More money for prisons is no answer

Writing about the crimes of a sex offender like Simon Levy, jailed on 13 August for killing two women and raping a third while on bail for sexual assault offences is difficult, but the Socialist Party’s response exposes a number of political problems with their approach.

In a pair of articles in The Socialist, the SP starts reasonably enough by saying that the “numerous failings expose the lack of seriousness given by the criminal justice system to tackling violence against women”. True. But it then descends into proposing, as a cure-all, more money for prisons, probation, and council housing.

Levy entered prison in 2021 as a sex offender and was released in 2023. To conclude, as the SP does, that “prisons and probation need serious funding in the short term” misses the central problem. Britain spends a lot of money on prisons, much more than other European countries. But it spends it by locking up too many people for petty offences, for too long, while doing little to rehabilitate or even assess those who pose a genuine danger. The problem with the £4.5 billion annual prison budget is not that it is too little, but that it warehouses too many people, and makes many dangerous people more dangerous.

Structural

There is a case that probation needs more than its current £1.4 billion, particularly to deal with offenders’ housing, employment, education, mental-health and drug-dependency problems. But there is also a structural problem: the service has both rehabilitative and punitive functions. These should, as far as possible, be separated, with offender welfare and public protection handled by different agencies. The SP’s reliance on more money alone is misguided; it is also who gets the money and what they do with it.

The SP also edges towards treating more money for police as part of the answer, stressing for example that: “women have died while waiting months for the police to release details of whether their partners have prior convictions for domestic abuse.” The Met’s problem is not its £5 billion a year funding but its priorities and prejudices. More resources might well mean more stop and search of young black men and heavier policing of protests. More money will not cure institutional misogyny.

British Transport Police failed to handle ten sexual assaults by Levy on public transport, the first of which should have seen him recalled to prison. This shows shocking disregard for women’s safety, combined with a level of incompetence for which the BTP is renowned.

The Met’s failings were different. Levy’s two murder victims and the woman he raped were street-based sex workers with drug dependencies. Levy targeted women he thought he could attack with impunity. The perfunctory police response tells you that they shared Levy’s disregard for the value of those women’s lives.

Decriminalisation

The SP struggles to understand this. It half-heartedly supports decriminalisation of street sex work, but then lurches into economic reductionism. It claims that a £15 minimum wage and council housing would have meant that Levy’s first victim Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo “would never [have] crossed paths with Levy”.

Poverty and insecure housing certainly push some people into street sex work. But that is not the whole of it. And drug dependency, homelessness, and trafficking also demand treatment, housing and support from organisations trusted by sex workers, not the police. A murderous misogynist like Levy will seek out the most vulnerable, including those whom police misogyny regards as unworthy of protection.

The SP proposes “democratic community control of policing” as a cure-all. Yes, the police should be subject to more controls and accountability. But the idea that “communities” can completely control the existing police is fantasy. Moreover, communities can share police prejudices, including hostility to homeless drug users and street sex workers. Socialists should champion the marginalised, whose lives have the same value as anyone else’s.