Pubs and misdemeanours

Professor Andrew Ashworth QC has published a pamphlet for the Howard League for Penal Reform entitled What if imprisonment were abolished for property offences?

He sums his view at the end of the full report (p. 14):

Thus the crucial argument for me remains the argument from fairness and proportionality. Is it not an abuse of state power to deprive a person of liberty – and thereby to condemn her or him to the conditions of a local prison – for an offence that involved no violence, no threats and no sexual assault? Should we not redouble our efforts to respond to property offences in a more appropriate way?

During the pamphlet he notes the reduction in prison population that might be achieved and the costs of prison to the prisoner and his or her family and friends.  It would seem that his view is that prison is a disproportionate punishment for certain forms of theft, fraud and other other transgressions of trust around property.

This seems laudable and would clearly go some way to solving the very serious problem - prison overcrowding and associated conditions.  But it does, of course, leave the question open as to what alternative responses we can muster.

Whilst I read the report I was reminded of schemes dealing with fare dodging in a city in the north of England.  Spot checks on trains were carried out, and those found dodging were fined.  However, they also had their name and approximate address published on posters that were later publicly displayed at various stations on the network.  Something like this:

Hieronymus Jones, of Tweedlbury Street, TR15, failed to pay his train fare on 8 June and was fined £100 for his attempt to undermine the public transport system of Trumpton

I believe the posters carried other injunctive social norm statements in order to emphasize how Hieronymous, and colleagues, were destablizing the public good of the local transport network.  I further believe that the fine was suitably heavy to render cheating, as discounted against the chance of being caught in a spot check, unpalatable.

So this kind of approach musters some compensation in kind, through the fine, but also relies on social censure.  It is not unrelated to recent work done on cues of being watched.

A key issue for social censure type punishments is social cohesion.  If people live in a disconnected society then such effects will be weakened, as no one will know who Hieronymus is.  The size of a city and its social network structure will also be critical.  The poster needs to be seen by someone who is connected in some way to Hieronymus, or rather, Hieronymus needs to think there is a high enough chance that people in his social network will see it and shame him.

In the same week as Professor Ashworth published his report the BBC also told of us of the decline of British pubs.  There are particular hotspots of pub closure but this is a national issue.  Where once pubs hosted regulars and acted as the hub of subsections of the larger community they are now failing.  The BBC suggested that cheap supermarket alcohol prices are undercutting pubs.  If this is true my assumption would be that socializing at home is more prevalent, but that is likely to be with a very close network of people.  At the pub one gets to talk to more distant neighbours and learn about one's 'manor' and cement social bonds and grow a sense of shared ownership.  Hieronymus might be found anxiously sipping a light ale and hoping no one has seen the recent poster at the station.

Whilst some cynics might say that fewer pubs means fewer places for stolen goods to be traded, I think it is a sign of disconnected community.  For Professor Ashworth's ambition to be realized, for community service to be a true punishment and redress, for the options of social censure to work, then our communities need to be brought together.  Perhaps one day the Howard League for Penal Reform will sponsor the Great British Beer Festival.