned by small businesses) but did not believe that imprisoning young offenders and throwing away the key would reduce crime.
“Is tougher punishment the only answer? Can you show us the evidence of crime coming down because of tougher laws? “Do we seriously want the young offenders to be locked away for good or should we have programmes to rehabilitate them back into society?
These were some of the questions that he asked politicians and people campaigning for law change to consider. He is of course aware of the anger and anguish of the Indian community which dominates the retail sector which is currently experiencing violent attacks and ramraids.
He said that the safety or the lack of it in the retail sector is a serious issue.
Mr Wood called for evidence to the demand for long prison sentences to combat crime.
But such evidence is hard to come by.
Two years ago, in an interview published in the Guardian, Penelope Gibbs, former magistrate and founder of Transform Justice said that there was no evidence that increasing imprisonment reduces crime.
“However, restorative justice has delivered promising results. That is where the person who committed the crime has to hear the victim and has to apologise,” she said.
High rate of imprisonment
Nicholas Turner, President and Director of the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based organisation which is working to reform the American system of sentencing and immigration, said that nearly two million people are in prison in the United States of America.
But the problem of mass incarceration in the USA is not just a function of the number of people in prison or the much larger number of people who cycle in and out of jails every year.
“Our system also incarcerates people for far too long, doling out excessively long sentences. Concepts that have been central to sentencing theory, policy and practice to date such as retribution, deterrence and excessive incapacitation have been backed by paltry evidence of success, demonstrating instead, more evidence of harm. States and the federal government have leaned on these principles to justify as much prison time as possible. But doing so has not been effective in delivering accountability and building public safety. Instead, this system has caused harm that has disproportionately impacted Black and Latinx communities,” he said.
Mr Turner worked as a clerk for Federal Judge Jack Weinstein (1996-1997), who strongly, and publicly, opposed mandatory minimums and the then-rigid federal sentencing guidelines.
“But there was little he could do to deviate from those directives. I saw many people cycle through his courtroom. A large percentage of them were people who, out of desperation, had agreed to carry cocaine into the country in exchange for a couple hundred dollars and were arrested at JFK Airport.
Judge Weinstein did not sit on the bench. We would all sit around a table in the well of the courtroom: the judge, the Assistant United States Attorney, the convicted person, their family, their attorney, and me. He tried to apply a modicum of human decency to a process that is utterly dehumanising. It was sometimes all he could do,” he said.
In most cases, Judge Weinstein had no option but to sentence them to mandatory minimums or make a ’downward departure’ from the guidelines, which would be subject to reversal if the prosecutors chose to appeal. As a general matter, those convicted would have to serve excessively and pointlessly long sentences.
Devastated families
The Vera Institute found through surveys and studies that the lives of those sentenced to long prison terms and that of their families were devastated.
“Millions more continue to be today, as states and the federal government continue to use mandatory minimums, three-strikes laws, and other sentencing enhancements. And yet, evidence to support our retributive, punitive approach is limited. In fact, we know this approach doesn’t make our communities safer in the way proponents claim and the public assumes. A 2021 meta-analysis of 116 studies found, for example, that custodial sentences do not prevent reoffending, and can actually increase it,” Mr Turner said.
That is because incarceration destabilises people’s lives. The brutality of US prisons, the difficulties in securing employment and housing with a conviction history, and the overall lack of financial security all negatively impact people and their ability to succeed after prison.
An integrated approach
Mr Wood was right when he said that all of us should approach the problems jointly and talk with the families of the young offenders, hold them to account and make them understand the feelings of victims of their crime.
“These young offenders come from broken families, families that are addicted to drugs and families in which parents do not take responsibility. We have several programmes in place to effectively address the problem. We want the affected families to address the issue, we want the young offenders to go through counselling and other programmes, and we want them to meet with the victims if the victims agree. We want to break the cycle. That is the way to bring about change. We have to make the young people understand and help them turn their lives around, not by pretending to be tough. That will not help anyone,” Mr Wood said.
There seems to be room for Restorative Justice because it is a community-based response to crime that aims to hold offenders to account for their offending and, as far as possible, repair the harm that they have done to the victim and the community.
Participation in Restorative Justice is voluntary and involves a facilitated meeting between the victim and offender.
Perhaps it needs to be tried again with a fresh perspective.
