Punishment of the looters and restoration of society's lost communities

This was written in August 2011, following the rioting and looting in many British cities.


Punishment and Restoration

Now that last week's disturbances have passed and those responsible have begun to be arrested and brought before courts, thoughts must turn to how the guilty should be punished.  Clearly mere slaps on the wrist are inappropriate for those who participated in such wholesale destruction and theft.  Iain Duncan Smith certainly thinks so, telling BBC Breakfast yesterday morning that he was looking at the possibility of suspending benefits payments to convicted looters.
Obviously it is important that the guilty are punished in ways which cause them to ponder their actions.  However, effective punishment may prove difficult to administer in many cases.  For a start around half of the guilty are below the age of eighteen, meaning most will be treated differently to adults.  In addition to this, stripping away benefits may be counterproductive and possibly even illegal.
What actions then could be taken which would suit the seriousness of the disturbances and satisfy public feeling?
Prison is always a possibility, but sentences would have to be of an appropriate length and early releases might well reduce punishment to the slap on the wrist category.  Those under the age of eighteen of course could be sent to Young Offenders' Institutes.  However, as someone who works with socially excluded young people, it is my experience that many young offenders treat YOIs as a fact of life and the threat of incarceration holds no terror for them.  It should also be asked whether our already overcrowded prisons and YOIs have sufficient free capacity to accept the numbers presently being arrested.
Prison aside, what else is there?  Obviously for those convicted who are working, fines would be easy to impose.  This is not generally as easy for benefit claimants.  Courts often find it difficult to collect the fines they impose if people refuse to pay.
As IDS has already suggested, benefits could be suspended.  However, the minister is not sure if this is legally possible without a custodial sentence.  Suspending people's benefit payments might well be counterproductive in any case, as this would surely drive many to commit crime in order to replace their lost income.  Suspension of benefits would be likely to result in hundreds of burglaries.
Eviction from council houses is another possibility and one which is already being used.  However it will not be able to address most cases, as attempts to evict families with children under eighteen could fall foul of the powerful Children Act 1989.
Confiscation of property is an option which might satisfy a public desire for repayment in kind, but taking private property might open a legal can of worms which is perhaps better left closed.
A more realistic option, and probably one which will see a lot of use, is community service orders.  These have the advantage from a PR point of view of giving something back to the community but one has to wonder how sufficient numbers of CSO placements would be found.  Perhaps some people might have punishment deferred and then do CSO service at a later date.

Punishment can only ever be one side of the coin.  The other must be the much more complex task of remedying the societal problems which have led to large numbers of young people with no sense of respect or the concept of right and wrong.
With such a complex task as this there is no one silver bullet which can be employed to turn these people into fine upstanding contributors to society.  Many have long criminal records and are unlikely to change their lifestyle or habits anytime soon, particularly as pier pressure will cause existing gang groupings to exist for the foreseeable future.  By no means all of these young people are members of gangs however and alongside the sense of alienation and lack of values, many do desire something better.  They often do not know how to go about achieving this though.  It is my experience as well, that even when they do want to change their lives for the better, many lack the personal discipline to carry on going to courses they have been enrolled for and maintain associations with friends who pull them down again.  The prime minister has announced a proposed programme of social reform but I for one will not hold my breath for any top down initiatives to work well.  In order to create the conditions where young people have a better chance of getting a proper education and going on to have successful lives, much has to be done locally and the financial cost will be considerable.  Local people must play a major part too.

The first thing which must be done is to rid council estates of the criminal kingpins who buy and sell stolen goods and sell drugs and who often become malign roll models for young people, particularly those from broken homes with no positive male role models.  Too often these figures are the focus of criminal activity and hold a great deal of power over people on their estates.  Cleaning up estates must involve not only clearing out the criminals who terrorise their neighbours but also improving lighting and making residents feel safer, with a regular and visible police presence.  Housing standards must be monitored and improved where necessary, allowing residents to start to take pride in their neighbourhoods.  Whether teenagers would be responsive to environmental improvements is another matter however.
Schools must also be improved and supported.  Many schools in welfare dependent areas find it hard to attract good teachers and pupils are often taught by a succession of supply teachers, which provides little consistency in their education and is far from conducive to achieving good results.  These schools need to be supported to attract talented principals and good teachers to create relevant, stimulating programmes which encourage respect and hard work as well as working hard to reduce the number of exclusions.  How long it will take poorly disciplined pupils who have an ingrained sense of abandonment and low expectations to respond positively to better schooling is harder to guess at though.
Neighbourhoods must be provided with appropriate recreational facilities.  Boredom is a major factor in much of the bad behaviour engaged in by young people but far too often councils have found it expedient to close down local leisure facilities.  These facilities must be reopened and upgraded, or built anew where they do not exist.  Attention to these places needs to be ongoing.  How will they be staffed?  How will facilities be managed?  How will young people used to non-engagement and gang culture be encouraged to make use of sporting and leisure facilities?  Could the involvement of existing projects such as the boxing gym run by Amir Khan be arranged?
There must be public education campaigns to spread information and help improve standards.  But will teenagers listen to messages from those who they have no respect for?  I don't hold out strong hopes of that particular miracle for some time yet.
Providing appropriate recreational and learning opportunities and facilities to enable adult learning and social activities.  Again though, how would these places be staffed and managed?  How long will it take people used to living in a climate of fear and violence to gain the confidence to use the resources which must be made available.
Outreach work must be extended back into these areas and cancelled programmes reinstated and properly funded.  At the same time the administration which often accompanies this work must be reduced to allow support workers to spend more time engaging with young people and their communities.  From my own experience I know this to be challenging work but the results can make a positive difference.  I have seen both boys and girls on the verges of gang membership gain new focus when someone took the time to sit down with them and help them make a plan for their future.  Not all of these will come to fruition but some will and I have seen a number of young people from former sink estates go on to become qualified tradesmen and in one case a local charities co-ordinator as a result of such intervention.  Will they find the right people to act as outreach workers though?
Ways must also be found to create opportunities for work and training.  Calls are often heard that there are no jobs to be had, but this excuse must be taken away.  Any opportunities created though must be safeguarded from being taken up by people coming in from outside the area.  How easily people who have never worked and who hold ingrained negative beliefs about work (as many do) will respond to job opportunities will remain to be seen, but it is important that people on estates see people they know gaining paid work and profiting by it.
All this and far more will need to be done for each deprived community if we are to save a sizable proportion of the younger generation from self destruction and whole neighbourhoods from constant fear.
In the past well funded housing action trusts have been very successful in transforming sink estates and the formation of further such trusts may be key to much of what will need to be done.  The accountants will baulk, especially in the present economic climate, but if we want to save those communities it must be done sooner than later.