So, we’ve all seen the glaring typo: “Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits.” and it appears some will even have signed in spite of this small but embarrassing boob.
FT – Ministers plan removal of rioters’ benefits
Reading the FT this morning, it struck me that the quality of the argument about such a fundamentally important principle could have been better. Still reeling with anger at both the audacity of the criminals and the failure of the safety net to prevent the wide-spread chaos, those for and against this proposal appear to be neither thinking clearly nor expressing their arguments coherently.
My analysis is thus:
In summary, the basic points coming through are these:
FOR
(1) We’re angry and want justice. (a) to punish the wrongdoers (b) to disincentive flagitious behaviour.
(2) It seems unfair that those breaking the law continue to receive benefits from society’s pockets. Indeed, perpetrators of this violence are continuing to benefit from the tax-paying victims.
(3) Benefits have been considered a ‘right’ whereas they ought in future to be assumed to be a ‘privilege’.
(4) It is not desirable to sustain hundreds or thousands more people in prisons. This is costly, apart from anything else but it also fails to demonstrate governance by consent in the longer-term.
(5) Break the law and rights and privileges should, can and will be removed from you.
AGAINST
(i) Benefits are a right.
(ii) Removal of benefits will not help in the longer term.
E.g. A person desperate for survival (food, shelter etc.) they will turn to stealing, mugging, looting or whatever else they in order to survive. If the solution is to punish through the courts and send people to prison, they will cost more there than they did on benefits. Hence this false economy serves neither to solve the cost problem nor meets the goal of crime reduction: if anything, it is counter-productive on both of these fronts.
(iii) It would be costly to implement a ‘barred from benefits’ list in an otherwise (already failure-prone) automated system.
(iv) The measure does nothing address the fix the “broken society” – i.e. will deal deal with symptoms not causes.
MY COMMENTARY
For:
(1) The criminal justice system ought to do this already. For the most part it seems to at any rate (Crime rates are relatively by historical standards). If it’s not doing it well enough, i.e. it’s not punishing and disincentivising criminal behaviour; isn’t the criminal justice system in need of review?
Since this violence was pretty exceptional (much like the rare times a prison [Remember Ford Open Prison earlier this year?)] has failed to keep order and then ended decimated) and we don’t generally make laws in the UK based on exceptional cases, this is a dangerously short-term precedent to set.
It would encourage media-friendly, knee-jerk policies which are poorly thought out, enacted in the heat of the moment.
I wouldn’t like to see laws made each time an e-petition goes viral over the social media network.
Laws should be made as a result of manifestos, properly debated and voted upon – this process legitimises the laws of the land: governance by the will of the people, not by the will of the social-media-sphere.
Also, some perspective: 150,000 people signing a petition is a lot of people; but not a high proportion of the population (approx a third of one percent of current UK population!)…
(2, 3 and 5) Indeed, I sympathise enormously with these points. The hand that giveth shall taketh away, and all that. It does seem fundamentally wrong that anyone guilty of wanton criminality – a complete disregarding of the laws of the land – should then turn around, cap-in-hand and insist on being charitably cared for by the innocent victims* of that crime (in this case, the innocent are numerous and consist indirectly of almost anyone in the country who failed to take part in the violence).
As forgiving and charitable as we the British are, there are lots of times when we’d like to withdraw that charity. Some behaviour just warrants an ‘enough is enough’ response.
Some examples? Mass murders ; pedophiles; fraudsters; all of whom we house in relatively comfortable prisons. I’m sure many would sooner revive more archaic forms of punishing the guilty:- Hang ’em? Flog ’em? Send them to the front line? Send them to America… All illicit a rye smile from me but realistically, I’d suggest we look instead at why prison is so ineffective.
I’d suggest forced labour or community service would be more effective but that’s just me. Alternatively, I like the idea of food-banks: essentials only. No inflated benefits cheque with which to buy a BlackBerry or Sky dish.
The bigger point is that a system that doles out money irrespective of recipients’ lack of gratitude and irrespective of his/her behaviour / participation in society must, I agree, have its days numbered if we’re ever to avoid this feeling of complete injustice. That however, like is not limited to the rioting incident.
*ironically there are lots of guilty victims too – they’re the ones who have ruined their own lives and town centres by idiotically participating in the violence last week.
(4) Prison is a very crude and expensive generally. It’s hardly a deterrent to many ‘mild’ criminals (hence record prison numbers) and has very little use at all as an immediate deterrent to those creating the type of mayhem that we saw last week. ‘Tougher’ prisons might be one step in the right direction but I think it would benefit society more to look at alternatives – community service, for example.
I overheard someone in the street suggesting those convicted ought to be barred from major cities for a period of a year / two years. I think that would be very interesting as an experiment – totally disperse them away from one another and from encouragement to re-offend.
I liked the idea of having the rioters, for example, hauled back and shamed in front of the communities (those they recently so showed such blatant disregard for) and made to clear up their own mess. Must be careful not to be find too ‘soft’ an alternative though.
That said, when it comes down to it sometimes Prison is the only option (reluctantly) and the cost of that should be seen as immaterial compared to the cost to society of those people being free to inflict whatever chaos they choose.
Against:
(i) No, they’re not. Or if they are (by virtue of bureaucratic / legal definition) they shouldn’t be. If you’ve paid into the system then they’re a contractual right but there ought to be terms – you should not be able to flout the law and claim benefits. This is even truer in the many cases where people have never contributed (or contributed too little) to the system – benefits were an ‘insurance policy’ – how they ever came to be considered a right I do not know. A message should be sent – it’s such a tremendous privilege to live in the UK at all – let alone enjoy the fruits of our societies combined effort – but don’t take the honest, hardworking and law-abiding taxpayer as a fool forever obliged to look after you: play by the rules or your out of the game.
(ii) This is probably the best point the nay-sayers have but believe even this point precariously stands on socialist sand. The assumption here is that the benefit system ‘benefits’ society / the individual in the longer-term and the removal of that benefit would result in further desperation and an exacerbation of tension thereafter*.
Actually, I don’t think they do. Benefits ought to be a short term, time-dependent pay out: this immediately incentivises proactive redressing of someones situation whereas unbound, unlimited, unstoppable and unending benefits do precisely the opposite – they incentivise a lethargy, kill ambition and ultimately result in an adjustment – a lowering – of expectations for life to a point where ‘surviving’ with a TV, mobile phone and occasional new tracksuits / trainers is acceptable.
I’ve seen this happen to my own twin brother. This ‘easy’ path is heart-breaking to watch, addictive and all to easy to tread forever. This must stop else we will truly have a society of two ‘classes’.
*People in desperate situations do desperate things and law enforcement is impossible if the penalty for, e.g. not stealing is starvation whereas the penalty for stealing is a brief visit to a prison where you’re fed.
(iii) The benefits system needs a complete replacement. Although the numbers are big they’re really not ‘that’ big : a few million payments once a fortnight shouldn’t be so ludicrously error-prone and unwieldy. The private manage very complex transactions – thousands or millions a minute – with exceptionally low levels of errors. The financial sector has talent aplenty who could, I’m confident, replace the benefit system very quickly. The political will may be another matter. Private firms should be brought in to run an improved benefits system. The largely-paper based system in operation by the public sector is dizzyingly archaic and utterly incompetent.
(iv) Agreed – completly. Responding in a knee-jerk fashion to this one-off, exceptional spate of violence is failing to see the wood for the trees. Major changes are needed in criminal justice and benefits systems. It’s a step change but it’s doable. Focussing on ‘a fightback’ against the rioters is one thing – a fleeting moment only. Focus on the Big Society. [Stop laughing – it’s serious and clever in spite of its gimmicky name]
To conclude more succinctly:
This was an exceptional event which justifiably draws the attention to a dangerously reduced confidence and satisfaction people feel in respect of the criminal justice system and to widespread indignation at a benefits system which seen as a right to be enjoyed irrespective of
We should though be careful not to exacerbate levels of desperation and to fix the ‘broader’ system failures rather than trying to come up with a ‘response’ to a single issue – a style of governance this country would do well to steer clear of. Only by doing this do you help proactively firm up the foundations of society; meddling with knee-jerk, reactionary legislation is to miss the point completely.