Moral Bankruptcy

Continuing with our morality theme, regular contributor 'Getafix has unearthed yet another interesting contribution to the discussion here:- 

Challenging the moral bankruptcy of the criminal justice system

Justice is an interpretive process, from the investigation of alleged crimes through to trial, acquittal or conviction, punishments for past actions, deterrents and identification and prevention of potential future threats and possible rehabilitative interventions.

This represents a considerable number of interpretive acts involving a significant number of agencies and professional groupings. The criminal justice system is procedurally bureaucratic and criticised by just about everyone involved: it fails victims, the accused (including those on remand), criminals (whether on probation, in prison, on parole) and communities. It seems that no one is satisfied with the processes or outcomes of justice. Add to this the realities of institutional racism, sexism, homophobia and transgender bias, then there would appear to be a significant problem.

In terms of punishment, there is no disagreement on the facts of record imprisonment rates and their consequences including the exacerbation of existing problems – overcrowding, terrible prison conditions, addiction, mental health problems, self-harm and suicide. Once understood, this should be genuinely terrifying, but despite this knowledge, nothing changes.

The ‘tough on crime’ consensus between both the left and the right of politics is based on individualism and market economics, where – despite the rhetoric of rehabilitation – punishment and incapacitation are the sole purposes of prisons. They have become places of deliberate torture and suffering, with institutions such as the National Probation Service providing a constant conveyor belt of supply by returning people to prison often for technical breaches of orders rather than for having committed more crimes.

Build more prisons, recruit more staff, so that more people can be punished more efficiently and effectively, conflate treatment and rehabilitation with punishment to keep people employed and economies stimulated. Tough deterrent sentencing ensures that more people are imprisoned, and quite simply people are set up to fail. This circular, self-justifying rationale fails to deliver justice or healing, to victims, criminals or communities. While private companies may welcome the profits, morally the approach is bankrupt.

In Redemptive Criminology we argue that the places of justice are the places of injustice, with utilitarian justifications for punishment being stupid, banal and dangerous. People who have committed crimes become the necessary scapegoats around which we can all cohere by agreeing on their guilt and using the innocence of victims to justify harsher punishments. It seems that, in an age of global anxiety, the necessity of punishment is the only certainty that we can agree on.

Winston Churchill famously said in 1910:

“The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country. A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the state and even of convicted criminals against the state, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry of all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if only you can find it in the heart of every person – these are the symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it.” (Hansard, 20th July 1910).

We fail every single criterion that Churchill articulates. He was not a man renowned for compassion, his politics are not our politics, but that difference is important because despite political differences we should agree that a common humanity, an understanding of virtue, and the rights of every person are at the heart of both the meaning and the practices of criminal justice espoused in our politics. A civilised justice system expects and demands that punishments are limited by inalienable human rights. This is opposed to the open-ended approach of actuarial risk and public protection measures, and deterrent sentencing.

Institutional justice implies shared values and institutional memory and a need for the organisations involved to be learning organisations. At the heart of this process is a conformity–creativity paradox. One of the interesting things to come out of the assault on institutional justice from the populist insurrections of both Trump and Johnson is that to maintain systems of justice that have integrity, we need people who are committed to human rights and due process, are able to resist and push back.

Once we are aware, then we need to act. The authentic practitioner is a non-violent practitioner, someone who is trying to bring peace to situations of conflict, and thus transforming society from the ‘bottom up’. This firstly involves understanding the self in the light of others within the systemic context (conflict) and exploring the boundaries of professional practice in day-to-day interactions and decision making. In challenging violence and discrimination within the CJS, practitioners must develop a hermeneutical narrative to understand their own complicity in violence and discrimination. 

Hermeneutical narrative is the process of understanding our own story of how we have arrived where we are and how we take our lived experience into professional practice. Conformity requires replication, creativity, originality. Any of these can be problematically rooted in our own potential for violence. Only authentic practitioners working through their own thoughts, feelings and actions in collaboration with others can disentangle the inherent violence of institutional processes to enable working with self-organising capacities and allow new things to emerge rather than repeating the same. 

Andrea Albutt, President of the Prison Governors’ Association, has identified the ongoing commitment to increasing prison places as lunacy, and Jo Farrell, the new Chief Constable of Police Scotland has acknowledged that the force is institutionally racist. Other leaders must follow these examples of honesty by providing resources for their staff to reflect on their own practice individually and collectively to promote change in their organisations. This is most powerfully effective at team level.

Practitioners must engage with the contested concept of forgiveness. In Redemptive Criminology we develop a rereading of the Judaeo-Christian understanding of forgiveness to argue that this provides us with a dynamic energy in the systemic space between victims, criminals and communities. Forgiveness is the space of possibility that is given up front rather than the end-point reward for jumping through hoops (aka atonement). With the latter, the end point is never reached, another aspect of the moral bankruptcy of the system – people are locked in with no way out. Failure is profitable.

By being authentically human we recognise the authentically human in others, meaning that we see them as human beings first (human rights are grounded in that common humanity) before the requirements of justice or the job that we are required to do. Irrespective of the crimes committed, this embracing of the other’s humanity ensures their rights are recognised, welcomed and ensured. It acknowledges and does not forget harms caused to others, but ultimately recognises the possibility of some degree of healing so that those harms are not replicated.

Authentic practice then is that space between conformity and creativity which invites all those involved to recognise their own complicity in violence and to do things differently, trying to ensure that cycles of violence – whether personal, institutional or both – are broken, and providing a way forward for all those involved.

Aaron Pycroft PhD Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Social Complexity, University of Portsmouth, UK. Clemens Bartollas PhD Emeritus Professor of Criminology, University of Northern Iowa, USA.

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This starts this morning 9.00am BBC Radio 4

BBC Reith Lectures 2025 – Moral Revolution

Bregman's 2025 Reith Lectures will reflect on moments in history, including the likes of the suffragette and abolitionist movements, which have sparked transformative moral revolutions, offering hope for a new wave of progressive change. Across four lectures, he will also consider the explosive technological progress of recent years - placing us at a moment of immense risk and possibility, and will look ahead to how we might shape the future.