Policing the November 30 Strike Action
I am showing solidarity with lecturers at my University and all other public sector workers who taking part in the strike action today – although I don’t exactly have a job from which to strike I have avoided the department (and was particularly disappointed at it not cancelling a conference occurring there today) and am not responding to work emails. I also went into Cambridge to join the UCU feeder march up to Parker’s Piece and then took part in the march around Cambridge.
Neither the feeder march nor the main march were heavily policed – despite me seeing a much heavier police presence than usual on my way in to town, there were very few police accompanying us on the actual march. Interestingly, the heaviest police lines were situated at the entrances to the Lion Yard and the Grand Arcade – the main shopping centres in Cambridge town centre. The fact that the police seemed to be mainly interested in maintaining the separation between the public and private spaces and protecting the private organisations which occupy those shopping centers in Cambridge is pretty nice symbolism for the problem underpinning and stimulating the action taking place today. Moreover, does it suggest a misunderstanding of what is happening today – are the police conflating these marches and picket lines with the riots of August 2011? Very worrying if so.
One further thought: I think that the unions need to make sure they don’t stray into the realms of ageism with their opposition to raising the retirement age to 68. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a retirement age of 68 – it’s no more arbitrary than 65 already is and there are many jobs that can be carried out perfectly well at age 68 – indeed there are people who want to carry on working beyond 65 but aren’t allowed to do so. However, many speakers on the stage as well as the placards being held up were suggesting that anyone aged over 65 is, to put it bluntly, past it. One of the megaphone wielding Union stewards taught the crowd a chant and then said ‘if you can’t remember that now then you’ve got no chance when you’re 68′ – I think my 85 year old grandma would have something to say about that! The cuts to pensions are being driven by an ideology which predicates the private over the public; market forces over the equal distribution of capital – this is the issue; not an arbitrary 3 year difference in the pension age and the Unions would do well to remember it.
Shock horror… an offender had a bit of luck!
Another example of how ex-offenders are vilified in the media (and maybe in public opinion). The ITV gameshow has, shock horror, allowed an offender to win £1m in a game of pure luck. For some reason, the media doesn’t think that offenders, a group of people who probably have the worst luck in life, can engage in a bit of fun to win some cash.
When the show was launched in May, presenter Ant McPartlin said there would be checks in place to ensure winners were “not going to be criminals”.
At the same event, Cowell said the show was likely to feature “all types”.Asked how show bosses would make sure there was a worthy winner, McPartlin said: “All the checks will be in place so they’re not going to be criminals.
What exactly is a ‘worthy winner?’
Moreover, as Stephen Farrall has pointed out on the new, recommended, Discovering Desistance blog,
Interestingly, the chap in question goes on to report that he is helping his family, now working and wants to use the money to start a new life. As someone who has interviewed numerous people who have stopped offending, this all sounds very familiar – albeit that few have the fortune (no pun intended) to win £1m. But again, we can’t see past a person’s past …
Why can’t we give the guy a break? He’s clearly trying to make amends and giving him the chance to legitimately win some cash to ‘start a new life’ is surely no bad thing.
Should offenders lose their benefits?
A couple of days ago Iain Duncan Smith said that ‘If you knowingly and willingly embark on criminal behaviour, the consequences of that should be… that you lose some of your benefits under the current system’. But isn’t that the point of a fine? It really annoys me that benefits are seen as some kind of privilege rather than a right (which is especially irksome in the case of contributions-based JSA which is, in effect, someone claiming money back from the state that they have paid into the system).
What this suggests to me is that the government think that those who are in benefits need punishing more than those who are in employment – how does having a job not make one less culpable when found guilty of a crime (in fact, it could increase culpability if the offence is related to an abuse of power in the workplace)? Surely, in the interests of proportionality the fine is a fairer way of financially punishing people than removal of their benefits. In any case, if the offender gets sent to prison (as many rioters are being), they will lose their benefits anyway.
The popularity of crime
I like Google’s new tool, the Book Ngram Viewer with which you can search 5 million books published between 1800 and 2000. Apparently Google have normalized the results by the number of books published in each year so the results shouldn’t be too skewed. I thought I’d run some criminology related searches.
Crime, Criminal, Offender:
We might not be living in such a crime obsessed world as we might think. Interesting to note that offender is less popular than it was.
Prison, Probation:
Interest in the prison appears to have waned with probation staying stable after the formalisation of the Service in the early 20th Century. Interest in the prison population has shot up:
And, my favourite, Risk:
The Risk Society!
Army veterans and the criminal justice system
I don’t know what to make of the Howard League’s report which says that ‘when they do [go to prison] veterans are more likely to be serving sentences for violent and sexual offences’ and the government’s desire to use ex-service personnel as a way to economise in the Probation Service, as reported here.
MoJ Business Plan
The MoJ, along with all government organisations has today published its business plan. The Rehabilitation Revolution appears to be taking shape:
Create a system introducing greater involvement of the private and voluntary sectors in the rehabilitation of offenders, including use of payment by results, to cut reoffending
The Department will no longer…
…provide rehabilitation services directly without testing where voluntary or private sectors can provide it more effectively and efficiently
Amused to note that the first action is already underway, but overdue:
Very interested to see what the Green Paper has in store.
The panopticon
Modern day panopticon:US offenders unmonitored as tagging system fails
Particularly this line: “The offenders – about 300 in the state, most of them sex offenders – were never aware they were not being tracked, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Linda Eggert said.”
Compendium of reoffending statistics and analysis
On Probation has blogged about the recently published reoffending statistics compendium. I couldn’t agree more with his analysis.
The important thing is persuading the public of the fact that so many offenders are so disadvantaged and that some (‘some’ being the operative word here) programmes appear to work- when the media focusses on the fact that 74% of offenders reoffend in 9 years, the difficulties of clearly representing and disseminating information about how we deal with offenders and reoffending statistics become clear.
It’s positive to note that the word reconviction is preferred over reoffending and that the frequency of offending is being taken into account but a shame that the statistics still fail to take into account any increase/decrease in seriousness of offending. I think I am mentally classifying it as ‘a step in the right direction’.
BBC drama about the Probation Service
The BBC has commissioned a drama which will be set in the Probation Service. It will be interesting to see how accurately the Service is represented by Tony Marchant- if you need to consult with someone who has spent a considerable amount of time observing life in probation, do get in touch! The drama will be called public enemies- presumably this is a nod towards the way offenders are seen as the enemies of the public who need to be brought on side through reparation and restitution.
I enjoy looking for inaccurate representations of the Probation Service on TV. One memorable incident occurred on EastEnders when Ian Beale was doing his Unpaid Work. There he was, working away in his orange vest (they got that bit right) when along came his daughter who was having a crisis – she walked up to Ian, they had a chat and they then both walked off- complete with orange vest- without a word to or from his UPW supervisor about talking to members of the public and, basically, absconding from UPW without permission!
New Probation Blog
I have been very absent from blogging recently, partly because I’ve been busy but also because I’ve been kept so amused and interested by a newcomer to the blogging scene that I haven’t felt the need to add my two penneth. A real life probation officer blogging about probation: http://probationmatters.blogspot.com/. Strongly recommended reading.
