The Adviser: Tackling the causes of crime

Thursday 31 October 2019

While courts in Jersey do well in terms of sentencing, Advocate Olaf Blakeley thinks more could be done to address the causes of offending and help rehabilitate the offenders.

"Each jurisdiction across the world has different methods, and different policies, for sentencing convicted defendants. Some, by Jersey and UK standards, are shocking.

You only have to flick on the television and watch programmes such as ‘Banged Up Abroad’ or ‘Young, Dumb and Banged up in the Sun’ to find that out.

Pictured: An English has been sentenced to death penalty in Thailand for letting off a firework in public.

I recently watched a documentary in which an English tourist in Thailand was locked up in the most appalling conditions for letting off a firework in public: in Thailand discharging a firework is treated the same as an explosive/bomb and (at the time in question) carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.

That has now been changed, according to the programme: the life sentence has been changed to the death penalty. Don’t play with sparklers is my advice. 

While I often moan about certain aspects of the legal system in Jersey, in terms of sentencing criminals, I think Jersey does well apart from what I say below.

We have a suite of possible sentencing ranging from fines to imprisonment. Mixed in with those two methods we have probation orders, binding over orders, compensation orders and community service orders. There is plenty of choice available to judges to ensure the sentence is suitable for the offence, and the offender.

Pictured: Jersey's Probation Service is based on Lempriere Street.

We are lucky in Jersey because of the good work the Probation Service carries out. With the exception of simple offences such as speeding, the court orders a ‘Social Enquiry Report’ which is a report prepared by the Probation Service about the individual’s background, his or her offending and their family life. This will include drinking and drug habits.

From this information the court is able to find a sentence which is matched (as best as possible) for the particular circumstances. I say we are lucky because in the UK it is not such a rosy picture. Such reports are not always prepared, and their absence can have catastrophic effects.

Such is the problem that, in the beginning of September, a joint committee on human rights made up of MPs and Peers, said judges must make reasonable enquiries to establish whether a defendant is the primary carer of a child. If so, the judge must wait for a pre-sentence report, unless there are exceptional circumstances. The report must contain 'sufficient' information for the judge to be able to assess the impact of sentencing on the child.

Pictured: "A joint committee on human rights made up of MPs and Peers, said judges must make reasonable enquiries to establish whether a defendant is the primary carer of a child."

The committee, chaired by Harriet Harman MP, said judges cannot respect a child’s human rights if they are ignorant of the child. There are examples of devastation overlooking the effects on children.  One woman, mother-of-four, dropped her children to school, parked on a two hour parking bay and went to court for a non-violent crime. Within 15 minutes thereafter, she was locked up for three years having serious effects on the children.

Another child, aged 15, was left to deal with running the family when her mother was also locked up, with no enquiry as to possible effects. It is almost impossible for such things to happen in Jersey.

But, is there room for improvement? Yes. Although we do pretty well, courts in Jersey need to continually try harder to impose consistent sentences for offending.

Sometimes we have disparate sentencing which should be avoided. This often appears to take place because of different judges’ approaches. While there are sentencing guidelines for certain offences, it still does not properly tackle the problem of inconsistent sentencing. On the whole, however, I think we do well. 

Pictured: According to Advocate Blakeley, more needs to be done to help offenders change their behaviour.

By far the biggest failure – no doubt a funding/resource problem – is what happens to offenders who are given prison sentences.

I remember a client I represented many years ago, sobbing when he was sentenced to imprisonment for sex offending. He was a young man who said, “I will come out the same person I was before. What is the point?”

He had been to prison before for similar offences and knew what would happen while he was there: according to him, there would be little, or no, assistance given to help him ‘change.’

I am not criticising those who are involved in rehabilitation of offenders; I am sure they do the best they can, given time and resources available.

But I do believe more can be done which will require more funding. Without targeted, consistent assistance, tackling the causes of offending, locking people up only serves to keep those people out of criminal offending for that period of incarceration. We merely suspend the problem."

This article first appeared in Connect. You can read it by clicking here.