Criminal justice in England and America

Public Interest, Wntr, 1997 by James Q. Wilson

Twenty years ago, I discussed in this magazine how England and America dealt with crime.(1) Then, crime in both nations was increasing rapidly. England, of course, had vastly fewer violent offenses than the United States, but even with property crime - burglary, for example - England had fewer offenses than did we. Though both nations had rising levels of crime, England, at least, seemed determined to do something about it. There, "the chances of going to prison for having committed a serious crime [were] much greater" than they are here. This might explain, I suggested, why English property crime rates were lower than ours. There was, however, one worrisome note: The chances of going to prison in England were declining, a fact that might help explain why crime there, though lower than here, was rising.

Today, the worrisome note has become the dominant problem. Starting around 1980, American crime rates began to go down while English ones (and, in fact, those in most European nations) moved up. Though England's murder rate is only a fraction of that found in the United States, the rate of other crimes - notably, burglary and auto theft - is now higher there than here.

Professor David Farrington of Cambridge University and Patrick Langan at the National Institute of Justice in the United States have reported that by 1987 the number of burglaries (per 100,000 population) reported to the police was one-third higher in England than in the United States, and the auto-theft rate was higher by one-half. Since the public may differ in their willingness to report crimes to the police, a useful check on police reports is citizen responses to victim surveys. In 1987, English victims reported the same burglary rate as did Americans and an auto-theft rate that was twice as high. Moreover, during the 1980s, the British crime rate was rising dramatically, and the American rate was dropping significantly.

The combined effect of these two changes was to produce a remarkable alteration in the chances of victimization in the two nations. In 1981, the American burglary rate was twice that of England; ten years later, the English burglary rate was twice as high as America's (using police reports) and one-fourth higher (using victim surveys). English auto theft was double America's rate.

The treatment of arrested offenders also differed, but in the opposite way. The percentage of arrested suspects who were found guilty of a crime during the 1980s stayed about the same in the United States, but dropped sharply in England for virtually every major crime. For example, between 1984 and 1992, the number of robberies more than doubled, but the number of persons sent to prison because of robbery went up only slightly. Owing to this reduction in imprisonment, the proportion of English adults who went to prison also dropped in England, especially for burglary and auto theft.

Farrington and Langan have suggested that Britain relaxed its penal sanctions in a way that may well have contributed to the continuing rise in crime rates, while America, during the same period, may have tightened its policies in ways that helped drive down most forms of crime. To support this, they note that, while the average English burglar had his chances of avoiding conviction rise from 1 in 35 to 1 in 78 in just six years, the average American burglar saw his chances of avoiding conviction fall from i conviction per 61 burglaries to i in 54. Finally, these scholars indicate that time served in prison remained low in England (six months for the average burglar, less than 17 for the typical robber) while time in prison remained at least twice as high in America.

The puzzle is this: Given that both England and the United States have high crime rates, that voters in both countries are deeply upset about crime, that prison policies are known to reduce crime, and that (during the 1980s) both countries were led by conservative political regimes (Thatcher and Reagan), how can one explain the lowering of penal sanctions in England and their increase in the United States?

Doing time here and abroad

In 1976, it was already clear that England had embraced a policy of deferring sanctions for offenders. The Criminal Justice Act of 1967 required that sentences not in excess of six months be suspended unless the offender was a violent one. A Parole Board had been created with the power to release from prison offenders who had served one-third of their sentences. These polices had their effect. In 1968, about three-fifths of all inmates were released from prison after having served only four months. In 1972, a new Criminal Justice Act weakened the 1967 commitment to suspend sentences, but still recommended them, urging judges to reserve prison terms for only the most serious offenders. The British civil service was strongly committed to the idea of noncustodial treatment. It helped create the system of community service orders which allowed offenders to do work in the city instead of spending time behind bars.