Unit Four - Whodunnit?
"He hath showed strength with His arm. He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek".- Preacher: We are all sinners
- Philosopher: Society is not possible without justice
- Politician: Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime!
- Pilgrim: Most downtrodden people still behave.
Having looked at some theoretical ideas in Units One and Two and looked at ourselves in Unit Three, we are now ready to apply some of our thoughts and doubts to more practical matters.
Here are some ideas about criminal justice; it should be:
- Predictable - people should know in advance what the penalty will be for an infraction
- Open - it must be seen to be done, not transacted in secret
- Communal - the community administering to itself
- Impartial - those dispensing should not favour one side
- Objective - those dispensing should not be swayed by their own feelings or experiences
- Balanced - sentences must take account of containment, deterrence, punishment and rehabilitation
- Holistic - the needs of the perpetrator, victim and society must be taken into account.
The first obvious thing to note here is that some of these ideas are in direct conflict with each other; for instance the idea that justice should be predictable but take different circumstances into account obviously presents some problems.
However, before we go any further, let us return to our Grunge Park teenagers. They have been accused in the Magistrates Court of taking part in a punch-up with the Khans (see Unit Five) and the Magistrates have found them guilty of affray and have asked for reports; here, in summary, is what they get back:
- Phil lives in a settled, happy home but prepares the open air to sitting in his house with a computer or watching television.
- Joe's parents are in financial difficulties. His father was defrauded of all his life savings in a financial scandal for which no compensation is available. His parents have left their comfortable, suburban home and are now in a scruffy and cramped flat. Joe's father is working huge amounts of overtime and his mother has taken up work for the first time. When they are at home the parents row continuously. Joe, who has also suffered through these changes, feels disappointed and rejected. Joe has a previous conviction for shop-lifting basic foods.
- Mary's 'parents' are not interested in her. Her mother wanted a boy and she is the only child and her step-father deliberately ignores her. Mary's father is desperately hanging on to his job in spite of being bullied continually by his boss and so he escapes in television and his wife feels she needs to support him.
- Sam's mother is a poor character in every way, not very bright, weak willed, a prey to men. Sam has never settled at any school for more than two terms and she never knows where she is at home or school. She has special needs but the school is very poor and there is no budget.
- Jane's parents are both out of work. They were at the local factory but when it closed because of "Globalisation" they could not find anything else to do. In their late '40s they have lost hope and escape through alcohol but this makes the father violent and the mother retaliates. Jane feels unsafe and creeps back into the house late at night when her parents are asleep.
- Bill comes from a long line of criminals, some of whom have resorted to violence. His father and elder brother are both drug dealers and all the family are users. Bill has a previous conviction for a similar offence and has been fined for possession of cannabis.
Questions:
- The Court will consider criminal records before social background when deciding on sentences; is this the right way round? Which is more important? Is this a general answer based on a theory or should it be different for each case?
- How do you balance social background and previous convictions? Should Phil get a heavier sentence than Bill because his behaviour seems to come out of a stable background even though Bill has previous convictions?
- The court is very limited in what it can do by way of remedial action. It cannot, for instance, recommend a rise in benefits for the families of Joe or Jane, or special educational facilities for Sam.
- Should the court sentence Bill to a period away from home on, say, an adventure holiday?
- Finally, how just is a system that treats criminal behaviour separately from everything else?
These questions in turn should lead us to think about underlying causes. The first question we need to resolve is whether or not we accept the concept of underlying causes and, if we do (remember Unit One) is this a personal belief, a theory or a paradigm?
If we do not believe in underlying causes then we are likely to discount social reports and concentrate on previous convictions. If, however, we accept some notion of causality, is it sensible for us as a society to go on dealing with the individual and collective pain of thousands of children and their families as if they lived in social isolation?
- First, then, we have to establish how far back we are prepared to apportion responsibility. Should we apportion all the blame to our six teenagers or should we also hold their parents to account? Further, should the children and their parents be able to plead in mitigation that they were not wholly responsible, that there were circumstances beyond their control?
- Secondly, if we accept some degree of mitigation, should such places as Grunge Park exist? Should our so-called 'social housing' be grouped together on so-called 'estates' or should it be scattered throughout our communities? How responsible are we for housing segregation? Are we acting fairly when we say that we are against integrated social housing because it is our primary responsibility to maintain the value of our property for our children who will inherit it? On this last question, might our children not be better off in a fairer and less violent society, even if this meant that their financial inheritance was less valuable?
- Thirdly, we need to think about our economic system. Is it inevitable that 'Globalisation', which has blighted Jane's life, should operate in the way that it does? It might also have caused problems for the boss of Mary's step-father and for Joe's father. In three out of the six cases the problems in the households are not directly the result of the behaviour of the parents. The problem, of course, is to go backwards into what causes globalisation and ask whether the phenomenon can be reversed or, in any case, humanised. We will return to this in Unit Five but, for the time being, let us simply ask whether we should use domestic resources like legislation and taxation, to mitigate the kind of economic problems faced by three of our families.
- Fourthly, what are we supposed to do about Sam's household? From what we know she is highly likely to continue to get into trouble until such time as she, like her mother, becomes prey to a man and is a serial single mother herself. As this is so predictable, what should we do about it?
- Finally, Bill is in a worse position than Sam but it is equally predictable. Ever since he was born Bill has been marked out as a future criminal; his parents knew this as did his nursery school teacher, his primary school head, his social worker, his doctor and his vicar. What were they supposed to do about it, individually or collectively?
Having thought about the individual cases and underlying causes, let us now go back to the ideas about justice at the head of this Unit.
- Predictable - Is it possible to reject causality completely? Do we accept that predictability can only be within certain bounds, that sentences cannot be uniform?
- Open - Can the process be totally open when reports are confidential? After all, the parents are not on trial. It is also true that Family Court proceedings are currently held in private although there is a current debate about whether they should be. What is the reason for making some proceedings private and others public?
- Communal - All three magistrates live in the same local authority as Grunge Park but they have never been there. They live in leafy suburbs and are comfortably well off. How communal is this?
- Impartial - The police give evidence clearly and simply but the Legal Aid Solicitor is hurried and harassed. Of course, the reverse could be true. How helpful is an adversarial system?
- Objective - We can never really measure this criterion; so it is important to be careful when discussing it. How objective are the kind of media reports we read on criminal cases?
- Balanced - The sentences attempt to strike a balance but they would not be universally welcomed. Many people think that containment and punishment are the sole criteria for sentencing. Over the past two decades there has been a relentless populist push to raise prison sentences so that in the UK we have more prisoners per head than any other country in the EU. Our ratio is only exceeded in democracies by the United States. Countries with much lower imprisonment in the EU have similar crime rates to ours; and while imprisonment rates have been rising the incidence of crime has been falling. How should we strike a balance between the purposes of sentencing?
- Holistic - Inevitably, perhaps, the victims of the Disorderly Behaviour think the sentences were all too light. Should they have some say in the sentencing or should we preserve our arms-length system which allows impartial people to determine guilt and sentences? Is there a conflict between caring for the victim and the criminal?
Having looked at individual cases and some of their ramifications, let us return to our four prototypes.
So far we have really been examining the positions of the Politician and the Philosopher. We have asked about where the balance has to be struck between dealing with the individual criminal and the underlying causes and we have implicitly accepted the Philosopher's position that society is not possible without justice, and we have also implicitly accepted the Politician's position that any act is a combination of social circumstances and individual will. However, our Pilgrim and Preacher raise some uncomfortable points which question the whole of what we have discussed so far.
Pilgrim raises the point that people from the same, difficult circumstances behave differently. For all we know, Bill has a younger brother who has reacted so much against his family that he has never committed a crime and is determined to stay that way. Phil's sister has never been in danger of hitting somebody on a Friday night and Joe knows plenty of children worse off than him who are completely law abiding. Yet it has to be admitted that although there are crime free paupers and millionaire criminals, there is a general pattern in rich countries that relates poverty to crime to such an extent that, quite independently of legislation or sentencing, there is an inverse relationship between crime and economic growth. Nonetheless, Pilgrim's point is the most serious objection to the idea that society collectively bears some responsibility for individual crime.
Most uncomfortable of all is Preacher's idea that we should not judge. Perhaps this is moderated by Philosopher's idea that in an imperfect world we have to judge in order to survive but, still, Christians at least ought to give more thought to what Preacher says. We might link the universality of sin with the famous dictum: "Judge not that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7.1). On this basis we might accept civic justice in an imperfect world but what does this mean for Christians as citizens and opinion leaders? Is it appropriate for Christians to call for ever more punitive prison sentences or should they call for ever lighter sentences?
Behind this question there are three more which we should not ignore:
- First, how much do we know about the fitness of people to stand trial and be sentenced? Where do we draw the distinction between wickedness and illness? We know that there are many people in prison with mental health problems but, at the extreme end of the spectrum, are mass murderers truly evil or are they profoundly ill?
- Secondly, do we think that alcohol abuse and drug addiction, which now lie behind so much crime, are illnesses or simply criminal?
- Thirdly, even if we accept the principle of public trial and censure, should anybody be sent to prison other than for rationally determined public protection?
Underlying the whole of this discussion there are two final issues which we need to discuss:
- Crime and economics
- The nature of the problem.
- Crime and Economics. We have already alluded to the link between Grunge Park and crime but this needs closer examination. Is it a coincidence that the people most likely to advocate punitive sentencing are also those who deny the link between socio-economic status and criminality? If people hold that behaviour is not linked to socio-economics, is this a belief, a theory or an alternative paradigm? This, in turn, leads us back to another topic from our earlier discussion: how far are we prepared to accept any idea of causality and, again, whichever 'side' we come down on, what is the nature of the position we hold?
- The Nature of the Problem.
Finally, we need to look at the fundamental nature of the problem. There are essentially two paradigms which have their Christian equivalents; human beings are:
- Sinful, incomplete, 'fallen'
- Loving, constructive, reflections of the divine.
We should note immediately that these two views are not entirely incompatible but they represent the dichotomy in Unit One between Plato and Aristotle and they broadly represent the two views of humanity in the Christian tradition.
The way I like to ask the question is: "Is there a Mozart on every street corner or only one in a million"? Having provisionally accepted that these are two paradigms, we have to ask on what basis we choose the one or the other. Are these fact-based paradigms or simply reflections of our individual prejudices about the human race? When we say that genius is rare, are we basing this statement on the story so far or on a theory of humanity as a whole? Are we, in other words, saying that this paucity of genius is remediable or not?
Taking the idea further, then, are we saying when we talk about the sinful nature of humanity that this is inevitable and that nothing can be done about it other than to put one's faith in God or are we saying that there are constructive approaches to our individual and collective falling short of what God requires of us?