‘Stop using 19th century punishments for 21st century crimes’, urges Supers president

New ideas are needed to keep punishments relevant for the perpetrators of rapidly emerging crimes, the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales (PSAEW) has said. Gavin Thomas pointed to the high cost of keeping offenders locked up and reoffending rates as evidence that current sanctions are inadequate. Mr Thomas suggested that young cybercriminals could be made to wear Wi-Fi jamming devices on wrist or ankle bracelets that would disrupt their access to the internet. While he accepted there are practical and Human Rights issues with the proposal, Mr Thomas described it as the kind of thinking necessary to ease the burden on the country’s prison system. He said: “We have got to stop using 19th century punishments to deal with 21st century crimes. It costs around £38,000 a year to keep someone in prison but if you look at the statistics around short term sentencing the recidivism rate is extraordinarily high. “So while we might feel good about ourselves that we have put someone in prison for 12 to 15 months, the chances are that person is going to come out of prison and commit more crime. “We can continue jailing criminals but it is not going to help the long term situation and I speak as someone who has spent a career putting people in prison.” Figures released in January 2016 showed reoffending rates for young criminals have reached the highest point for more than a decade. Thirty-eight per cent of the 42,000 juvenile offenders cautioned, convicted or released in 2013/14 committed a new crime in the next 12 months – the largest proportion since comparable records began in 2002. Meanwhile, cybercrime cost the UK economy approximately £1 billion last year, and the related offences are now thought to account for 40 per cent of all crime committed. For young cybercriminals, Mr Thomas believes taking away their ability to use smartphones or laptops might prove a more effective punishment than jail time. He added that combining the readily-available gadgets with rehabilitation courses and community sentencing could further drive down the reoffending rate. Implementing Mr Thomas’ proposal would require officials to overcome problems like the disruptive effect the gadgets would have on nearby, legitimate internet users. Offenders could also continue to access the internet using wired Ethernet connections, or 5G phone signals that operate on a different frequency to Wi-Fi. However, Mr Thomas still believes it is something that the Ministry of Justice should consider. A PSAEW spokesperson said: “Policing needs new ideas and different thinking if it is to tackle 21st century offending effectively. “Policing and the criminal justice system are dealing with crimes that didn’t even exist a few years ago. These are changing faster than policing methods and techniques can keep pace with. “We also need to find appropriate ways of preventing reoffending which are an alternative to prison for a range of crimes, as prison is not always an efficient or an effective way of deterring people from committing further crime. “The service needs to work with the technology industry to help it solve problems with cybercrime and criminality that is carried out or enabled by new or evolving technology. “The intention with this example is not to champion a particular technology or solution, but to start a debate that stimulates ideas and to have a discussion about what works.”