Partners in crime: the value of cross-disciplinary working
Criminal justice challenges require collaborative working across disciplines, with active academic-practitioner partnerships, argues Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay
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Criminal justice challenges require collaborative working across disciplines, with active academic-practitioner partnerships, argues Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay
The relationship between sentencing practices and the official crime rate was discussed last week at a packed event hosted by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.
The event – Alternatives to custody: Data and policy perspectives – was organised jointly with the University of Birmingham.
Community punishments do not have a significant impact on crime rates, but neither does prison, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay writes
On Friday, 25 September, the preliminary findings of research led by economist Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay on the relative effectiveness of non-custodial sentences will be presented at a workshop at the University of Birmingham.
There will also be talks by:
There is a shaky evidence base for incredibly long sentences (100 years plus), Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Birmingham argues in a recent post on The Conversation.
Following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that life sentences without parole are a breach of human rights, the government has proposed extra long sentences as an alternative.
But Dr Bandyopadhyay argues that 'the logic behind 100-year sentences is weak'. He adds:
The man with a hammer tends to see every problem as a nail. By the same token, the think tank in search of prison as the answer to crime will surely find it.
So it is that Civitas, a think tank that has long argued in favour of higher imprisonment rates, has published a paper arguing that tougher prison sentences result in lower crime.