What are the Alternatives to Prison?

There are many possible alternatives to imprisonment, although it is important to recognise that the word 'alternative' covers rather different kinds of punishment. Some alternatives are intended to punish an offender while allowing him or her to remain in the community; others are primarily designed to rehabilitate; and some combine punishment, supervision and rehabilitation. The central question is not simply whether an offender should be punished, but whether depriving that person of liberty is the most effective way of protecting the public, expressing society's condemnation of the offence and reducing the likelihood of further offending.

Community service

Unpaid work, often known as community service, occupies an interesting position between punishment and rehabilitation. An offender may be required to perform a specified number of hours of useful work for the benefit of the community. It has the advantage of being visibly punitive without necessarily destroying the offender's employment, housing and family relationships. It can also provide an offender with a sense of responsibility and the experience of contributing something positive to the community. Its weakness is that, unless it is combined with other measures, it may do relatively little to address the underlying causes of persistent offending.

Probation and intensive supervision

Probation and intensive supervision provide another important alternative. Instead of simply being left at liberty, an offender can be required to maintain regular contact with a probation officer and comply with a detailed set of conditions. These may include restrictions on where the offender can go, whom he or she can contact, where the person may live and whether drugs or alcohol may be consumed.

Electronic monitoring can make these restrictions more enforceable. A curfew enforced by an electronic tag, for example, can require an offender to remain at home during specified hours. This allows the state to impose a substantial restriction upon liberty without the costs and disruptive effects of imprisonment.

Financial punishment

Another important alternative is financial punishment. Fines are particularly appropriate for less serious offences, although their effectiveness depends upon the offender's ability to pay. A fixed fine can be trivial to a wealthy offender and ruinous to someone with very little income. For this reason, British courts generally take an offender's financial circumstances into account when imposing fines. The broader principle is that punishment should be proportionate to the offence without producing arbitrary differences in severity merely because offenders have different incomes.

Restorative justice

Restorative justice offers a fundamentally different conception of punishment. Instead of concentrating exclusively upon the relationship between the state and the offender, restorative justice attempts to address the harm done to the victim and the wider community. Where the circumstances are appropriate and the victim wishes to participate, the offender may meet the victim or otherwise communicate with him or her, listen to an account of the consequences of the offence, accept responsibility and agree to make some form of reparation. This does not necessarily replace conventional punishment, but it can provide something that imprisonment often cannot: an opportunity for the offender to understand the human consequences of his or her conduct.

Treatment-based alternatives

There are also treatment-based alternatives, particularly for offenders whose criminal behaviour is closely associated with drug or alcohol misuse. Instead of simply punishing someone for repeatedly committing offences associated with addiction, a court can require the person to undergo treatment. The underlying logic is straightforward: if substance misuse is one of the causes of the offending, reducing the misuse may reduce the offending. Similar principles can apply to mental-health treatment and programmes designed to address anger, impulsivity, sexual offending or other specific behavioural problems. Such measures are most persuasive when there is good evidence that the particular intervention addresses a recognised cause of the particular offender's behaviour.

Home detention and electronic monitoring

Home detention and electronic monitoring provide another possibility, especially where the principal purpose of imprisonment is restriction rather than rehabilitation. An offender can be required to remain at home for substantial periods and may be electronically monitored to ensure compliance. Geographical exclusion zones can also prevent an offender from entering particular areas or approaching particular people. These measures can be especially valuable where the objective is to protect a victim or restrict an offender's opportunities to commit further offences.

Deferred or Suspended imprisonment

A further possibility is deferred or suspended imprisonment. The court imposes a custodial sentence but allows the offender to remain in the community provided that specified conditions are met. The offender therefore has a powerful incentive to comply, because breach of the conditions can result in imprisonment. This can combine the deterrent effect of a prison sentence with the advantages of remaining in the community. It is particularly suited to offenders for whom a court considers imprisonment unnecessary provided that they comply with stringent requirements.

Problem-solving approaches to criminal justice

There is also a broader category of problem-solving approaches to criminal justice. These recognise that persistent offending is often associated with problems such as homelessness, unemployment, addiction, poor education, family breakdown and untreated psychological difficulties. Instead of treating the offence as an isolated act requiring a purely punitive response, the court attempts to deal with the circumstances that repeatedly bring the offender into contact with the criminal justice system. Such approaches do not mean excusing criminal behaviour. Their justification is pragmatic: if the causes of offending can be changed, future victims may be prevented.

Prison for dangerous offenders only

For the most serious and dangerous offenders, however, the alternatives are much more limited. A person who presents a continuing and substantial risk of serious violence may need to be physically separated from the public. No amount of community supervision can provide the same degree of incapacitation as imprisonment. This is why an argument against excessive reliance on prison does not necessarily imply an argument for abolishing it. There is a strong case for retaining imprisonment for offenders whose dangerousness cannot adequately be managed in the community.

Non-custodial sentences for 'safer' offenders

The more interesting question concerns offenders for whom imprisonment is not necessary for public protection. Here the case for alternatives is considerably stronger. If a person can be supervised effectively in the community, required to undertake treatment, prevented from approaching a victim, compelled to undertake unpaid work and made subject to a substantial curfew, imprisonment may add relatively little in terms of public protection while imposing considerable costs. It may also remove employment and housing and weaken family relationships, thereby making successful rehabilitation more difficult.

Alternatives to Prison not 'soft'

The alternatives should therefore not be understood simply as ways of being 'soft' on offenders. A demanding community sentence can sometimes be more intrusive than a short prison sentence in particular respects, because it requires an offender to remain under supervision and to undertake constructive activities for a prolonged period. More importantly, the objective can be to combine proportionate punishment with the reduction of future offending. If the latter is regarded as an important purpose of criminal justice, then the effectiveness of a sentence should be judged not merely by how unpleasant it is for the offender but by what happens afterwards.

This suggests a principle for sentencing that is rather different from the intuitive idea that serious wrongdoing should automatically produce severe imprisonment. The appropriate question is: what combination of punishment, restriction, rehabilitation and supervision is most likely to protect the public and provide a proportionate response to the offence? For some offenders the answer will undoubtedly be prison. For others, particularly those convicted of less serious offences or whose offending is strongly associated with treatable problems, a carefully constructed community sentence may be both more humane and more effective.

The strongest alternative to prison, therefore, is not a single substitute but a range of sanctions capable of being combined according to the circumstances of the offender and the offence. Fines, unpaid work, probation, electronic monitoring, curfews, treatment programmes, restorative justice and restrictions on movement or contact can all play a part. The ultimate aim should not be to find a punishment that merely makes the offender suffer, but to find the least restrictive punishment that adequately expresses society's condemnation, protects victims and the public, and gives the offender the best realistic opportunity to cease offending.