Punishment and Crime

The September edition of Touchstone published an article headed ‘Law and Order: Youth Crime’, which reads: “There is a lack of consequences. Labour came to office promising to scrap longer sentences for repeat violent and sexual offenders, reduce prison numbers by 30 per cent, and not build any more prisons. The results are playing out in the communities with tragic consequences. Youth offenders know there are no consequences, and the adults who encourage them to commit crimes know this. That’s why the most brazen and risky crimes are increasingly performed by people too young for the police to be able to charge. Unless there are tougher consequences for crime, innocent people will continue to suffer and pay the consequences.”

I feel compelled to write that knowledge of my family history refutes the argument that consequences alone will prevent offending by the young. Something more is required. Imposing tougher consequences will not produce the change it suggests. My great-grandfather was convicted at the Assizes (courts) in Nottingham, United Kingdom, on 16 March 1821. Though he was declared to be twelve years old, some family say he was only nine. His crime was stealing a handkerchief. The court decided that his punishment would be seven years transportation to Australia.

Why did he steal? Family memories are that he stole a handkerchief so that it could be sold to support his mother and sisters who were living in very unsatisfactory circumstances. Their poverty was obvious. It’s telling that when this boy was imprisoned and sent to Australia, his mother and siblings, without the meagre resources provided by this boy, were taken ‘into care’ and placed in the workhouse. The workhouse was a local authority / council way of shutting vagrants (those without visible means of support) away and out of sight. There they were provided with accommodation and work, in return for which their very basic needs were provided for. His mother and sisters were never released from the workhouse. They died in care.

What is significant, when considering the view that tougher consequences deter crime, is that records show that some 160,000 people, some young like my great-grandfather, and at least one in her seventies, were convicted and sentenced to transportation between 1787 and 1867. This very severe punishment – transportation – did not deter crime. Nor did resorting to the capital punishment regularly imposed by the courts at that time.

I am convinced that the only way that youth crime may be addressed, and for all in society to feel valued and safe, will be when disaffected young people are able to see that they have opportunity to rise above their station in life and to live productive lives. This comes with opportunities for meaningful employment, and when living in safe housing is a reality. Then they will have much to gain. Where these conditions do not exist, we will continue to experience youth crime as an outcome.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Faulkner