Solving the prisoner’s dilemma

With the glimmering colourful lights and the smell of popcorn, the Empire at Leicester square seems an unlikely place for serious discussion on public policy. Yet it may be the starting point for an important movement to change public perceptions and the politics of youth justice.

Yesterday about 400 people were gathered at the Empire for the first screening of the documentary The Fear Factory. The film powerfully described how the fear of crime is maintained by sensationalist media coverage and the cynical tactics of political parties. This has lead to harsher and more punitive responses to youth crime, which in many cases do little more than entrench the criminal behaviour. The documentary, produced by Spirit Level Films, is connected with a campaign for a criminal justice policy that is more humane and long-term in its perspective – and ultimately better at delivering safety for our neighbourhoods. nef’s latest report Punishing Costs was launched in connection with the screening.

With interviews from key experts and practitioners, the documentary shows how the public’s beliefs about the risk of becoming a victim and the general trends in the amount of crime were far from reality and all evidence. Britain has become a safer place in the past two decades – yet the fear of crime remains stubbornly high.

Unfortunately, it is perceptions that drive politics. One of the safest political strategies in the recent past has been to promise to crack down misbehaving youth and to hit them where it hurts. The Fear Factory documents how any deviation from this pattern is quickly struck down, as happened to Cameron when he suggested understanding the social causes of crime. The film also points an accusing finger at the media that gives disproportionate attention to violent cases and misrepresents sentencing as more lenient than it is in truth.

This reaction may actually create the monster that it so much fears. In the climate of alarm about youth crime, the imprisonment of children and young people has remained on very high levels. Prison as an intervention is incapable of dealing with the real causes of crime, and does little more than temporarily isolates an individual from contact with society. About three in four young people released from prison return to crime within a single year.

At the same time custody uses up massive amounts of resources that could have truly improved the safety on our streets. Our report Punishing Costs shows how the full cost of a year-long sentence in prison is £140,000. It is worth pausing to think about what could be achieved if these resources would be put to a positive use.

The screening was followed by an excellent panel that included some prominent criminologists and politicians – and an ex-editor of a tabloid who astonishingly displayed no sense of regret for his past role. Most of the panellist agreed that current policy was too much determined by knee-jerk reactions to high-visibility criminal cases in the media and an arms race between the parties to appear to be the true guardians of law and order.

One of the solutions they proposed by the speakers was to create a cross-party committee for a longer-term vision of developing criminal justice policy that all parties would sign up to. This would curtail the harmful competition between parties, which has led to the current punitive arrangements that hardly anyone believes to be productive or humane. Such a committee, together with a better debate and engagement with the public, is part of the recommendations of Punishing Costs.

Documentaries are powerful tools in transmitting knowledge and awareness of issues. At a time when the media is transmitting a largely false picture and political parties are failing to take the leadership to change perceptions, a film may be exactly the tool that is needed. I hope the Fear Factory, and the coalition forming to campaign around it, receive the attention they deserve.

Aleksi Knuutila
Researcher in the Valuing What Matters programme at nef
Original article: http://neftriplecrunch.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/2088/
nef

Attend to consciousness, the key factor.

I think it is worthwhile pointing out, as this film will, that it is unhelpful to our children, who will be our nation’s citizens, to exaggerate the scale of problems that they are responsible for.

I would, however, like to take a different approach to that of criticising anyone, including the journalists and the media, and offer proven solutions to the problems that our children are experiencing.

That’s my profession, giving people proven solutions. Or, should I better say, giving people the ability to solve their problems themselves in a more coherent manner. I am a teacher of Transcendental Meditation.
So many problems bearing down on our youngsters and it seems difficult to know where to start in attempting to solve them, particularly if the key problem is generally unknown.

The key problem is one of low levels of consciousness in the individual and in society. That one factor, consciousness, stands at the back of every decision that we make and, if you can change that then behaviour will change automatically. It also, of course, stands at the back of every article that a newspaper publishes.
If there is a good enough quality of technique to swing the individual spontaneously into a more positive pattern of life then all sorts of worthwhile spinoffs occur, both for themselves and people who care about them.

If you had a hand in choosing the benefits of such a turnkey technique would the following feature in your design? These form the outcomes of an initiative using Transcendental Meditation.

• Supportive and complementary to valued interventions currently in use
• Propagating happiness, reducing anxiety and depression, eliminating stress
• Undemanding for the practitioner, not a mental skill that one has to work at, it becomes a very private thing
• Something that the mind will like, and will be encouraged to do again and again
• Definitely not a religion, no belief is required
• Solid body of evidence to check, including case studies, putting it head and shoulders above anything else available

http://www.mum.edu/tm_research/welcome a leading brain researcher speaks

• Not necessary for all to learn as effect spills over onto non-practitioners
• Non-contextual—it will work anywhere in any situation
• Accessible to learn within a few hours
• Convenient to do anywhere.

John Markham
Director for Rehabilitation: Global Country of World Peace (UK)
Maharishi Foundation

Tories 'distributed misleading figures on violent crime'

BBC investigation finds Conservatives omitted Home Office caveats about use of crime statistics

The Conservatives today denied distorting statistics amid claims that they distributed misleading figures on violent crime.

Official figures sent out for campaigning purposes to Tory activists in constituencies throughout England and Wales appeared to show that there had been sharp increases in violence during Labour's time in office.

But a BBC investigation found that the Conservatives omitted Home Office warnings that the figures for the periods before and after 2002 were not comparable because of a change in the way violent crime was recorded.

Instead of police officers deciding whether an incident should be recorded as a violent crime, the decision was given to the alleged victim, with the effect of forcing up recorded violence by an estimated 35% in the first year, according to the BBC.

The British Crime Survey suggested that people's experience of violent crime has in fact fallen by around 50% since 1995.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, defended using the statistics without any warning to alert readers to the change in recording methods.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning: "There are certainly changes in the recording methods, but the point is that they are the only comparators available. They are published by the Home Office.

"We don't create crime figures. We use the official crime figures published by the Home Office. The Home Office has continued to use the same comparators. As an opposition party, we don't make the statistics. We can only use what the Home Office publishes."

Grayling said that the British Crime Survey was not a reliable guide to violent crime because it omitted offences such as murder and manslaughter.

He said that an independent assessment of the Home Office's use of statistics in 2006 found that warnings attached to official figures were designed to be politically advantageous to the government.

"If you talk to anybody in the streets, and particularly in the poorest areas which are most affected by violent crime, you will find people will absolutely say that violent crime has risen sharply over the last 10 years," he said.

"The reality is that that is the life they are experiencing. The problem we have got to deal with is not debates over statistics. It is actually sorting out these problems, it is delivering better policing in these areas and getting to grips with the problems in these communities."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/03/tories-violent-crime-statistics/print

Chance UK

Like many other partners in the Fear Factory coalition, Chance UK is part of the early intervention movement which is the future of the fight against crime.

We want to protect the future victims of crime by reducing the number of 94,000 children who enter the youth justice system every year. Because this number will clearly lead to a lot of future victims of crime.

We all know that prevention is better than cure. It is easier, cheaper and quicker to prevent someone turning to a life of crime than it is to help them turn away from it. It saves the massive financial, social and emotional cost that such a life will lead to.

Think of a teenage boy who is just starting a life of crime. Rewind back to his primary school years – research shows that there is an 80% chance he was showing signs of behavioural problems then. He might have been getting into fights with other children, found it hard to concentrate in class and been excluded from school several times, leaving him facing permanent exclusion from the school system.

Already low in self esteem, perhaps experiencing a difficult home life, this child will be far more likely to start spending time with negative influences in the form of older children who are also outside the mainstream school system. He will look for a sense of belonging in this group, and be happier to do whatever task the group sets for him, no matter how immoral or illegal. And once in the youth justice system, experts agree that it is very difficult to take the boy out of it, or to reduce the number of victims of his crimes.

But we can stop all this. By spending a bit of time one-to-one with the boy while he’s still at primary school, building up his self esteem and providing positive outlets for their energy and talents. It’s the everyday men and women who mentor the children that do this work, which leads to calmer children in the home, more stable families and better education not just for that child, but for all his classmates as well.

It’s up to all of us to not just change perceptions of the children, but to challenge their potential; do something practical to change a child’s future. As Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Matt Collins
Chance UK

The Place2Be: the case for early intervention

Most juvenile crime is committed in mid adolescence. Much of it is petty and needs no more than a firm caution and plenty of educational, work and recreational opportunities. A relatively small but significant proportion commit more serious crimes. There are various reasons for this but, regardless of socio-economic conditions, most are struggling with emotions that they can’t cope with. They are in varying degrees very angry, scared, lonely or wary, usually for good reason, and without help or understanding, they turn to crime as some form of release or expression.

The Place2Be recognises that these teenagers were young children but only a few years before – and that most of their emotional problems were brewing in childhood well before they got involved in crime. And so we believe that it makes sense to make contact with them early and offer support before things build up out of proportion.

The Place 2Be is basically an early intervention service and we know that we can prevent some children from entering the youth justice system at a later stage.

It is a voluntary organisation that has developed during the last 15 years a highly valued and respected school based counselling service in 17 regions across England, Scotland and Wales. We work in 155 schools, mostly primary. We support teachers and parents; we offer a self referral service for all children in the schools (approx 50000 children) and we provide individual and group counselling to those children who particularly need it.

Children, by and large as a result of our intervention, are in a better position to learn and access their education; parents feel more confident in handling their children; teachers feel better supported in understanding and responding to the children in their classrooms. We are encouraged by the many positive comments of head teachers who are quite clear that we make a big difference to the overall well being of the whole school and to the mental health of the children.

We very much want to be part of the coalition to call for the depoliticisation of young people and for more preventative and humane ways of addressing the problems in youth crime.

Peter Wilson
Clinical Adviser
The Place2Be