Draw Breath

One of those hidden problems was raised in yesterday's Northern Ireland Questions . Paul Goggins, Minister of State in the NIO, revealed that 30% of prisoners in Northern Ireland (or 59% of prisoner receptions according to the Northern Ireland Committee report (pdf, p.6) on the NI Prisons Service) that provoked the questions) are there for fine defaults. As some members pointed out, given the limited number of imprisonment options here, fine defaulters tend to get lumped in with more serious criminals, including in Maghaberry.

One of the most important issues surrounding imprisonment for fine defaults is the strange impact the policy has on women, especially regarding non-payment of television licences. Alistair MacDonald raised this during NI Questions but the Minister of State did not have figures to hand. Of the women in Hydebank Wood in 2006/7 (pdf, p.11), for instance, close on two thirds were there because of default either on fines for motoring offences or because of non-payment of television licences.

This problem created something of a stir in England and Wales in the 1990s. As this article by Christina Pantazis and David Gordon from 1997 points out, the BBC's TV Licensing regime has a deleterious effect on poor people, of whom single mothers and the elderly made up an increasing proportion from the 1980s onwards. Poor people are naturally the least likely to be able to pay a fine, are likely to be already in debt and are unlikely to be able to manage their finances in response to new demands.

What Pantazis and Gordon didn't point to was the shift in the BBC's enforcement regime when it outsourced to Capita . From what I heard at a conference last year, the BBC Capita got a bonus if they brought in a new licence (as did the officers if Wikipedia is to be believed). Since they called during the day they were more likely to find women at home (very likely poor women or single mums) and once they found someone without a licence they would offer to sell one (and procure that bonus). This gets anyone who can afford to pay the agent off out of the equation, leaving the poorest ending up in front of magistrates and then facing fines. And they tend disproportionately to be women.

In fact, in the mid 1990s fully 57% of women in prison in England and Wales were there because of a default on their TV licences.

Something had to and did give (as outlined here (pdf) with the introduction of various payment methods that moderated the doorstepping tactic and closer guidance to magistrates about matching the level of fines with the person's capacity to pay.

Strange thing is, if yesterdays NI Questions this shift doesn't seem to have been extended to Northern Ireland. We still may have a regime that locks up women to a disproportionate and, if the lessons of England and Wales are anything to go by, needless extent. In the words (pdf, p. 9) of Robin Masefield giving oral evidence to the NI committee, "we have tended to adopt the approach in Northern Ireland of the default being a period of custody, we actually have a significantly higher rate of fines being paid than England and Wales."

This, as Masefield says, cannot be right.

I see that Conrad Black has been sentenced to six years in the slammer. Corporate fraud trials tend to be very complicated things indeed, so there's no use simply assuming that Black robbed the company silver, at least in an obvious way, though he was certainly recorded removing delicate files from his office when he discovered he was under investigation.

Anyway, Richard Finlay an excellent essay on the real-life space opera villain that is Conrad Black over on his blog. Also, you might want to check his comments on subprime out while you're over there.

I'm making my way through a few books at the moment and have just finished Neil Collins's The Great Irish Bank Robbery, on Allied Irish Banks and the DIRT tax. The book is one of those marvellous journalistic pieces: an easy rolicking read covering the events and (primarily) personalities behind a scandal without bothering the reader with much in the way of analysis. Given this, I don't think I'm with Shane Ross in calling the book a 'humdinger.' Still, the book does reveal the complete breakdown of governance in Allied Irish Banks throughout the late 1980s and 1990s as ambition overtook the willingness to address scandal after scandal after scandal.

I'm in the middle of an enormous teaching burst here which, despite the fears expressed in my previous post, is most enjoyable indeed. For me at least...

Anyway, that coupled with a temporary lack of broadband at home has meant that a number of interesting issues have slipped by.

Primary among them was Justice Carney's speech (also here) referring (obliquely in the end apparently) to Majella Holohan's Victim Impact Statement at the end of Wayne O'Donoghue's trial. Chris Gaskin has an nuanced general piece about Victim Impact Statements over on Balrog and there's a characteristically intelligent discussion about the matter on GUBU.

I have to say that this sort of problem brings the arch-formalist out in me. While we all ought to feel enormous sympathy for the victims of crimes (clearly including the family of victims) that does not mean that courts are an appropriate venue for catharsis, even if after a trial.

The state may be under an obligation to devote significant resources to assisting victims, but - to be rather blunt - victims do not own crimes. To imagine otherwise, even to the limited degree that a VIS does, is I think wrongheaded. It legitimises the idea that criminal justice is a matter of retribution and that victims' impressions ought to drive the state's response to crime. Compassion can be the business of the state, but it's certainly not the business of the court.

This is well worth a watch. My solution? Cover your hand with your wallet as you key in your pin number. Without a visual recording of your pin the scam doesn't work.