Tough on crime populism not as popular any more

Has the tide gone out for law and order? Do the so called “tough on crime” populist election campaigns still work with the modern electorate?

With Bracks and Baillieu jostling for the “tough on crime” pole position in the lead up to the November Victorian Election, is all the talk about crime figures and lenient sentences still worth all the effort?

Opinion polls and public research in several countries are indicating that voters are seriously questioning the traditional law and order assumptions. Many people now seem to believe that the basic assumptions that rely on imprisonment as the major response to crime are flawed.

Law and order electioneering seems somewhat inevitable. Politicians have been successfully spruiking tough on crime policies since Reagan and Thatcher turned law and order populism into an art form back in the 80s.

Law and order has since become ingrained as a big ticket election item in just about every constituency in the Western world, enough to make or break a party’s fortune. So much so that in a wide-scale study of the criminal justice systems of Canada, United States, United Kingdom Australia and New Zealand, authors found that contemporary criminal justice policies in each of those five countries have been specifically designed to appeal to voters rather than actually preventing or reducing crime.

However, in recent years another world wide trend seems to be emerging. Whether it is because of the human and economic impacts of rising prison populations becoming more evident or heightened voter scepticism of political trickery, what is evident is increasing voter sophistication when it comes to law and order.

In detailed “focus- group” consultations with South Australian voters prior to their state election this year, law and order was seen, for the first time, as a negative. The consultations found that ten years ago "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime" was a sure-fire vote winner. Nowadays voters are jaded as tougher laws have not made them feel any safer, and they are looking for more nuanced approaches. People were asking whether it would give a better law and order outcome to employ an extra 400 police, or 400 teachers.

The International Crime Victimisation Survey has found that Australian attitudes to crime have become somewhat less punitive over the past few years. This is also reflected in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes which has seen a decrease in the proportion of Australians who support stronger sentences.

Most recently this has been confirmed in a Melbourne University study by criminologist Dr Austin Lovegrove in which 475 community participants were asked to give what they thought were appropriate sentences to a series of violent crimes. It was found that once people were made familiar with the personal circumstances of a violent crime they tended to give substantially more lenient sentences than the offenders actually received from the judge. This study clearly refutes the commonly held view that judges are more lenient than the general public.

Indications are that tough-on-crime populism is also facing rejection by voters in numerous other countries.

In Canada, with a minority government and the ever-looming election within the year, crime in general has appeared low on voters’ minds, despite Stephen Harper’s Conservatives continuing to hammer home their crime platform at every opportunity.

In California alone, there are more people imprisoned than in any other country in the world except China. However, in light of Governer Schwarzenegger’s push for even more prisons, public opinion polls are showing that three out of four Californians prefer rehabilitation and prevention over sending more young people to prison.

One poll found that only 3 per cent of Californians believe that prison construction should be a priority. The last two times Californians voters were asked to approve prison construction bonds, they were overwhelmingly rejected.

One grassroots group, CURB or California’s United for Responsible Budget has been pointing out that “the more money we put into our already $8 billion prison budget, the more money is drained from schools, social services and existing independent community programs”.

Mandatory sentences were once seen as a panacea for virtually all crime in the US and heavily spruiked by every political candidate since Reagan. However, as the 25,000 members of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) have found out, thousands of mainly black and Hispanic young people have been swept up for minor drug offences and are now serving incredible five, ten or even 20-year sentences.

It seems that many Americans have noticed that prison populations have increased without anything like a proportional drop in the rate of crime. According to a poll commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) a majority of Americans, 61 per cent, now oppose mandatory sentences for nonviolent crimes. The poll reflected a strong dissatisfaction with the current mandatory system and a growing confidence in rehabilitation and alternative punishments for nonviolent drug offenders.

The “tough-on-crime” measures of the last quarter of the 20th century have helped balloon prison budgets at a time of falling revenues. As these financial crises reached epidemic proportions, US states began to look at smarter, less costly sentencing and correctional policies. Mandatory sentencing laws are now being repealed or rolled back across many American states in an attempt by policymakers to ease prison population pressures.

Seventeen states have eliminated mandatory sentencing laws altogether, or restructured other harsh penalties, choosing to treat rather than incarcerate people with substance abuse problems.

In the United Kingdom, the prison system is also close to breaking point. With all juvenile facilities full, almost 80,000 prisoners crowding every goal and police cell, the British Home Office is considering the early release of thousands of low-risk criminals.

But another realisation is seeping into the public consciousness. There are simply too many people, particularly young people, who should not be in prison at all. Some should be in hospitals for the mentally ill - many others still in community-based programs. Yet, according to one British prison governor, these extremely vulnerable young people are being crammed like sardines into a prison that can barely cope, simply because there is no-where else for them to go.

The Home Secretary in Britain is currently facing calls to shut down all women's prisons and cut the number of female prisoners from nearly 5,000 to just 100. Penal reformers have stated that female prisoners are suffering shocking levels of suicidal behaviour, sexual abuse, mental illness and drug addiction, and pressure on prison spaces means many have to be held far from families and friends.

Community groups in the UK have also been battling to stem the rising tide of the black and minority ethnic prison population. Although they are no more likely to commit crime than any other groups, the imprisonment rate among black and ethnic groups has grown eight times faster than the white population over a five-year period.

Tony Blair's attempts this year to begin a fight back on law and order suffered a setback when one of his own advisers cast severe doubts on his claim that the criminal justice system was biased against the victim.

Ian Loader, director of criminology at the Oxford Centre for Criminology, accused the Government of relying too heavily on headline-grabbing pledges of new legislation and warned that this would not solve the problems it perceived on crime. Instead, Professor Loader recommended that the Government try to "reduce the political and media heat" on crime by finding, funding, delivering and explaining to people programs that work - such as on prison education, reassurance policing and better detection.

Victims of crime in the UK have been asked for their views on what cuts crime for the first time this year. An extensive survey has found that, against all expectations, victims of crime do not think prison reduces crime. Eight out of ten victims think that more constructive activities for young people in the community and better supervision by parents would be effective in stopping re-offending. Seven out of ten victims also want to see more treatment programs in the community for offenders suffering from mental health problems, and for drug addicts, to tackle the causes of crime. This challenges many pre-conceived ideas that victims around the world always want heavy penalties such as prison.

Young people around the world always tend to cop most of the blame when it come to law and order electioneering. A combination of media attention on youth offending and the ease at which politicians can highlight fears has created the public image of a society ruled by youth gangs.

However, campaigns for youth crime prevention rather than tougher penalties are growing in strength in the US. A new body called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids involves 3,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, other law enforcement leaders and victims of crime, now campaigns in ten states across the US for high quality early education programs, prevention of child abuse and neglect, after-school programs for children and teens, and interventions to get troubled kids back on track as effective alternatives to the previous “lock ‘em up” policies.

Even in Britain it seems that the tide has turned against the once popular ASBOs or Anti Social Behaviour Orders introduced in 1998.

ASBOs can ban any individual (including young people over ten years of age) both from carrying out specific acts, such as playing loud music, or wearing a baseball cap backwards and from entering certain geographical areas such a shopping centre or an entire suburb. They last a minimum of two years, but can be imposed for longer.

ASBOs have been used to ban activity that is not in itself criminal, such as begging, prostitution, being drunk, using abusive language, protesting or sleeping rough. Non-compliance of an antisocial order can ultimately lead to a prison sentence.

In the first few years, ASBO’s faced steadfast resistance from local councils, housing workers and landlords who at first were repelled by their punitiveness and had to be further enforced to use them by the Anti-Social Behaviour Act.

The British Institute for Brain Injured Children (the BIBIC) now estimates that a third of all ASBOs have been given to children or young people with learning difficulties, ADHD, or other behavioural problems. In the light of high breach rates and questioning from constituents about whether ASBO’s actually improve anything, numerous councils and London boroughs have announced plans to review their use of ASBO’s.

Professor Rod Morgan, the government-appointed youth justice "tsar" responsible for problem children, recently said that ASBO’s have been responsible for "demonising" a whole section of British youth due to “a misplaced hysteria over teenage crime.” Despite this, ASBO’s or something very similar are still on the policy agenda of several Australian parties seeking the “tough on youth crime” vote.

Ironically, the high level of petty street crime in the UK that prompted the ASBO’s many saw as a result of 20 years of Thatcherite economic restructuring, social neglect and law and order policies.

There is a certain easy logic to law and order politics. But this logic demands that parties come up with increasingly harsh punishments at each election which can only be justified on the basis that crime and violence are worsening, which it isn’t. Community fears are continually fuelled to meet the political need for more punitive measures. And once the law and order genie is out of the bottle it can be hard to put back.

In Australia, and particularly in Victoria, we would like to think that we are smarter than all this. And yet Victoria’s prison population has increased by 55 per cent in the past decade, on the back of longer and increasingly custodial sentencing by our courts. Women, Indigenous Australians and people with a mental illness have made up the bulk of this increase.

So, as the election campaign heats up in Victoria with the weather, let’s see which way the tide of popular opinion on law and order populism turns.