“Beware of all those in whom the urge to punish is strong” counselled Friedrich Nietzsche. I’ve always thought that it was perhaps the wisest thing that ardent man ever said. I’ve made some of the other arguments why we should be cautious about Tory and Labour plans for mandatory prison sentences for knife carrying. Time for a foray into the cash consequences of the thing.We all know that prison is hellish expensive. While I’ve alluded to the monetary implications of Labour and Tory mandatory prison sentences for knife carriers, I’ve not attempted heretofore to tot up, in concrete terms, how many pennies this Red-Blue (I suppose, Purple) punishment phantasm would cost. Helpfully, the Scottish Liberal Democrats have overtaken my intentions and have been doing the sums, concluding that it would involve a lean outlay of £21 million to give effect to Labour preferences, and a stonking £83 million to realise the Tory, two-year proposal. Those are their conclusions, but what was the working behind it? The gopherish John Lamont, mellifluous Tory popinjay, alleges some elementary mathematical errors: “A mandatory minimum sentence for carrying a knife would act as a massive deterrent and any amount of dodgy arithmetic from the Lib Dems won't alter that fact”. Not specifics, you understand, just the lazy judgement of an ‘X’ beside the reasoning and off to the teachers’ lounge for a Kahlúa and coke. I won’t even mention his porcine Labour companion’s remarks – they’re simply too crass.
How did they reach the 1345 figure? This I’ve had difficulty nailing down. The answer is certainly to be found in the text of Robert Brown’s written question to Fergus Ewing, which I’ve attached at the foot of the post for your information. There are two new categories of people who’d go to jail under either the Tory or Labour policies. Firstly, any of those convicted of “having in a public place an article with a blade or point”. In 2008/09, 1847 individuals were convicted of having done so, 669 going to jail. This makes for 1,178 new prisoners, with those cases disposed of by fines or by community sentences joining the rest in jail. This figure does not even take into account those persons prosecuted for possession of knives as offensive weapons.
However, we also have to look at those given custodial sentences. Many of these were sentenced to periods of less than Labour’s six months. In the new mandatory regime, these peoples’ sentences would be extended, if they had been tried under the proposed system. These figures are found in Robert Brown’s second parliamentary question. And it reveals that 130 people were sentenced to terms up to three months, with a further 251 falling in the category of three months to six months. This constitutes a further 381 who would be spending more time in jail under Labour's proposals alone and ratcheting up the daily cost. Again, this does not even factor in those prosecuted for possession of an offensive weapon or folk who fall foul of restrictions of offensive weapons laws. To my eye - potentially the result of my own unmathematical accounting skills - the suggested Liberal Democrat figure of 1345 looks conservative, if we take 2009 and assume, in a workmanlike way, that its trends will be replicated in the future. Lets use the 1345 figure for now, conscious that revision of the figures upwards seems likely.
In 2008-09, the Scottish Prison Service estimated that the cost of each prison place was £31,106. The Liberal Democrat argument seems to assume that we can simply take this annual figure and divide it by months. So, for Labour’s six month plan for mandatory imprisonment for knife carrying, the individual cost per prisoner is £15,553. For Tory, two-year sentences, we simply double it, with an estimated individual cost of £62,212. If we jail the 1345 people for six months apiece – this takes us to £20,918,785, rounded up in the BBC report to the neater £21 million. For the Tories, the BBC rounded down. If we process the 1345 people in this way, the cost is £83,675,140.
It might be objected that the easy accounting assumptions which this analysis relies on are too broad brush, given to imprecision. In particular, can it be assumed that the cost is simply halved across a half year in prison, or that the cost of longer sentences is simply reached by doubling it? Although I’ve no direct insight into the Scottish Prison Service’s operating costs, one might imagine that certain elements of the costs are pretty stable – food, upkeep, linen – while processing costs are likely to ramp up the more people you have just passing through on short stints. That said, none of this is particularly to the defence of mandatory prison sentences. Even if we can’t be crystalline and sharply delineate the precise dead weight these policies would put about the shoulders of public finance, these are the sorts of concrete figures we are dealing with. Can the purple pair really think of nothing better which could be done with at least 21,000,000 or 83,000,000 pounds weight of public money? Where will they find the funds to pay for their respective posturing positions?
Written Questions & Answers 10th March
Robert Brown (Glasgow) (LD): To ask the Scottish Executive how many individuals were convicted of carrying a knife or other bladed weapon in each of the last three years, broken down by manner of disposal.
Fergus Ewing: The crime category for handling an offensive weapon includes the offences of having in a public place an article with a blade or point, possession of an offensive weapon and restriction of offensive weapons. Over the last three years overall, the type of weapon has been recorded with around two-thirds of offences. Where the type of weapon has been recorded, for the offence of having in a public place an article with a blade or point, 90 per cent of the weapons are knives, and, for the offence of possession of an offensive weapon, 22 per cent of weapons are knives.
The available information is given in the following table:
Persons with a Charge Proved in Scottish Courts for Handling Offensive Weapons1, 2006-07 to 2008-09
Offence/disposal
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
Having in a public place an article with a blade or point
Custody
644
629
669
Community sentence
545
596
667
Monetary
404
348
354
Other
162
146
157
Total
1,755
1,719
1,847
Possession of an offensive weapon
Custody
404
363
385
Community sentence
552
518
559
Monetary
616
580
497
Other
223
240
241
Total
1,795
1,701
1,682
Restriction of offensive weapons
Custody
0
0
0
Community sentence
0
0
0
Monetary
0
1
0
Other
0
1
0
Total
0
2
0
All offences
Custody
1,048
992
1,054
Community sentence
1,097
1,114
1,226
Monetary
1,020
929
851
Other
385
387
398
Total
3,550
3,422
3,529
Note: 1. Where main offence.
Robert Brown (Glasgow) (LD): To ask the Scottish Executive how many individuals convicted of carrying a knife or other bladed weapon were given a custodial sentence in each of the last three years, broken down by length of sentence.
Fergus Ewing: The crime category for handling an offensive weapon includes the offences of having in a public place an article with a blade or point, possession of an offensive weapon, and restriction of offensive weapons. Over the last three years overall, the type of weapon has been recorded with around two-thirds of offences. Where the type of weapon has been recorded, for the offence of having in a public place an article with a blade or point, 90 per cent of the weapons are knives, and, for the offence of possession of an offensive weapon, 22 per cent of weapons are knives.
The available information is given in the following table:
Persons Receiving a Custodial Sentence in Scottish Courts for Handling an Offensive Weapon1, 2006-07 to 2008-09
Offence / custodial sentence length
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
Having in a public place an article with a blade or point
Up to 3 months
269
185
130
Over 3 months to 6 months
240
207
251
Over 6 months to 2 years
130
226
265
Over 2 years to less than 4 years
5
11
20
4 years and Over
0
0
3
Total
644
629
669
Possession of an offensive weapon
Up to 3 months
200
144
103
Over 3 months to 6 months
141
113
143
Over 6 months to 2 years
59
96
123
Over 2 years to less than 4 years
4
10
15
4 years and Over
0
0
1
Total
404
363
385
Restriction of offensive weapons
0
0
0
All offences
Up to 3 months
469
329
233
Over 3 months to 6 months
381
320
394
Over 6 months to 2 years
189
322
388
Over 2 years to less than 4 years
9
21
35
4 years and Over
0
0
4
Total
1,048
992
1,054
Note: 1. Where main offence.
Extrapolation is always a poor way to discuss economics... though it does make good headlines.
ReplyDeleteThe real question should be based around the cost/benefit equation for the effect of the potential reduction in knife crime victims.
worthwhile implementing = (cost of cases due to not punishing) - (cost of implementing)
Given the costs associated with having to patch up and compensate victims of crime, it'll probably work out as a good deal.
The equation still ignores the human element from the victims side and the perpetrators. I imagine being stabbed or going to jail is not ideal for either.
Egad, an economic discourse, with a dismal felicific calculus to justify its conclusions!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Joe. Although I take your point about extrapolation on the chin – and indeed reference some doubts in the argument itself - I disagree with you about the fundamental questions we ought to be asking. Primarily, because I'm not convinced by the possibility of meaningfully reducing these costs and benefits to any “objective” calculation that ought to determine how we make our choices. If we get beguiled by these external justifications for our conclusions, that is our folly, not the necessity of the conclusion. And that, without factoring in the great gulfs of uncertainty and indeterminacy involved.
That said, I’m happy to engage in a loose language of causes and consequences. With this you can contrast those who are particularly keen on sending folk to prison. Their advocacy of this position - save for the occasional rhetorical flourish seeming to denote a consequentialist theory - is solidly predicated on deontological judgements, and sod the consequences. In particular, although the argument that those in jail won't be stabbing other people might seem compelling - I don't think we can ignore the broader implication that jailing (mostly young men) will probably have the unintended pay-off of generating or confirming them in the manner than first brought them to the attention of the forces of the law.
Its important also to bear in mind the limited ambit about what we're talking about. Not stabbings, but mandatory prison for people who are simply discovered carrying pointed implements. Although, obviously, the two phenomena are related - and the difference between a wounded victim and not may be a slim hair's breadth in some cases - the point is that many underlying facts and circumstances may be involved, and Courts should be able to evaluate that in the particular circumstances, rather than having their judgement superseded by the unworkable preferences of Baillie Bill or Richard Baker's latest populist wheeze.
The best justification for this coming from the tory camp seems to be that a criminal imprisoned for three months may be back in jail three months later, (before eventually incurring a serious penalty) and so may as well be locked up for longer first time.
ReplyDeleteif we assume that prison is useless as either deterrent or reforment for periods of less than sic months, then there is a strong argument that locking someone up for two years on the first offense saves money (e.g. two years and no further offences vs. several periods of shorter imprisonment, plus the prison and court costs of bringing them to book on each occasion).
Whilst neither Labour nor the Tories have convinced me, I might be open to arguments based on costings along these lines.
To come at an argument we would need numbers not on prison periods, but overall prison/crime careers of criminals. So not x number of sentences are y long, but x number of prisoners have spent y non-consecutive months in the clink.