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Crime And Punishment In The Bahamian Society
Related to country: Bahamas

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OPINION-Crime and punishment -
The Nassau, Guardian:



There are around one thousand people in prison in The Bahamas. Is that a lot or little? How can we tell?

Compared to the 2.2 million people languishing in U.S. jails it does not sound all that many, but the population of The Bahamas barely exceeds 300,000, compared to the United States population in 2005 of 298.2 million.

Prison, what a strange thing it is. We can remember our shock as a child being told that some adults had done things so bad, that they had to be locked away for years until they knew better. We could hardly imagine anything worse. Prisons seem to belong to the age of the horse-drawn cart and the workhouse, not to satellites and the Internet. If anything, we should be phasing them out - converting the prison into luxury accommodations.

Speaking as a social observer rather than a criminologist, we find just about everything to do with the criminal justice system an enigma. But the central question it seems is this, are we imprisoning more people because we have to, or because we choose to? And in either case, why?

The argument that we simply have to lock more people away is usually based on the idea that society faces a rising tide of crime. The former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, often seemed to encourage this view. In one of his last statements on crime as prime minister, he announced that the government's priority was to close the growing "justice gap": The gap between recorded crime and convictions. In the United Kingdom, government figures state that in 2000, there was one conviction for every 11 recorded offenses, as compared to one conviction for every six offenses in 1980. If the prison population is rising, yet the conviction rate is falling, the obvious conclusion is that as a society we are failing to cope with an increasing disregard for the law.

We need to understand why the prison population is rising, but firstly we need to appreciate that it is determined by many variables, and then to establish what contributes most to the increase. The crime rate matters, of course, but note that it is affected not only by people's behavior, but also by the forms of behavior which are classed as criminal. But other factors affect the prison population as well: The detection rate, the conviction rate of those on trial, and sentencing policy, both sentence lengths and the proportion of convicts who receive custodial sentences, rather that fines or community service orders.

When political philosophers teach our students about the justification of punishment, we tell them that there are four main theories: Deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution and public protection. Society sends people to prison to deter others from the same act, to turn criminals into better citizens as an act of pure punishment, or to take criminals off the street. If imprisoning individuals is to affect the future crime rate, then at least one of the deterrence, rehabilitation and "off the street" arguments would have to be effective, since the retribution argument is entirely backward-looking. Rehabilitation is also a poor candidate, because only a few of those who break the law find themselves in prison, and so rehabilitation, even if effective, could only have a marginal effect on future crime rates.

Public protection, by taking criminals off the streets, is likely to have some effect on crime, unless all it does is create new openings for opportunistic criminal entrepreneurs.

The argument for deterrence is more promising, it suggests that a sentencing policy is set so that breaking the law is just not worth the risk of detection and punishment. Perhaps the harsher regime has had a significant deterrent effect? On the face of it, it seems a plausible hypothesis. Roughly, deterrence theory presupposes a rational choice model of behavior, and in particular that if an action brings with it some probability of cost, then the higher the cost and the greater its probability, the less attractive that action will be. If I am thinking of stealing your car, my likelihood of doing so will correlate with what I think are my chances of being detected, and the sentence I will receive on conviction.

There is a further category of crime - what we might call "disconnected". Disconnected crimes are crimes of passion; they are prompted by impulse or anger, or pride, without much, if any, thought to the consequences. Many murders and other serious assaults are of this nature. The final criminal attitude is that of the "authoritarian" who takes positive pleasure or satisfaction in breaking the law.

Consider a pillar of the community who is caught shoplifting. The scandal and the damage to his reputation would be immense. In the most extreme causes, it could lead to bankruptcy and divorce. The cost therefore is not simply the cost of a fine or prison sentence, multiplied by its probability, but the cost of a criminal record, reported in the local newspaper and made known to family, friends and acquaintances. For those who consider themselves respectable, the cost of a criminal record is so overwhelming that no benefit to be obtained by shoplifting could possibly outweigh it. Therefore, the reason why the cost-benefit analysis is not carried out - that theft is not considered - need not be that the person strongly identified with the law, but that he or she knows in advance how the calculation will turn out, so it is not even worth bothering with.

The point we seek to emphasize is this - what matters most to individuals is the impact a criminal record will have on other aspects of their lives. Small changes to punishment will barely make a difference. Consequently there is support for something the churches have been saying for years: The best way to reduce crime is to "give everyone a stake in society". Those with a decent job, a supportive family and a flourishing social life are less likely to risk it all. And to add another banality: The justice gap is better closed by reducing the motivation to offend, rather than putting more offenders in jail for longer. But if we can't do that, then second best, at least from the point of view of reducing crime, is to put our efforts and resources into surveillance and detection, rather than building the prisons to keep up with longer sentences.

April 23, 2008 | 11:39 PM Comments  0 comments

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