We must treat criminal offenders with respect when we hold them accountable

What interests you?

My interest in criminal punishment, the topic of my research, began when I worked in the criminal justice voluntary sector before becoming an academic. During this time, I saw the enormous amounts of collateral damage that harmed individuals when they were punished over and above what the court intended. I also saw the patchy, public, private, and philanthropic attempts to help people put their lives back together after criminal punishment.  

Who inspired you? 

I love learning, and I’ve had some fabulous teachers along the way and a lot of encouragement. But humans have a success bias – we love to hear about success stories, breakthroughs and discoveries. We only hear about Thomas Edison’s ‘10,000 ways that won’t work’ because attempt 10,001 at inventing a lightbulb was a success. Edison will have needed a huge amount of resources to have had those 10,001 chances - he didn’t do it alone. I’m inspired by the equally important folks we don’t hear about, who do important work learning about what doesn’t work. We’re not standing on the shoulders of occasional giant intellects; we’re giving each other a leg-up with small steps that might not be widely known (and quickly forgotten once success is encountered) that point someone else in the right direction. Knowledge is a collaborative, collective endeavour, even if we like to pretend it’s a competition between rare individual genius. This is why I encourage my students to work together and not to be afraid of making mistakes. This is how we learn. 

What’s the big idea?

 I’m a legal and political theorist. I work with ideas. I’m interested in the values and principles behind the policies we implement, the things that tell us what we ought to be aiming for.  

I’m particularly interested in whether punishment is justified at all, and, if it is, what ways of treating people who are being punished are morally acceptable. I do this by applying the ethics of care to penal theory. Care ethics is a different way of doing moral reasoning that begins with relationships and responsibilities and pays a lot of attention to context and practice. In my academic work, I argue that punishment, even as it currently is in England and Wales, contains important elements of care – although woefully badly practiced care. Without care, our prisons couldn’t function. We would do better to recognise this essential work and to use it proactively to produce punishments that allow people to support themselves and their families in crime-free lives.  

What should we be reading? 

 Anything from a reputable source that makes you think or ask questions. Read something that challenges what you already think. Read something different to what you usually read and learn something new.  

It’s not so much what as how. Read with a pen in your hand and questions in your head. Better decisions are shaped with more information, not less.  

But reading is only one way of learning. There are some great podcasts out there – I love Radio Four’s ‘In Our Time’ back catalogue (discussions of topics from the arts, sciences, history, maths, religion – and, of course, politics and philosophy). I’ve also learned a lot from the British History Podcast. There’s also nothing like doing - volunteer, join a club or a class. It’s never too late to pick up something new.  

What policy changes would you like to see in your area of expertise? 

 Implement the recommendations of the 2006 Corston Report, which reviewed the position of vulnerable women in the criminal justice system. The Government of the day accepted most of the recommendations, but too little has changed. The report specifically considered the needs of women prisoners and made recommendations about holding women serving custodial sentences in smaller residential facilities, closer to their homes and families, with more opportunities for building trusting relationships within prisons between the staff and the people who live in them. The report also noted that these provisions may well also be useful other categories of people serving prison sentences, including young men.  

Providing services to prisoners often produces a complaint about other people in the community who could also benefit from similar help. This is an argument for better service provision in communities, not an argument about reducing services in prisons. Better access to timely support for individuals and families and investment in communities is extremely important, especially given the current cost of living crisis.  

What’s the big question? 

Assuming we must punish people who break the law, how can we do so in ways that hold them accountable for their wrongdoing, but also respects them as persons and citizens? 

Criminal offending is an ordinary human behaviour. We don’t all do it, but there’s more than enough of it for it to be statistically significant. Humans are the kinds of creature that do wrong things on purpose, make mistakes, and do things we later come to regret. This shouldn’t be a surprising state of affairs or question.  

What’s the answer? 

Sentences which support people towards being able to live law-abiding lives – the ordinary lives that in my experience the vast majority of people with criminal records want to live – are better for communities and punished individuals. They allow people who are being or have been punished to support themselves, to support their families, and to benefit everyone by contributing to their community as good family members, employees, and citizens.  

Some types of punishment make it harder for individuals to live law abiding lives. Prisons disrupt family relationships, employment, and make it harder for people to take care of their dependents. David Cameron was right when he said that people who are being punished should be valued, but not as a resource to be exploited – rather as ordinary folks with the same needs, responsibilities, and rights as everyone else.  

Ideally, there would be no crime. But since we don’t live in an ideal world, and since we haven’t invented time travel, we can’t un-happen a crime once it’s been committed. All we can do when we (or the state on behalf of the community) are punishing a person is to try and think about what to do next: to repair the damage and hold a person accountable for their choices while also thinking about how we can best minimise future harms.  

You previously worked as a senior parliamentary researcher. Given this experience, how do you think academics can more effectively frame their ideas in ways that are useful to people on the front lines of policymaking and politics?  

Don’t underestimate the importance of talking to the parliamentary researcher. Politicians are enormously busy, and many have their minds on other things. But it’s the researcher’s job to put facts in a sensible order in front of them in an easy-to-absorb format at the appropriate time. They can help you make your points clear and accessible if you can show them why it’s relevant and important. 

Keeping your point focused on the matter in hand will help too – just like we tell our students with essays, make sure you answer the question. If you don’t know the questions the politician you will be engaging with is asking, ask their researcher or other staffers.   

You don’t need to know everything or have all of the answers. Policymakers might not like answers that aren’t black and white and cut and dried. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not important that someone tells them they need to consider in more depth why this issue is complex. Remember what you do know and think about how you can contribute to a better understanding of the problem.  

How can academics work to increase their influence over policy debates?  

 Communication, communication, communication.  

 Academics need to be better at communicating outside of the academy, but we need help to build the relationships that support clear communication.  

Ideas take time. Ideas develop through regular repeated discussion. It’s how we come to see what’s important and why it matters. It’s how academics learn about the applications ideas might have in the real world – by talking with people who have experience of trying to manage things in practice - whether policy makers or front-line practitioners. Communication like that depends on building relationships between both parties. Understanding can’t be rushed.  

What did you learn while working in Parliament that continues to influence and shape your academic research?  

 Nobody knows everything. I wasn’t hired for what I knew but rather because I knew how to find out, interpret, and apply what we found. No one knows everything, and different folks have different strengths. Recognise what you do know and what you can contribute. We build solutions together, but first, we need to understand the problem.  

Who or what gives you hope?

People and our capacity for solidarity. You don’t need to agree with someone to learn from them. We can do wonderful things when we work together.  

Dr Helen Brown Coverdale is Lecturer in UCL's Department of Political Science.