The Tribune

By Malcolm Strachan

A RECENT spate of shocking crimes – including sex attacks against elderly women – has prompted some familiar talk. We must be tougher on crime, tougher on criminals. Perhaps so – but in our reaction, we appear to be falling into an old trap of seeking to carry out action, any action, without regard to whether or not it really works.

Few ideas for tackling crime are really new – and the suggestion in the House during last week from FNM MP Adrian White was another that has been tried before elsewhere.

He suggested a three-strikes policy. If that sounds familiar, well it should. It’s a 30-year-old policy first tried out in Washington in 1993. Its use was not limited to there, 22 more states following suit in the next couple of years.

Interestingly, the laws were passed at a time when crime rates were falling – though public concern about crime was soaring. That disparity between perception and reality might be a recurring theme when talking about crime.

Mr White said of his suggestion in the House: “If you have three serious offences, we can debate whether that individual should remain in custody for the rest of their lifetime, three strikes and you’re out, your freedom to be back in society is done, or we can debate it along the lines of three strikes and when you’re out, the public knows that you’re out, the public is on notice, they’re aware and can take precautions.”

Let’s break that down a little – there are two suggestions here. The first is that if you commit a third serious offence then you’re not ever coming back out of prison, the second is that if we do not go down the path of permanent incarceration, then we just tell people when you’re coming out so that the public can “take precautions”. What those precautions are, Mr White did not specify.

One of the biggest problems encountered under the three-strikes law in the US was that it led to a substantial increase in the number of prisoners serving long sentences for relatively minor offences. One such example was the case of Leandro Andrade. He had a history of drugs and burglaries when he tried to rob two stores of a grand total of $153 worth of videotapes. Because of his past history, he was jailed for 50 years. Another case involved Timothy Tyler who was sentenced to life in prison without parole under the federal version of the three-strikes law even though neither of his two previous convictions were violent – he had not served any prison time previously.

Well, let the criminal be on notice, some might say – why have sympathy with anyone if they are committing a crime? Perhaps so – but the real effect to take notice of when it comes to these measures are whether it serves as a deterrent to crime. Does it drive crime figures down?

With 30 years of evidence to draw on, the answer seems to be there is no significant impact on deterrence. A 2004 study found no significant effect on deterrence – although some of that may be because of pre-existing laws in place.

After all, repeat criminals have always faced stiffer penalties already. You will note the number of times an attorney defends his client saying this is their first offence and they receive a lighter sentence as a result. A repeat offender? Not so much. Their sentencing goes up, not down.

Another study found that some criminals did indeed stop committing small crimes – but that some were pushed towards more serious offences on the basis that if they are going to get a long sentence regardless if they get caught, they have little to lose by committing more serious crimes rather than misdemeanors. Even worse, a 2015 study found a 33 percent increase in fatal assaults on law enforcement officers as criminals seek to avoid the prolonged punishment if they get caught. Such laws can also slow down the court systems as prolonged appeals seek to avoid longer sentences, and even before any sentence occurs, those prisoners end up in jail because what’s to lose with fleeing the jurisdiction if permanent imprisonment is your alternative? Prisons would need to be bigger, and investment in courts too if they are to keep up with the associated backlog.

Mr White, of course, suggests that this is for serious offences only – and other jurisdictions have done that too. Alaska, for example, introduced its three-strike policy in 1996 for serious felonies only – with a third strike earning a 40 to 99-year sentence. In the two years following the introduction of such a law, it was used a grand total of once.

This is not the only time we have leaned towards implementing programmes that have been tried elsewhere and perhaps found wanting.

The Shock Treatment scheme – which is a social reform programme that has been turned into a TV show – exposes children to the consequences of crime. It is designed to shock participants and show them what lies ahead if they stay on a wayward path. While the intentions particularly of Dr Carlos Reid may be wholehearted, again there is plenty of evidence on whether such a scheme has an effect.

Locally, there are the anecdotal stories – it was recently noted that some of the participants are in prison or have been killed, while other individual success stories of graduates were touted. It feels good to say this person did well, or that the programme is a success even if only one person is helped – but that person may have been helped another way just as much. Taking a broader view shows whether statistically the programme is working collectively – or not.

In the UK in the late 70s, the Short Sharp Shock scheme was introduced – with young lawbreakers placed in an almost military environment. Afterwards? Most went on to commit further crimes and about 90 percent were unemployed.

So what are the alternatives? Well, getting people jobs is a major one. People holding down a job and earning money that way are more likely to steer clear of crime.

But an even bigger one is one that does not work as well as a soundbite: Help.

Many of our repeat offenders also have an addiction to drugs. Treatment programmes have routinely been shown to have a greater success rate in steering people away from crime than repeated calls to be tougher.

If the goal is to reduce recidivism and with it reduce the overall level of crime, the answer lies not in soundbites or kneejerk calls for action, it lies in examining the proven evidence across a number of programmes that have already been carried out across the world.

We do not need to reinvent the wheel, we just need to follow the best examples implemented elsewhere. If in doing so we can reduce our crime levels, then that is the success we must aim for.