Tariff Reform
MYRISONMENT in this country is still based on 1 what'has been described as the tariff system: the aim is to provide a punishment appropriate to the crime rather than to the criminal. But recently, more attention has been paid to the possibility of making the punishment fit the criminal; and it is for its consideration of this aspect of the law that the Streatfeild Report has aroused most interest. The needs of the oflender as a person have to be considered not (as the punitively-disposed complain) from woolly humanitarian impulses, but because the prisoner is going to be thrown back into society again a' the end of his sentence, and the security of society will depend on what happens to him during his months or years in gaol. If his sentence merely encourages his anti-social instincts, so much the worse for society; and this is as likely to happen if his prison sentence is too short (be- cause insufficient time is given to his rehabilita- tion) as if it is too long. Therefore, the Report urges, sentences must be adjusted to the need to Iit a prisoner for his release.
To some extent the courts already consider the needs of the criminal. The variety of sentences that can be passed is wider than it used to be, and a judge must choose, from what he has seen and heard, which will be the most suitable for
the man in the dock. But he may have few qualifications for making the choice. It is not unknown for a judge to boast that he never visits a prison, because it is his job to administer the law, not to concern himself with what happens after sentence is passed. This may have been true in former times. the Report points out, but it is no longer true today : 'where a court passes a sentence of corrective training rather than imprisonment it is implicit that it has reason tc believe that corrective training has a better chance of reforming the offender'; and unless the court is familiar with conditions in the different types of penal institution, and has avail- able information about their relative advantages and disadvantages, it cannot perform its task adequately Therefore, the Report argues, sen- tencers should take care to familiarise themselves with what is happening in penal institutions, and with the results of current research on crime.
This is obviously sensible; but a better way to deal with the problem might be through a divi- sion of labour—leaving the courts, as of old, to apply the tariff system to crime; and establishing some other organisation to decide what is best for the individual criminals. This would mean that the judges would have to make their tariffs more flexible; it might even necessitate the intro- duction of indeterminate sentences, though safe- guards would have to be included to prevent the prospect of release being dangled as a bribe before prisoners, to keep them docile—the system which was used at Rampton, with unfortunate results. Where the length of a sentence is to he substantially increased or reduced, the change should be made only with the courts' sanction. But in general, the aim should be to put the treatment of criminals on the same basis as the treatment of mental patients; a balance ought to be struck between the needs of the patient and the needs of society. rather than a fixed term of incarceration settled upon in advance.
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