Tim Kiely responds to Government’s ‘Beating Crime’ plan

Tim Kiely has written an opinion piece looking at Government’s recent ‘Beating Crime’ plan which features a range of measures, including proposals for people convicted of burglary and theft to wear position-monitoring tags and those convicted of drinking-related offences to wear tags monitoring their sweat for alcohol.

Tim Kiely, writing for Law Gazette specifically examines government’s proposal to increase the visibility of people undertaking unpaid community work in an initiative akin to “chain gangs”. He comments:

“a glance at the evidence would show you that there is no relation between the public shaming of offenders and the reduction of crime. As Professor Wendy Fitzgibbon has noted in a 2015 study on the use of community supervision produced with the Howard League, rehabilitation is only possible when those subject to it are ‘supported to gain social capital and build up their lives towards resilience and desistance’. Most of us understand this intuitively – why would you have any incentive to reintegrate into society if that same society had devoted so much time and energy to grinding you under its heel?”

He continues:

“there is also something fundamentally vicious about a society which insists that the most appropriate way of building public trust in the justice system is by turning prisoners or offenders into a kind of carnival sideshow for everyone else to gawp at.”

Read full opinion piece here: [Law Gazette]