| |
Crime and
Punishment
Click
here for PDF version
Brian
Bedkober and Nicole Billante debate whether greater
use of prison and more police work in reducing crime
rates
We
don’t need more police
Brian Bedkober
Last
year, The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) promoted
a discussion of
policing in Australia. The starting point for the discussion
was the fact
that
while the incidence of serious crime (defined as homicide, rape/sexual
assault, assault, robbery, break and enter, and motor vehicle
theft) has risen by
about 450% since 1964, the number of police per 1,000 serious crimes has
fallen from
225 in 1964 to just under 60 in 2000. Although the number of police rose
by about 37% between 1964 and 2000, this increase was outstripped by the
incidence of
serious crime. The proportion of crimes cleared (that is, crimes solved
by the police) also fell by nearly one-third between 1964
and 2001 when ‘only
roughly 22% of serious crimes were cleared’.1
CIS
made a number of suggestions in response to these findings.
One was to throw their weight behind the ‘broken
windows’ theory of policing, where
prompt intervention is encouraged to deal with the little things like
graffiti, vandalism, jaywalking
and noise on the grounds that any crime at all is damaging to society
and if people observe that the little things escape punishment then they
are
tempted
to try bigger things.2
Consistent
with a ‘broken windows’ approach, there is considerable evidence
that high police visibility is one the most effective deterrents to crime. ‘Broken
windows’ policing also often incorporates the targeted policing of ‘hotspots’ (on
the grounds that a high proportion of crime is committed at particular
locations) and the targeting of repeat offenders (since a relatively
small number of people
are responsible for a disproportionately large amount of the crime).
Implementation of this kind of policy frequently leads to the apprehension
of offenders with
outstanding warrants who, not surprisingly, are the same people who commit
the ‘smaller’ crimes
like fare evasion. It is claimed, however, that this ‘broken windows’ policy
will have to be associated with an increase in the numbers of police
(or police surrogates).
Furthermore,
according to CIS, there are ‘strong
patterns of a rise in crime in response to falling imprisonment per
crime’.
That is, imprisonment per se, as compared to other forms of punishment,
is an effective way to reduce
crime rates. Australian imprisonment rates, however, have
been falling. ‘The
chances of going to prison if you commit a serious offence’, says
Nicole Billante, ‘have
fallen from one in seven in 1964 to 1 in 32 in 2000’. Not only do
we need to increase rates of imprisonment and numbers of
police but, argues Billante,
we also need more effective policing (improved ‘strategic employment
of police resources’). In this regard ‘advances in technology, such
as CCTV (closed circuit television) and DNA matching may
have also contributed to increased
clear up rates’.
As Billante
observes, ‘crime, as with most
social phenomena, has many causes and thus also many
solutions’.3 I would like to suggest an alternative (or complementary)
approach that I believe merits greater attention.
Increasing
crime rates in the United States, say Billante and Saunders,
were
accompanied by increasing imprisonment rates so that ‘today the US
has a much higher per capita prison population than any of the other
countries we looked
at but its crime rate has plummeted’.4 Yet there are a number of
reasons why crime rates may fall. In addition to increasing imprisonment
rates,
new policing
strategies and more police we also have to consider mandatory sentencing,
changing age populations (with the number of crime-prone young males
decreasing with reduced
birth rates and an aging population), the state of the economy and
increased private sector responses (neighbourhood watch, alarms,
private security
personnel and so on).
The number of private security personnel in the United States,
for example, now exceeds the number of police officers. Another
major
factor in decreasing
crime
rates in the US may have been the spread of private neighbourhoods
such as Residential Community Associations and Gated Communities;
some 50
million Americans now live
in these communities. Yet another critical factor is the role played
by laws
permitting or denying citizens the right to carry concealed weapons.
As John Lott has demonstrated, allowing citizens the use of guns
(concealed or in
the home) to defend themselves has had a tremendous effect in reducing
crime rates
in the United States. That 34 US states have acknowledged this
fact (up from eight in 1985) and passed the right to carry guns
may be
reason enough
for
the reduction in serious crime rates.5
Increasing
imprisonment rates also has some downsides. As Billante
notes, prison works in two
ways—as a deterrent and as a means of excluding criminals
from society so that they can no longer carry on with their
criminal activities. But has
imprisonment really been effective in
excluding criminals
from society? When imprisonment rates are high the system becomes
congested and we see an increase in plea-bargaining in which criminals
negotiate
with the justice
system and the wishes of victims are disregarded. In the United
States criminals serve less than 37% of their sentences
and a study of more
than 100,000 former
prisoners showed that 63% of them were re-arrested for serious
crimes, including more than 2,000 murders.6 At the end
of 1998, there were
over four million
people in America who were either on probation or parole and 57%
of these had been convicted
of a felony crime and released straight to probation.7
RESTITUTION
AS A BASIS FOR PUNISHMENT
Too little attention is paid in the current justice system to restitution
to the victims of harms and to reducing the costs of the system to the
taxpayer. Increasing police numbers and increasing imprisonment rates
is expensive. So are the costs imposed on victims when they are not compensated
for the harm done to them. The current system allows victims of a robbery,
for example, to lose not only their goods with virtually no prospect
of recovery, but also to be further victimised by being taxed to pay
for the legal processes and detention of the offender. If fines are imposed
on offenders they are paid not to the victim but to the state.
The
restitution model of punishment requires criminals
to make up for the damage that they have done.
As Mary Ruwart suggests in Healing Our World, costs
should include not only reimbursement for victims’ losses
but also the costs of the legal processes required
to catch and convict offenders and the costs of
their incarceration. Costs might also reasonably
include an amount to cover the inconvenience and
stress caused to victims. The costs of the legal
process and incarceration would be owed to the
enforcement authority (public or private). Where
property has not been stolen, for example in cases
of physical injury, offenders should be allowed
to buy their way out of punishment at a cost agreed
to by the victim. Because the costs of catching
criminals will be charged to them, the restitution
model may well result in the maximisation of deterrence
as well.
In
a system based on restitution, the pursuit of justice
would be a much more economical proposition (particularly
for the poor) since lawyers would be more prepared
to offer their services on a contingency basis
(if that were permitted). Overall costs would be
reduced since the guilty would be reluctant to
adopt delaying tactics by pursuing frivolous appeals
if, when they ultimately lost, they were personally
responsible for the costs incurred. Furthermore,
if the plaintiff is able to benefit via restitution
then there is an incentive both to report crimes
and to be a witness against the accused, an incentive
that is not always present when fines and punishment
are the province and property of the state.
A
problem with the restitution model is that no payment
can adequately compensate for some crimes. The
amount of any payment made must also be commensurate
with the ability of the offender to pay while at
the same time allowing some incentive for early
payment. Criminals are capable of earning an income
while institutionalised. Those who refuse to work
would have to depend on charity to survive (or
to repay their debt). Victims might also be able
to insure themselves for crimes for which adequate
compensation could not be obtained from the criminal.
|
Moreover,
as Billante and Saunders observe, ‘locking up novices with
experienced criminals can increase the chance that they will
re-offend . . . and it can be
a brutal experience. Furthermore, any expansion of the prison system would
be a very expensive option’.8
So is
increasing police numbers. It has been estimated, says
Billante, that an increase of 1,000
policemen in New South Wales would cost $77 million (although
locking up criminals and increasing police numbers need only be expensive
if the taxpayer is forced to fund them, see box opposite).
For this reason CIS
has
proposed a trial of Community Support Officers (CSOs), with or without an
increase in ‘real’ police, to deal with ‘order-maintenance
and low level crime’.9 The
involvement of ‘the community’ in policing activities is supposed to enhance
social capital, yet the CSO concept could lead to a corps of busybodies and
peeping Toms, tattling on their fellows and ‘policing’ their moral preferences.
In the UK these CSOs have the power to demand identification, detain individuals
for
up to half an hour, issue on-the-spot fines and confiscate private property.
Respect
for the law can only be maintained if the law is worthy
of respect. A side effect of making everybody a criminal
is
that the concept of crime becomes
blurred and genuine criminality becomes less unacceptable. This raises
a critical issue—the distinction between illegal and immoral
activities. It is when this distinction is not made that citizens
are often turned into smugglers, tax-evaders
and law-breakers by regulatory governments gone mad. Increasing ‘crime rates’ are
in no small part related to the increasing criminalisation of consensual
acts (e.g. prostitution) and victimless crimes (e.g. smuggling, gambling).
Making
drugs illegal, to give another example, results in an exponential increase
in their price so that addicts often indulge in grand larceny to support
their habits.
Criminals,
like everybody else, balance the risks and rewards of the
actions they contemplate. This is the
principle that underlies putting more police on the beat
in the ‘broken windows’ scenario. Yet there is not only
less chance of getting caught when police numbers are low
but also when the police are busy locking up prostitutes,
seizing marijuana plants and issuing speeding tickets.
There is also much less chance of being appropriately punished
when the courts and jails are clogged up by those apprehended
for minor ‘offences’ for which the only victim is the offender.
While law enforcers pursue these offenders, the genuine
criminal has a proportionally lower expectation of getting
caught and genuine crime becomes worth the risk.
Allied
to this problem is, as Billante observes, the fact that ‘Clear
up rates for robbery have the lowest clear-up rate for
crimes against the person at 31%
in 1964 reducing to 27% in 2001.’10 Clear
up rates are obviously affected by factors other than the decreasing
ratio of police to crime. The
fact that property
crimes account for the most significant falls in clear up rates (a
60% drop since 1964) raises the question of what effect the decline
in respect
for private
property,
and the fact that many householders are insured against these losses,
has on the diligence with which police pursue these cases.
Furthermore, ‘zero
tolerance’ policing has led to stop and search powers that
threaten traditional concepts of individual rights to privacy, self-defence
and private property. Although it is important for citizens to have
access to technological
wizardry (microwaves, portable cameras, magnetic sensors and lasers)
to protect their property from criminals, I am not so sure about
the wisdom of giving that
technology to police without strong limits on its use to forbid the
indiscriminate monitoring of citizens. It is when the laws extend
to calling criminal those
acts for which there is no victim to complain or to offer evidence
of wrongdoing that the police must use other means to catch the ‘criminal’.
It is in the presence of victimless crimes and oppressive tax regimes
that authorities find technological
advances (and entrapment) so necessary and useful—and they resort
to wiretapping, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), militarised law
enforcement
and other police-state
tactics to identify the ‘criminal’.
We certainly
do need to apprehend those who indulge in ‘little’ episodes
of abuse of private property and to make sure that perpetrators
of more serious crimes are caught and convicted. But instead
of pouring more resources into increasing imprisonment
rates and the numbers of police and pretend-police available,
we may be better advised to free up existing numbers of
police and utilise existing prison places by re-examining
what it is that we declare ‘illegal’, and therefore, ‘criminal’.
If we increase police numbers without first taking this step then we may simply
find that the greater numbers of police will busy themselves attending to minor ‘offences’ since
more serious offences are less visible and less amenable to action until after
the fact. Increased numbers of police in these circumstances may simply result
in more police going after the things that they do see—that is, you and me.
Endnotes
1 Nicole Billante, The Thinning Blue Line, Issue Analysis No.31 (Sydney: The
Centre for Independent Studies, March 2003).
2 Nicole Billante and Peter Saunders, ‘A Glimmer of Hope on the Mean Streets’,
The Australian (6 March 2003).
3 Nicole Billante, The Beat Goes On: Policing For Crime Prevention, Issue Analysis
No.38 (Sydney: The Centre for Independent Studies, July 2003).
4 Nicole Billante and Peter Saunders, ‘The Price of Crime Without Doing Time’,
The Adelaide Advertiser (24 January 2003).
5 John R. Lott Jr., The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You’ve Heard
About Gun Control is Wrong (Regnery Publishing, 2003).
6 Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates, (Hoover Press, 1999), pp.143-144.
7 Morgan Reynolds, ‘Privatising Probation and Parole’, in Alexander Tabarrok
(ed), Entrepreneurial Economics (Oxford University Press, 2002), p.117.
8 N. Billante and P. Saunders, ‘The Price of Crime’.
9 N. Billante, The Beat Goes On.
10 Nicole Billante, ‘We Need More Police and to Use Them Better’, The Canberra
Times (25 March 2003). The
author
Brian
Bedkober is
Editor of Australian Private Doctor magazine, in which
a longer version of this article first appeared.
The Benefits
of More Police and Imprisonment Outweigh the Costs
Nicole Billante
I agree with several of
Brian Bedkober’s
points, but many of his arguments are complementary to
the policy suggestions
that I have
put forth in earlier work
rather than alternatives.
Bedkober argues against
employing more police to look into petty offences, but the statistics that
I used in ‘Does Prison
Work?’ and ‘The Thinning Blue Line’ focused
on homicide, robbery, rape, serious assault, burglary, and motor vehicle
theft—offences
that we can all agree are criminal acts. The number of police per thousand
serious crimes has fallen from approximately 225 in 1964 to around 60
in 2000. A debate
about the grey areas of the law does not alter the conclusion that we
have seriously weakened our capacity to fight crime.
It is true that I
do argue that one way of tackling the crime problem
is by addressing minor offences, as supported by the ‘broken windows’ theory
of crime. This includes directing resources to hotspots (focusing police
in areas of high crime and disorder).
The concerns raised by Bedkober about the implementation of ‘broken
windows’ policing
are valid. Clamping down on minor offences through such things as increased
stop and search or targeted arrests requires walking a tightrope between
personal liberties and effective crime control.
I have refrained from
endorsing a blanket transfer of New York’s practices to
an Australian context, but instead have argued for adapting the principles
to local circumstances. Research evidence clearly supports the ‘broken
windows’ theory.
It is up to the Australian public and policymakers to determine what
the issues of disorder are locally and how they wish police to address
them.
Bedkober says police should
not be using their power as a moral prerogative. But part of the role of
the police is to act on behalf
of citizens
against those who are violating fundamental property rights and
interfering with
the quality
of life of others. We delegate authority to these figures in order
to deal with problems that we feel need to be addressed. There
may be times
when those
issues
are not necessarily of a ‘criminal’ nature, for example youths
loitering outside local shops (which is often intimidating to older
people). The police
can assist in maintaining
society’s standards without having to take criminal action against
individuals. One of the key points in Wilson’s original ‘broken
windows’ article is
that policing has become over-formalised; traditionally the role
of the police
was to maintain
order as much as to clear up crimes, and maintaining order can
be achieved without arrests clogging up the courts.
In a liberal
society we have individual rights which the state must respect
but we also have responsibilities to our fellow citizens
to act in a
considerate manner towards those around us. For the majority
of people,
a reminder
from figures
of authority of their responsibilities is enough to address the
issue. For instance, the research on hotspots showed that the
mere presence
of police
was enough to
curb disorderly behaviour significantly. Similarly, in my discussions
with various police officers they have confirmed that often a
word of caution
is enough to
stop uncivil behaviour. When confronting hardened thugs bent
on terrorising neighbourhoods, however, retired detective Tim Priest
has advocated
a return to ‘old-style policing’,
where officers could expect a ‘good punch in the mouth or broken
nose in the line of duty’.1
With
regard to restitution as opposed to imprisonment, I believe
the use of this as an alternative is limited. I do support the
idea of
restitution directly
from
the offender to the victim. Some proponents suggest that this
can be beneficial
in humanising the crime for the offender (and thereby impacting
on the likelihood of re-offending) and providing a more direct
sense
of justice
for the victim.
However, the state still has a role to play in punishment by
acting on citizens’ behalf.
‘Does Prison Work?’ looked
at imprisonment as part of a crime prevention policy, namely deterrence and
incapacitation. Research supports the
claim that it is effective in stopping some crime being committed. However,
imprisonment also
has a functional role in reinforcing societal values. Crime
does not just
affect
the direct victim. Crime is a violation of the collective
values that as a society we have chosen to legislate. It is important for
members of
society
to
feel that
crimes against these values are adequately punished. The
state as our delegate has a legitimate role to play in acting against those
that break
the law.
While restitution has great potential to compensate the victim,
it is also important to have punishment that allows the public to feel the
offender has
paid their
debt to society. Deprivation of rights and liberty, for whatever
time period is deemed appropriate, is the ultimate means by which we can enforce
this.
Bedkober notes that factors
in addition to increased police and higher imprisonment should be considered
in evaluating
the drop
in crime in the United States. I have pointed out several
times that
changing
drug
markets, the economy,
and changing demographics have also been contributing
factors. Bedkober adds private security to this list.2 Yet our crime continued
to rise in the 1990s
despite Australia having higher economic growth
than the United States, an aging population (our crime
went up when
the number
of young
men was decreasing),
and about 100,000 private security officers.
An analysis of New York’s crime
by William Sousa and George Kelling3 found
that policing was the primary contributor to the drop in crime.
Bedkober questions
whether imprisonment has been effective
in excluding criminals from society. While there may
be a large proportion of offenders who are not imprisoned
in the
United
States, American
imprisonment rates are
still far in excess of Australia’s. They have 300
prisoners per 1,000 serious crimes, and we
have just under 30.4 There
is also double the likelihood of being a victim of
crime in Australia compared
to the US.5 There
is clearly room for improving the system in the US,
but American policy is still
more
effective than Australia’s has been in safeguarding
members of society from criminals.
Research
continues to establish beyond doubt that
prison works. Steven
Levitt, this year’s winner of the John Bates Clark
medal awarded to the young economist deemed
to have made the greatest
contribution to
the discipline, shows in one of his innovative
papers that reducing the US prison
population by one
increases the number of crimes committed
by 15 per year and costs the economy more
than it saves.6
Recent NSW research similarly
leaves no doubt that falling imprisonment rates (coupled
with falling clear up rates as the two
are interconnected) were a major factor
explaining
the growth
of
robberies in the state since 1974. The NSW Bureau
of Crime Statistics and Research estimates
that a 10% increase in the
arrest and imprisonment
rate
would produce
a 3% to 4% reduction
in the number of robberies (although
they also claim that
getting heroin off the streets would
have an even bigger impact).7
Further,
the degree to which restitution offers
a solution to the congested justice
system
is questionable.
The
system is clogged
because there is a large number of
serious crimes being committed. Choosing
to imprison someone or not does not
alter the fact that the offender must still
be processed
through
the justice
system.
Bedkober also expresses
concern that Community Service Officers would become
a corp of
busybodies. In my
paper, ‘The Beat Goes On’,
I highlighted this as a potential problem.
As I initially stated, this is a concern
with any position of authority. The
means of addressing
this issue comes down to recruitment
procedures, management by local
police
(who oversee CSOs), and accountability
to the public.
The same can be said
of the use of technology by police.
Bedkober cites my point that
the use of CCTV
and DNA
matching may have contributed
to higher clear-up rates. Undoubtedly
this technology can assist police
in identify
offenders, but
nobody advocates indiscriminate
use of such technology.8
No public policy is free of flaws;
policy decisions always require a
weighing up
of the positives
and negatives. Part of this equation,
though, needs to include
the cost of high crime rates to society. In social
terms it impacts on trust levels
and social cohesion.
In
economic
terms we already
have high financial
costs through increased insurance premiums, continual
payment for repairs to public and
private property,
lost productivity
of victims,
etc.9 While there
may be social and economic costs attached to
the policies I have presented, we
must
consider the
savings we
make in
other
areas. Steven
Levitt’s
US research certainly suggests that
the cost of imprisonment is outweighed
by the savings
from the crimes it prevents.
Endnotes
1 Tim Priest, ‘The Rise of Middle Eastern Crime in Australia’,
Quadrant (January-February 2004), p.11.
2 He also argues that the growth
of gated communities in the US
coincided with
the drop in crime.
However, the suburban
communities that increased security
were not the areas that suffered from high
crime rates in the first place;
the crime
problem was
concentrated in
urban
areas.
3 William Sousa and George Kelling, ‘Do Police Matter? An Analysis of the Impact
of New York City’s Police Reforms’, Civic Report
22 (New York: Manhattan Institute, 2001).
4 It should be noted that while attempts were
made to base these figures on like crimes,
differences in classification
between
the US and Australia
mean
direct
comparisons in the crime figures should be
made with
caution.
See below for the international victim survey,
which is a better tool
for comparison.
5 See John van Kesteren, Pat Mayhew, and Paul
Nieuwbeerta Criminal Victimisation in Seventeen
Industrialised
Countries (The Hague:
Ministry of Justice
WODC, 2000), p.178.
6 The Economist (8 January 2004).
7 Marilyn Chilvers and Don Weatherburn, ‘The Impact of Heroin Dependence on Long-term
Robbery Trends’, Crime and Justice Bulletin 73
(October 2003).
8 Recent work by the Australian Institute of
Criminology has estimated the cost of crime
to be around $31
billion, with
the cost of the
criminal justice
system
to be $6.4 billion. See Pat Mayhew, ‘Counting the Cost of Crime in Australia’,
Technical and Background Paper Series #4 (Canberra:
Australian Institute of Criminology, 2003).
9 See Caspar Conde for an analysis of CCTV,
its effectiveness in helping to reduce crime
and
the questions it poses
for civil liberties.
C.
Conde, The
Long Eye
of the Law, Issue Analysis (Sydney: The Centre
for Independent Studies, forthcoming 2003).
The degree to which restitution offers a solution
to the congested justice system is questionable.
The system is clogged because there is a large
number of serious crimes being committed. Choosing
to imprison
someone
or not does
not alter
the fact that
the offender must still be processed through
the justice system. The author
Nicole Billante is a former Research Assistant at The
Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) and author of the CIS Issue Analysis reports,
The Thinning Blue Line and The Beat Goes On (2003) as well as the CIS Occasional
Paper, Preventative Policing (2004)
Policy
is
the quarterly review of The Centre for Independent Studies.
For more information on subscribing to Policy, click HERE
If you are interested in the Centre's activities and publications,
why not subscribe to e-PreCIS, our regular
email update on the latest news and events.
(e-PreCIS requires
html capable email facilities, such as Microsoft Outlook Express
or Netscape Messenger)
|
