Prison, Crime and Common Sense

Antonio Gramsci made the useful distinction between "common sense" - a cultural universe where the dominant ideology is practised and spread and works to sustain domination - and good sense.  When it comes to matters of crime and punishment, it is "common sense" to insist on more and bigger prisons and longer sentences.  Unless you endorse mandatory sentencing, Asbos, electronic tagging, building new super prisons, you're just not taking law and order seriously.  Enda Kenny was banging this drum last weekend.  Michael McDowell has been at it for some time.  The Director of the Penal Reform Trust, Rick Lines, has an op-ed in today's Irish Times that gives the Justice Minister a deserved roasting.

Lines accuses McDowell of pushing through policies that have failed elsewhere and that are driven by electoral calculation:

Perhaps shutting the Government's own drug experts out of the process explains why Irish prisons are starting mandatory drug testing at exactly the same time the Scottish Prison Service is ending it after 10 years of expensive failure? In rejecting the [Prisons] inspector's call for new rehabilitative approaches, such as enhanced family visiting and prisoner employment programmes, Mr McDowell stated he intends to run a prison system "in conformity with what ordinary people would want" and to implement policies "most people in Ireland would agree with".

To give "what ordinary people want" when they are badly mistaken is just plain wrong.  As Lines points out there is always a constituency in the electorate and the media for whom no punishment is too harsh, no prison too big.  But, he adds, "most Irish people are not vindictive in nature, and would gladly swap harsh policies that don't work, for humane policies that do".  What is required is a commitment to evidence-based best practise so that effective programmes are put in place that rehabilitate prisoners and reduce re-offending, help people who use drugs and reduce criminal behaviour by addressing the root causes of petty crime.

A couple of weeks ago the Irish Penal Reform Trust criticised McDowell for adopting a "gadget"-based response that ignores international best practise, and an "opportunity missed" to effectively address the serious issue of drug use in prisons.  In particular it criticised his failure to follow the comprehensive and multi-faceted approach to drugs set out in the Government's own National Drugs Strategy.  In today's Irish Independent we see that heroin addicts trying to get off drugs are being forced to wait up to 19 months to get into methadone treatment programmes.  Surely reducing the demand side of the drugs equation is good sense?  So is rehabilitation in general.  I would truly despair if liberal and progressive politicians abandoned the complex and difficult tasks this would involve for the sake of short term electoral gain. 

Comments

[simon]

Good post and good points. But the thing is many who would consider themselves liberal and progressive are the ones that are going to put Fine Gael in charge who make McDowell look soft.