Mr Clarke's Modest Proposal: Supportive Evidence from Yeovil
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The first duty of any government is to preserve the public peace and protect the law-abiding citizen. As the guardian of the public purse, and for the sake of the taxpayer, it should do so as cheaply as possible; and if its policy does not work, or provide value for public money, it is duty bound to change it. This is what Mr Clarke is preparing to do. Crime rates in Britain have remained among the highest in Western Europe despite the fact that Britain also has one of the highest rates of imprisonment relative to its population in Western Europe. Moreover, the rate of recidivism among short-term prisoners remains intractably high. About seven out of ten prisoners given a short sentence are caught re-offending within two years of their release. Prison has thus failed to reform them, despite the high costs of imprisonment. The British criminal justice system taken as a whole, then, is not working very well. It is both costly and ineffective: the taxpayer gets the worst of both worlds. It therefore stands in need of reform and Mr Clarke has boldly seized the bit between his teeth. He thinks we ought to imprison fewer people and rehabilitate more. Dr Dalrymple recently spent six weeks in Yeovil, in Somerset, a normal English town. This is an account of what he found there, and how well it supported Mr Clarke's reforming zeal. He discovered that there was indeed a need for reform; the system was not working. Whether Mr Clarke's reforms are the right ones is, perhaps, another question. If Dr Dalrymple is right, they will at least have the merit of making sure that policemen, lawyers, probation officers, insurance loss adjusters, hospital casualty officers and trauma surgeons will have plenty to do for the foreseeable future. There will be full employment and an expanding market for them, if for no one else.
About the Author
Dr Dalrymple is a former prison doctor and psychiatrist of many years' experience. He wrote a column for The Spectator for many years. Among his books is Junk Medicine (Harriman House), that argues that the relationship between drug addiction and criminality is precisely the opposite to that which is generally accepted.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
A superb short essay
1 July 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
In this excellent short book, Dalrymple suggests rather strongly that Mr. Clarke's proposal is nonsense: his proposal is to release a lot of criminals from jail (to save money) and to place our bets on rehabilitation (which is right up there with tooth fairies).
Dalrymple adopts the very clever tactic of reporting the crime news from a town called Yeovil, in Great Britain. Simply by doing that, he makes it abundantly clear that Mr. Clarke's proposal is nonsense.
American experience offers support for this obvious idea, because we had to suffer through the ultra-liberal Warren Court doing the same exact thing --- releasing criminals and betting on rehabilitation --- with disastrous results, finally leading to Nixon campaigning on a "law and order" platform, and winning.
The only "rehabilitation" which works is locking crooks up until they are old. Sad, but true. Flying unicorns may apply elsewhere.
Dalrymple adopts the very clever tactic of reporting the crime news from a town called Yeovil, in Great Britain. Simply by doing that, he makes it abundantly clear that Mr. Clarke's proposal is nonsense.
American experience offers support for this obvious idea, because we had to suffer through the ultra-liberal Warren Court doing the same exact thing --- releasing criminals and betting on rehabilitation --- with disastrous results, finally leading to Nixon campaigning on a "law and order" platform, and winning.
The only "rehabilitation" which works is locking crooks up until they are old. Sad, but true. Flying unicorns may apply elsewhere.
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