Is an ever fiercer crackdown on the misdemeanours of the poor really justice? When a government minister suggests building new prisons to lock up shoplifters, Tory priorities are revealed in technicolour: that war should be waged on the symptoms, rather than the causes, of poverty. This is a tradition as British as drinking tea or Morris dancing. When the economy tanked after the 1720 “South Sea bubble” collapse, the so-called Black Act was passed, imposing the death penalty on the overwhelmingly poor Britons driven by hunger who poached animals in private parks in order to survive. Today’s justice system spares offenders the gallows, but it’s driven by the same class vengeance that defined it back then: witness how you’re 23 times more likely to be prosecuted for benefit fraud than tax fraud, even though the latter costs the economy nine times more.
The Tories’ plan to cling on to power is now abundantly clear: appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Proffering mandatory prison sentences as a solution to persistent shoplifting is part of that grim package. In practice, that means scooping up more largely poor, often traumatised citizens, and locking them up in institutions so overcrowded that their staff’s trade union describes them as a “powder keg waiting to blow”. That shoplifting is indelibly linked to poverty is beyond debate. Last year, even the new chief inspector of constabulary declared that officers should use “discretion” in prosecuting those who steal so they can eat, adding that “whenever you see an increase in the cost of living or whenever you see more people dropping into poverty, I think you’ll invariably see a rise in crime.” He was correct: shoplifting has more than doubled in the last six years, reaching a staggering 8m incidents last year.
This surge cannot reasonably be attributed to a sudden kleptomania pandemic. If you deprive millions of people of the means to sufficiently feed themselves, you can expect that a number of them will resort to desperate measures. Take Tower Hamlets, an east London borough with the highest level of child poverty in Britain. A recent report from its council found that the most stolen item was Calpol, noting that “desperation has led to an increase in theft. Shoplifting of essential items and medicine has increased.” Now, some may argue that it is offensive to claim poverty automatically breeds theft: don’t millions of struggling Britons manage to avoid stealing? Sure, but is stealing Calpol if you have a child in need really grotesquely irresponsible? Perhaps only if you value property above even the wellbeing of a child.
Ours is a wealthy society, after all, which has condemned so many of its citizens to such destitution that hunger is now their lot. According to the Trussell Trust, one in seven Britons experienced hunger last year because they lacked enough money – that is, 11.3 million people. While the richest fifth need only spend 11% of their disposable income if they seek to meet the cost of a government recommended healthy diet, that reaches 50% for the poorest fifth. That means millions skipping meals and schoolchildren stealing food from their peers in order to satisfy their empty bellies. Nurses are among those now receiving charity food parcels from food banks. These should be considered the real crimes, not that some of our most desperate citizens feel compelled to steal in order to eat, leading supermarkets to place security tags on £3.99 blocks of cheese.
Granted, it is not just hunger that drives such theft. A significant number of shoplifters have problematic relationships with drugs, and are stealing to feed their addictions. But the link between drug addiction and trauma is long established, as it is to poverty: in Scotland, for example, people in the poorest areas are around 18 times more likely to experience problematic drug use compared to people in the least deprived communities. How is condemning victims of a broken society to incarceration a solution?
As it is, 90% of prisoners have at least one mental health or substance misuse problem. Our prison system locks up some of the most traumatised, mentally ill members of the poorest British people and then calls that justice. What is needed is support and care to alleviate the mental health conditions that lead offenders to commit harm against themselves and others, not repeated periods in a prison cell. Condemning shoplifters to imprisonment may prove self-defeating in other ways: evidence suggests that prison can act as a school of crime, serving as a gateway to other criminal offences.
It costs around £65,000 to imprison each person, and then £40,000 for each year they’re behind bars: money that could be better spent on prevention. If the government focused more on abolishing hunger – a diabolical condition to exist in such a rich country – rather than titillating rightwing newspapers with law-and-order porn, it would find shoplifting rates would steeply decline. Reversing social security cuts during a cost of living crisis or, say, controlling rents is more likely to prevent desperate parents stealing Calpol or blocks of cheese than the threat of being deprived their freedom. But from climate to crime, this government believes its likeliest chance of retaining power is remorselessly appealing to ignorance and bigotry. This is class warfare, not justice, as it ever was.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
