When it comes to punishment, one size does not fit all

Posted April 13, 2010

Well, the race has begun. How long will it take the parties to start playing the ‘let’s be tough’ on crime game? And it won’t be difficult to guess how some of the media will respond to the mantra.

Freudian slip today – was skipping through the Guardian and had a quick look at what I thought were the main points of the Tory manifesto (the crime bit) to discover it was Labour’s… whatever the result, our field is going to have a challenge ahead. At a seminar at the National Gallery yesterday around arts in prisons we discussed the very real concerns expressed by the voluntary sector in particular about budgetary cuts. But also arts in prisons, like community sentencing, must not be seen as a soft option and we must all take shared responsibility to get a clear and positive message out to the public and politicians that offenders, like all of us, do not just simply respond to one kind of diet. We absolutely must not see excellent work discredited simply because it does not suit the ‘one punishment should fits all’ brigade.

community sentencing, general election 2010, Manifesto

Roma Hooper

Roma has worked in and around the criminal justice system since 1992, when she was asked to help set up Britain’s first prison radio station at Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution. She has a Masters in Criminal Justice Policy from the London School of Economics, is Chair of the Griffins Society (supporting women in the criminal justice system), Vice-Chair of the Foundation Training Company (which runs a series of prison and community based resettlement and development programmes) as well as Chair and Founder of the Prison Radio Association. In 2010 she launched Make Justice Work, a campaign to highlight the cost of short-term prison sentences and to improve public confidence in community sentences.