A colleague and I recently had an interesting meeting with a well-placed contact in politics, someone who also has a deep knowledge of the justice system.
Among the things we discussed was our report of last summer – Smaller, but tougher – which explores how the criminal justice system is processing young adults.
While the number of young adults processed by the system had declined sharply, we told them, those who are being prosecuted are more likely to be remanded, and to get a prison sentence (and for longer) if convicted. Ethnic and gender differences – young black men are more likely to end up in prison than comparable young white men, for instance – have also sharpened over time.
“We already know this”, was their somewhat dismissive response.
Sure, I thought, you may know that fewer young adults are being prosecuted, but do you really understand the detail of how this has changed over time? Do you know, for instance, that young black women are being treated far more harshly, on some measures, than young white women or, indeed, young white men?
I did not say any of this, of course. Part of the middle-class upbringing involves socialisation into being polite to important people.
With the benefit of some days’ reflection, I am glad, for reasons beyond socialisation, that I didn’t challenge them. In their seemingly dismissive response was an important truth.
Knowing that something is the case, ‘naming the problem’ (to use fashionable phrase), is just that. Knowing and naming is not the same as doing and changing. Moreover, doing more research, or repeating that knowledge, does not, in itself, change anything.
Explaining how something is does not change it for the better.
I can therefore understand the “tell me something I don’t know” frustration that many politicians and policy makers must at times feel when presented with research on well-worn policy challenges. It is all very good, but where does it get us, just repeating what we already know?
The “we already know this” response can also, though, reflect a deeper frustration: not about being reminded of well-known problems, but about their persistence, and the apparent inability to do anything about them. This in turn can feed pessimism, or even cynicism: that’s just the way it is. Nothing is likely to change it. Stop reminding me of something that just is.
Of course, few things in the justice system just are. The Crown Court backlog is currently around 80,000 cases. In 2010 it was half that number. The current prison population in England and Wales is approaching 90,000. A generation ago it was half that. In 2014, the performance of every probation area (then known as ‘trusts’) was rated as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. Today, the probation service is on its knees.
Thirty-odd years ago, the communist and historian, Eric Hobsbawm, made an appearance on BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs. Asked by the presenter, Sue Lawley, why so many people appeared prepared to live in societies Hobsbawm considered to be marked by injustice and barbarism, he replied: “human beings can get used to almost anything”.
It seems to me that we have to resist getting used to the state of the justice system. The current problems are not a given. They are the products of decisions made at particular moments, by particular people, in particular circumstances. This means they can, in principle, be unmade or remade.
Perhaps the value of research is not to surprise or shame, but to keep the door open: to explain how things are, and how they have changed, so that the knowledge is there, to inform effective decisions, when the political consensus, or practical opportunity, presents itself.
“We already know this” may be true. The question is what we decide to do with what we know.
