How do we re-moralise our society?

So we are less honest than a decade ago. No wonder, we've shed the familial, community and economic links that moralise us 

by Nick Spencer.

This article first appeared in the Guardian

So now we know. It's not just lying politicians, thieving bankers, treacherous hacks or light-fingered rioters. It's all of us.

According to recent research from the University of Essex, the British are, on balance, less honest than we were a decade ago.

The survey says the Britons of 2011 were more likely to tolerate extramarital sex, drink-driving or failing to leave a contact after damaging a parked car than those of 2001. The only transgression of which people had become less tolerant was benefit fraud. And it looks like it will get worse, with the study reporting that young people were more likely to condone bad behaviour than older ones.

It is not hard to see the flaws in such research. Abstract, decontexualised questions make a dubious foundation for comprehensive, ethical assessment. No matter how virtuous you think yourself, unable to contemplate ever speeding or dodging your taxes, some sophist will be able to manufacture a scenario in which you find yourself lying, cheating and bribing like a tin-pot dictator.

That may be so, but it is also largely irrelevant when comparing longitudinal trends. If the questions have their problems today, they are no different to those of 2001. The trends in the data remain valid, and the trends are downward.

This is wonderful grist to the Christian mill. We warned you what happens when you ignore God's commands, and now you can see for yourself. Secular ethics is inadequate. Moral progressivism in nonsense. We've all leapt on the liberal bandwagon only to find out it's a handcart destined for hell.

However, it's not as simple as that. While only the wilfully blind will deny that Britain is facing serious moral problems, they are not because – or not simply because – we no longer pay attention to the Ten Commandments.

The view that Christians read their ethics off the pages of scripture and do what they do because God tells them to is a myth peddled by those Christians who adhere to an outdated and ill-thought-through idea of moral practice, and by those secularists who want to portray Christians as unreflective automata.

The reality is that people, religious or not, behave well because of other people. We learn to behave, take our ethical cues and seek approval from one another. Ethics is grounded in communion. This is not an argument for moral relativism. The fact that people adopt the customs of their tribe is not necessarily to affirm those customs. If we behave well because of other people, we also behave badly because of them.

Rather, it is simply to state the fact. Being good is predicated on our sense of who we are, and who we are is shaped, predominantly, by the nature of our relationships.

The ethical problems facing Britain today are, then, indeed tied up with the decline of Christianity but not so much with the lightened social weight of Christian moral edicts as with the weaker presence of Christian communities, formed around and modelled, however imperfectly, on the example of Christ.

The same may be said of the multitude of other communities that dot the British landscape. These may be formed around less obviously ethical figures or pursuits, but they nonetheless sustain the relationships that make us good. From stable families to sports clubs, co-operatives to village halls, each in its own way incubates virtue and helps cultivate character.

For almost 50 years, we have dissolved the ties that bind – familial, community and economic. A half-century of social and economic liberalisation (and ensuing inequality), growing hypermobility, a shift from neighbourhoods to networks and an ethical discourse grounded almost entirely on rights has undermined precisely those structures of communion that moralise us.

Such trends were often well intentioned, and have sometimes been for the good. But they have come at a cost. Today, life is better for me, but worse for us.

The University of Essex research confirms what we suspected rather than tells us what we didn't. The bigger and harder question is what we do about it. Re-moralising a society is much tougher than demoralising it. If this argument is valid, it will start not with preaching or punishing, but with nurturing and protecting those structures of commitment and co-operation in which we learn to live with trust, respect and integrity.

New Amendment into LASPO for a Women's Justice Commission

After Clause 120

LORD RAMSBOTHAM

BARONESS GOULD OF POTTERNEWTON

BARONESS CORSTON

Insert the following new Clause—

“The Women’s Justice Board

(1) There shall be a body corporate to be known as the Women’s Justice Board for England and Wales (“the Board”).

(2) The Board shall not be regarded as the servant or agent of the Crown or as enjoying any status, immunity or privilege of the Crown; and the Board’s property shall not be regarded as property of, or held on behalf of, the Crown.

(3) The Board shall consist of no less than 10 and no more than 20 members appointed by the Secretary of State.

(4) The members of the Board shall—

(a) include persons representative of government departments and public bodies whose responsibilities have relevance to the treatment of female offenders and the prevention of offending by women (including, but not limited to, responsibilities for criminal justice, housing, education, employment, benefits, social services and health services), and

(b) work with specialists who have the experience and knowledge to provide the necessary expert advice.

(5) The Board shall have the following functions, namely—

(a) to develop a strategy to reduce offending by women and for the delivery of appropriate and effective services to women in the criminal justice system,

(b) to monitor the extent to which the aims of that strategy are being met,

(c) to set standards with respect to the specification, commissioning and provision of services to women in the criminal justice system and services to reduce offending by women,

(d) to make grants, with the approval of the Secretary of State, to bodies to enable them to develop good practice in the provision of services to women in the criminal justice system and the prevention of offending by women.

(6) The Board shall make an annual report to the Secretary of State on its performance of the functions in subsection (5).

(7) Within 28 days of receipt of the report under subsection (6), the Secretary of State shall lay a copy of the report before Parliament, and make a statement on its contents and the Secretary of State’s response to it.”

An Open Letter to The Justice Secretary

An Open Letter to the Justice Secretary, the Right Honourable Ken Clarke QC 

Dear Justice Secretary

We the undersigned are writing to urge you to give higher priority to and address the specific resettlement, rehabilitation and re-offending  issues of women   in the criminal justice system from a gender based perspective.

In spite of encouraging overtures in the initial Green Paper “Breaking the Cycle”  published in November 2010, which promised to address  diversion sentences for all but the most dangerous female criminals, women have slipped off this Government’s agenda once again.

Much consultation was undertaken around  the questions pertaining to women in the Green Paper and many female-specific services encouraged you to deal  differently with women and the reasons they commit crime. However, in subsequent drafts of the White Paper currently going through the House of Lords , now called The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) , these paragraphs have been dropped and the consultation ignored.

We ask you to reconsider as a matter of urgency the provision of a Women’s Justice Commission to address:

·         The economic impact of incarcerating women. The cost of keeping a woman in custody is in excess of £56,000 per year. The average cost of a community sentence is £750 - £1000. Community Sentences have consistently delivered better outcomes in reducing reoffending in women. The long term cost to society of a woman with a one year prison sentence is over £10million over ten years. 

·         The mental health needs of female defendants, and the opportunities provided by community based services to deal with lifelong trauma, discrimination and victimisation. Research shows that 67% of women in prison have at least one identifiable mental disorder. Diversion was promised as a joint initiative with the Department of Health in April 2011, but not enough has been done to effect change or reflect this in policy.

·         The provision of safe bail accommodation. Over half of women entering custody each year do so on remand. These women spend an average of four to six weeks in prison and nearly 60% do not go on to receive a custodial sentence. The need to provide alternatives to remand for Magistrates when considering defendants’ bail applications  has been identified by the Women’s Justice Task Force and the Magistrates’ Association,

 Yours the undersigned

327 petitioners including  Anna Bird, The Fawcett Society, The National Association of Women’s Organisations (NAWO),  Vivienne Hayes, Women’s Resource Centre, Sara Llewellin, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Dr Susie Orbach,  Jean Ritchie QC,  The Bromley Trust, Lady Susan Conway,   Bianca Jagger,  Rachel Cornish,  Wendy Cranmer,  Bristol Feminist Network, Dr. Paula Wilcox , Flo Krause , Polly Sampson, Lynne Franks
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/women-in-the-criminal-justice-system.htm l

Genderproofing LASPO

Based on an event that took place in London in September 2011, Kazuri asked  Baroness Joyce Gould to propose an amendment into LASPO, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, in the House of Lords.  We are grateful to her and to Baroness Corston for  reviving the issue of the inherent inequalities in the law and propsed and existing policy, as it affects women in the criminal justice system. Our deep thanks to Imran Khan, Vivienne Hayes, Jonathan Aitken,  Eoin McLennan Murray and Mark Jonson , Fawcett Society, Barrow Cadbury, Garden Court Chambers and the Women's Resource Centre as well as the the many others who have signed the open letter to the Justice Secretary. 

Thousands of women will be sent to jail needlessly if new criminal justice legislation is allowed into law in its current form, a group of cross-party peers warn this weekend ahead of a vote in the House of Lords.

A new Ministry of Justice bill on sentencing must be changed radically to take account of women, they say, if the Government is to reduce the growing number of women being given custodial sentences. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishing Offenders Bill (LASPO), which currently contains no reference to women offenders in the entire document, will shepherd more women into a prison system designed for men, critics claim.

More than four thousand women, or five per cent of the prison population, are currently held behind bars - a number which has increased by nearly a third in the last decade. But the Government's 'gender blind' approach to offenders mean women are being sent into a justice system that is failing them, according to the group of peers, who stress that most of them should not be going to prison at all.

At least two new clauses to the bill will be tabled in the House of Lords tomorrow [Monday], aimed at improving leadership and accountability for women in the justice system. They will include a proposal to establish a Women's Justice Commission and a plan to set up a national cross-departmental strategy on women offenders, which would produce an annual report to Parliament. The Scottish Executive agreed to set up a Commission with a view to reduce women offenders last year, when it emerged that the female prison population north of the border had doubled in the last decade.

Baroness Jean Corston, Labour peer and author of the Corston Review – a 2007 report into vulnerable women in the criminal justice system, said it is "extraordinary" that the coalition put nothing in the LASPO bill about women, while disbanding the cross-departmental criminal justice women's unit in Parliament. "It shows the Government's insensitivity in relation to women," she said. "If we treat people all the same in the prison system, that means we treat everyone as if they were men. It is blindingly obvious to me that most of these women should not be going to prison."

Critics of the current proposed legislation stressed that most women serve short sentences for less serious offences – almost two thirds of all women sentenced to custody between 2010 and 2011 were serving six months or less and over a third were serving sentences for theft and handling stolen goods, according to Ministry of Justice figures. Up to 25 per cent of new female prisoners were in jail last year for breaching community orders or the terms of their release licenses.

Former chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales and crossbench peer, Lord Ramsbotham told the IoS that the current prison system was "broken". "If we are going to have proper treatment and conditions for women in the justice system, someone must be accountable and responsible for making that happen; there is nobody in charge at the moment," he said. "If this Government wants a 'rehabilitation revolution'... then the revolution affecting women must be designed in a way that is appropriate to them."

The proposed amendments draw inspiration from the Corston review, which recommended replacing existing women's prisons with small custodial centres around the country and providing community-based alternatives to custody. Each year almost 18,000 children are separated from their mother by imprisonment and around one third of women lose their homes, according to the Prison Reform Trust.

More than "15.6m was invested by the Labour Government in 2009 in community provision for women offenders, with more than "10m awarded to women's centres across the country. The coalition has provided a one-off funding package of "3.2m to keep all but three centres running this year and a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said they are "determined to tackle offending among women."

"The justice system must represent both men and women fairly but we are committed to addressing the particular needs of women to ensure fair treatment through the system, and effective rehabilitation for women who offend," the spokesperson said.

Baroness Vivien Stern, a crossbench Peer and senior research fellow at the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College, London, said women have been experiencing "injustice" and "inequality" in the prison system for decades. "The bill is a great opportunity to have a good discussion about it and hold people to account, but it doesn't always come down to legislation - it is about whether someone is actually going to tackle the situation or not."

The cost of a women's prison place is higher than a man's at an average of "56,415 per year. By contrast, an intensive community order could cost up to "15,000, according to the Prison Reform Trust. Director Juliet Lyon called the absence of women-focused policy in the bill, a "glaring omission in law and government oversight."

Slowly killing the Welfare System by Claudia Wood

By jumping on the coalition’s anti-scroungers welfare bandwagon, Labour’s Liam Byrne has squandered a chance to make progressive changes to the welfare system
Just a week into the New Year and a depressing case of rhetorical brinkmanship is unfolding over welfare reform. The coalition has, for several months, been pushing the controversial Welfare Reform Bill through on a wave of ‘scrounger’ phraseology, often backed by cynically spun DWP statistics. These have been eagerly seized upon by the tabloids.

Despite widespread criticism of this approach, it has proved successful in the sense that is has captured the public imagination and plenty of column inches. It is perhaps unsurprising then that, in 2012, the Opposition has (belatedly) jumped on the ‘something for something’ bandwagon.
This is a massive wasted opportunity. Rather than differentiating itself from the government and gaining credibility as a more reasoned and objective voice for reform, it seems Labour has chosen to adopt an almost identical path to that of the government. Its welfare spokesman Liam Byrne has demonstrated a selective use of shaky facts in his recent Guardian article on William Beveridge, worthy of any IDS speech.

First, Byrne suggested that Beveridge’s discussion of conditionality meant the welfare state was always supposed to be based on ‘earned support’. He failed to point out that Beveridge insisted in 1942 that social insurance had to be combined with ‘national assistance’ – support provided regardless of a person’s contribution to the state. He also omitted to mention that conditionality was discussed by Beveridge two years later only in the context of full employment, defined as an economy where there were more jobs available than the number seeking employment; hardly the case in recession-hit Britain.

On the controversial issue of disability benefits, Byrne chose his words very carefully, stating, ‘I think Beveridge would have looked aghast at the government’s plans to axe disability benefits – like employment and support allowance that working people have actually paid in for.’
However, what he failed to mention was that the majority of disability benefits are given to those who have been unable to make adequate national insurance contributions. Byrne referred only to the contributory form of ESA, failing to acknowledge that of the 662,000 people claiming ESA, 339,000 (51%) claim the non-contributory form, because they have not made adequate national insurance contributions. Then there are the 3 million people claiming DLA, conditional neither on state contributions nor means tested.

Under the ‘something for something’ mantra that the Opposition is adopting, these benefits would surely be scrapped – leaving many extremely vulnerable people with no support whatsoever. But rather than say this – which would be unthinkable – Byrne simply skipped over this rather inconvenient truth.

The fact is, neither party would dream of following ‘something for something’ to its logical conclusion. In civilised society it always comes with a caveat of unconditional support for the most vulnerable, but it seems neither party now wants to muddy their hard line on ‘scroungers’.
This is disingenuous, causing huge anxiety for many thousands of disabled people who, understandably, take the political silence on this issue as a sign that they might be put in the ‘scrounger’ camp. More importantly, it prevents a reasoned approach to welfare reform from emerging.

And this is a crying shame, because the welfare system does need reforming. This needs to be based on evidence of what doesn’t work and wastes limited resources, rather than on sloppy tabloid language and cherry-picking of Beveridge quotes.
Labour could have shone as the dispassionate voice of reform: rather than parroting the simplistic and wholly unworkable ‘something for something’ narrative, Byrne could have presented an approach fit for the 21st century, where medical advances see ever larger numbers of people who may never engage in paid employment live well into old age. And he wouldn’t even need to bring Beveridge into it.

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