More on the Punitive State

Beatrix Campbell in today's Guardian, discussing the National Offender Management Service (NOMS):


"Noms's mission is to reduce re-offending, but custody yields a 60% recidivism rate. And putting more and more people in prison actually puts public safety at risk, says Professor Michael Jacobson, New York's former chief probation officer. He has been in Britain this month arguing that, contrary to myth, the city's crime was cut in the 1990s not by prison but by community punishment and probation. So, why privatise probation, rather than focus on reforming the big but unsuccessful prison service? We are left to guess - and my guess is that the government's view of what works with offenders has become that nothing works, that criminals are part of a larger residuum with criminal tendencies, and if we can't make them earn a legal living wage, and we can't kill them, all we can do is control them. So, criminal justice replaces social justice."