Dismantling the Fear Factory

Ken Clarke’s critique of the longstanding 'prison works' orthodoxy has received considerable media coverage. The Justice Secretary’s reform agenda has been divisive but it was widely welcomed by many working in the criminal justice sector – including the organisations in the Fear Factory coalition.

This growing third sector coalition is calling for cross-party commitment to creating and implementing an effective, long term Criminal Justice strategy based on evidence. It was formed as a result of a documentary film by the same name.

The film explored the crisis in our criminal justice system that has led to a record prison population. It uncovered how disproportionate fear of crime, and notably a fear of young people, has been stoked by the media and politicians in a “law and order arms race”.

It was that very arms race that Jack Straw attempted to rekindle in the aftermath of Ken Clarke’s announcements as Justice Secretary. The title of Jack Straw’s article in the Daily Mail was ‘Mr Clarke and the Lib Dems are wrong. Prison DOES work - and I helped prove it.’ A backlash for which he was castigated by a former head of the prison service, Martin Narey, at a Labour Party Conference fringe event.

With this backdrop, Ed Miliband’s election as the new leader of the Labour party could represent a positive result for penal reform. This is a view that has been expressed by Andrew Neilson of the Howard League for Penal Reform among others. The temptation for Ed Miliband would be to outflank the government on the right by returning to New Labour tough on crime rhetoric. However, Ed Miliband’s position seems to differ strongly from that of Jack Straw:

"I don't think we should try to out-right the right on crime" ...."A lot of what [Clarke] is doing is motivated by budget cuts; but he is opening up an opportunity for us to redefine part of the debate about criminal justice.”

An article by Ed Miliband in the Sunday Telegraph suggested that Ken Clarke’s proposals on criminal justice reform are one of the areas of public policy where he will be largely supportive. This is an opportunity to create an amnesty on the arms race. My hope is that Ken Clarke will hold his nerve and that Ed Miliband will help to build a new political consensus on penal policy.

Robert Patrick

The Fear Factory - Cinepolitics

Gracia McGrath, CEO of Chance UK and Mike McCahill, The Sunday Telegraph's Film Critic appeared on the Cinepolitics Show on Press TV on Saturday, 7th August to review The Fear Factory documentary.

You can watch the whole show here...

http://www.imafilm.com/cinepolitcs_142.html

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

Why did we commission “the Fear Factory”?

With funding from The Nationwide Foundation, three Third Sector agencies came together to commission this film, Safer Wales Ltd, Construction Youth Trust and Addaction. We all work intensively with young people who are either offenders or at risk of offending, to break the cycles of vulnerabilities, and prevent re-offending.

Frustration with External Factors
We have become, over the past 15 years or so, increasingly frustrated with the external factors which work against us and the young people themselves. In particular with how they are viewed, and treated, both within the criminal justice system, and also to some extent in schools, or in the care system, and in particular by the media, which we feel has a lot to answer for in perpetuating stereotypes and demonising young people, lessening their chances of exiting from the dire circumstances some of them find themselves in.

Wake Up Call – we need a Cross-Party Solution
We want the film, to be a wake-up call – to politicians, colleagues in the Third, Public and Private sectors who work in this field, and to the media. We want to ask you to join this coalition to develop and commit to a realistic and practical way forward on youth justice; and reject a system in which young people and crime are used as pawns to sell papers or to attract votes.

We want all of our politicians to work on a cross-party solution, and deal with the issue with proper long term planning, policy and delivery, and evaluation over a longer period.

Young people are entering the criminal justice system at younger and younger ages. We need to be asking the question why? Where are we failing them so badly that no one seems to be picking up the signs early enough to prevent this?

“Somewhere to go and something to do”
Consultation with young people who are “hanging around” on the streets, consistently shows the same result. They want somewhere to go, and something to do. It’s not rocket science. Too often, the same level of short-sightedness results in money being spent on practical measures that can end up alienating the young people even more – costly resources such as CCTV cameras and alley-gating schemes, please the electorate and meet short term community safety targets, whilst longer term or more creative solutions like more detached youth services and facilities, or, for example, the community (weekend, evening and school holiday) use of schools, are often talked about, but not delivered.

“All I wanted was an adult to talk to......................”
Many agencies in the Third Sector, including Safer Wales, find themselves delivering programmes to prevent “re-offending”, and we know that mentoring or other support schemes, and other interventions – if they are engaged with on a voluntary basis and occur at the right time – can make a huge difference to offending or reoffending behaviour. But the question we should be asking ourselves is why do these schemes need to exist? – Why are these young people getting into offending behaviour in the first place? – How is it that we have not effectively tackled and managed risk factors and vulnerabilities evidenced over 10 years ago - what have we really done to tackle poor literacy, poor parenting, low educational achievement, mental health issues, child abuse and plain old poverty?

Short-termist thinking doesn’t work...
The answer is that much has been done – but most of it in short term bursts, measured over 2 – 3 years. Partly this is because much new work is done with grant funding, which has a shelf life of 3 years at best. Partly, it is to do with performance reporting within agencies and with grant funders; targets (again annual or 2 – 3 year at most, coinciding with the electoral cycles), often related to what both local and national politicians want to demonstrate they have done on crime and disorder, to the electorate. It is also partly to do with the fact that some local CJS partners (the police and the CPS for example) may have centrally set annual targets which pro-actively ensure that more incidents are recorded and more young people are charged, and so, whilst they are all members of crime and disorder partnerships or other statutory partnerships, such as those which concern children and young people, they are constrained in their action, and there is no incentive to undertake things in a different fashion.

These things reflect the fact that no guidance over the past 30 years has taken into account the basic fact that if you want to prevent youth offending, you have to analyse plan and evaluate in a continuous process, long term, at least for a 5 – 10 year period. For example a literacy or vocational skill initiative which is undertaken in one year may support more 13 year olds to stay in school, which could impact on youth offending figures in 5 years time. Practically speaking this is about the years in which a young person may be most vulnerable to criminality – age 10 –20. The wider picture, tackling poverty and poor parenting, health issues etc – starts in early years and could go right through to age 25.

Join the coalition...
We want national and local politicians to work with us on these issues, and not put obstacles in the way; we want national and local media to stop stereotyping and demonising young people.

We need to act on this issue – TOGETHER and NOW – I appeal to my colleagues in the Third sector and elsewhere – sign up to the Coalition, and let’s start getting this right. We are delighted that so many organisations have already signed up to the coalition and hope many more will do the same.

Barbara Natasegara MBE
Chief Executive
Safer Wales Ltd