Immigrants & Penal Substitution

A traditional understanding of punishment maintains that each person should be held accountable for their own actions and no person should be punished for the actions of others. As Ezekiel 18:20 puts it: "The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him."

So, why is the Shadow immigration minister Damian Green suggesting that relatives of foreigners who outstay their visas should face imprisonment? Jailing someone for another's misbehaviour seems as unfair as Government proposals requiring relatives of foreigners to pay a £1,000 bond to ensure their visitors do not outstay visas. More than being unfair, such a move would also set a dangerous precedent. For what other crimes might it then become politically convenient to find an innocent scapegoat to penalise?

This is not the way to deal with the negative repercussions of unprecedented mass migration. If politicians really want to establish a sense of collective accountability, perhaps they should begin by returning to the days when ministers accepted responsibility for the mistakes made by their departments.

Youth Restorative Justice

We complained yesterday about the Government's Orwellian "One-Stop" plan to site the police, social care, advice and welfare services on school grounds. However, not everything in the Children's Plan was so ill-conceived. For, early next year a new scheme is to be piloted to deal with first-time offenders aged between 10 and 17 who have committed a minor offence. Under the scheme, such first time young offenders instead of being sent to court will have to explain their actions and apologise to their victim, either orally or in writing:

We intend therefore to pilot a restorative approach to youth offenders from April 2008. The Youth Restorative Disposal aims to prevent re-offending through a more rehabilitative approach and the involvement of victims so offenders have to face up to the consequences of even low level offending, and the pilots will look at whether this is a more appropriate way to deal with particularly low level, first offences.

Hopefully this will both help address behaviour to prevent reoffending at an early stage and allow police to deal with minor cases more speedily and efficiently, freeing them to deal with more serious crime. Whether the scheme proves at all successful may well depend on the kind of support provided to the first time young offenders after they apologise. Otherwise, the influences that led them to commit their first offence will presumably continue to lead them astray.

Alternatives To A Pound Of Flesh?

Treasury minister Kitty Ussher today launches a three-month consultation into issuing Islamic "sukuk" bonds, which are compliant with the prohibition on interest found in Shari'a law. The government's goal is to introduce the bonds in next year's budget with the view to establishing the UK a key world centre in the development of Islamic finance, a market started just five years ago with the first $600 million bond issue by the Malaysian Government and now estimated to be worth $400 billion globally.

Coinciding, as it does, with the ongoing global impact of America's sub-prime lending crisis and warnings that repossessions in the UK will keep on rising over the coming months, perhaps it is time for Christians to revisit the Biblical injunction against interest† and consider whether this is a product that we should use. For, as Thomas Aquinas famously observed, "To take usury for money lent is unjust in itself, because this is to sell what does not exist, and this evidently leads to inequality which is contrary to justice."

When Jesus applied the Old Testament teaching against taking interest for his disciples in the Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:34-36), his concern was that we might be kind and merciful. One of the issues, as Pope Gregory IX noted in the thirteenth century, is whether the lender shares in the risk associated with the loan or profits irrespective of what happens to the borrower. When you see the likes of Theo Paphitis, Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones investing their thousands in novel business ventures on Dragon's Den, you are witnessing the start of a relationship between lender and borrower as it is in the dragon's interests to ensure the entrepreneur makes the most of the borrowed funds. In contrast, when you or I visit the bank to negotiate a new mortgage, the bank is effectively able to ignore the needs of the borrower thereafter as they and their anonymous shareholders will profit whether or not we are able to make our monthly repayments.

The Islamic bonds, sukuks, are asset-based and tend to be used in conjunction with a structure where lease rental income provides a profit for the sukuk holders or where the profit share provides a return. In either case, the sukuk holder not only profits from the income generated from the underlying asset, but also holds a proportional ownership in it, so consequently assumes all rights and obligations for the maintenance of the asset. Here, at least there is shared risk, yet it still lacks the proximity of relationship seen in the Dragon's Den.

Once the Government has introduced the legislative framework to allow such bonds, promising to entrench London as "a global gateway to Islamic finance," perhaps Christian businessmen could devise a new set of financial institutions that would enable people to borrow and invest in a way that both shares any risk equitably and cultivates closer community relationships?

† See Ex 22:25, Lev 25:35-37, Dt 23:20-21, Lk 6:34-36

Stupidity in Practice

"One day we will all wake up to the namby-pamby, politically-correct approach that for economic reasons seems to be adopted to save the police paperwork - instead of letting them get on with their jobs."

Jailing a serial thief who stole a pensioner's purse, but was given just an £80 on-the-spot fine after committing an identical offence two years earlier despite a string of more than 30 previous thefts, Judge Timothy Nash has condemned the Government's policy of on-the-spot fines:

"The issue of a penalty notice ticket for the criminal offence of shoplifting as a device is stupidity in practice. It means, not infrequently, that people don't have their difficulties addressed by a court, which is better able to deal with shoplifters than anybody issuing what is in effect a parking ticket."

The judge thus maintains that, in sparing almost 200,000 offenders every year the humiliation of a court appearance, Labour's policy is unfair to the community and leads to offenders not getting help from the courts. But then, as we have discussed before, this Government appears to think criminal justice is solely about punishment and seems completely closed to the possibility of transformative justice. In Labour's Big Brother world, transgressors are to be punitively controlled, not reformed, let alone helped back to the point where they can make a positive contribution to society.

Muslim Leaders' "Common Word" Letter

This week's letter, "A Common Word Between Us and You," by 138 of the world's most powerful Muslim clerics, scholars and intellectuals to leaders of the worldwide Church is being hailed by many as something of a miracle. However, such a response is not just overly optimistic but hopelessly naive.

In a display of supposedly unprecedented unity, the letter calls for peace between Christians and Muslims, arguing that the most fundamental tenets of Islam and Christianity are identical: love of one (and the same) God, and love of one's neighbour.

There are two crucial points to make in response. Firstly, the Muslims who penned the 29-page statement are in fact seeking a one-way dialogue on their own terms: "As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes." Yet, as the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, quoted by Archbishop Cranmer, rightly notes:

"What the Qur’an condemns, we do not believe. Whatever our doctrine of God, there are fundamental issues that must be addressed, such as refugees fleeing because of their faith and because of persecution ... But what I would stress is that dialogue between partners must be conducted in the integrity of each faith. One partner cannot dictate the terms on which dialogue must be conducted ... We may disagree about the nature of God but there are many other important areas of dialogue as well. There is justice, compassion, fundamental freedom, freedom to express beliefs, persecution of peoples. All these are matters of dialogue. Only one of them, the need for peace, is mentioned here."

Secondly, there is more to Islam than simply "peace" — there is also "jihad." And to quote the new Baroness Cox biography, "Eyewitness to a broken world" by Lela Gilbert:

"A key development in the concept of jihad is contained in this verse in the Koran:

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor the Last day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Prophet, nor acknowledge the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians), until they pay the jizya (tax) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Sura 9:29, Medina)

... It must be noted that there are other verses in the Koran that speak of peace and respect for other people, especially "People of the Book" — Jews and Christians... However, traditional Islamic teaching has resolved any inconsistency between the verses of peace and the verses of war by adopting the principle of "abrogation", whereby the later revelations of the Prophet abrogate, or override, the earlier revelations. Unfortunately, this means that the more aggressive militaristic interpretations of jihad, associated with violence and terrorism, prevails over peaceable interpretations.

The most fundamental tenets of Christianity have given rise to Western democracy as we know it. Yet the most fundamental tenets of Islam set it on a course of conflict with what we all believe (believers and unbelievers alike) on a whole range of human rights issues, from the freedom of religion to equality of the sexes. As Baroness Cox warned earlier this year, "The time has come to draw a line in the sand: to say that, while we in Britain value cultural diversity and enshrine the principle of tolerance, we must also ensure that such values and principles are not used in ways that destroy the fundamental freedoms on which our democracy is built."

Substance With Style

Today's much anticipated report, Breakthrough Britain, from the Conservatives' Social Justice Policy Group, headed by Iain Duncan Smith, is the result of 18 months work of consultation with over 800 experts, organisations and charities, the policy proposals will propose a completely fresh approach to tackling poverty in the UK.

Having previously identified the five interlinked "pathways to poverty" — family breakdown, education failure, welfare dependency, debt, and addiction — today's proposals, if adopted by the Conservative Party will "reset the balance" that currently makes it advantageous for couples to break up, or to pretend to be "living apart together" — a term referring to the 200,000 more people claiming benefits for lone parents than there truly are lone parents in the country.

The Conservatives are not proposing a return to the married person's tax allowance, which Duncan Smith accepts had flaws. Neither are they suggesting that lone parents should have less money. Instead, married couples would qualify for a £20-a-week tax break and receive higher benefit payments of £32-a-week, bringing the benefits awarded to married couples into line with those currently awarded to single parents. This will be paid for through welfare reform targetted to encourage recipients off one of the five "paths to poverty".

Labour is already trying to claim that these proposals would be unfair on the children of single parents or those whose parents choose not to marry. However, there is nothing unfair about levelling the playing field. Indeed, one could argue that such an egalitarian approach achieves what socialism has always failed to deliver: social justice.

Your Questions For IDS

"The social fabric of many communities is being stripped away... We need a system that understands that while material deprivation must continue to be dealt with, poverty isn't just an issue of money; while money is important, so is the quality of the social structure of our lives. To improve the well-being of this country it is necessary that we help the people of Britain improve the quality of their lives or we will all become poorer." Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP

Commissioned by David Cameron to come up with ways of dealing with acute social problems, Iain Duncan Smith has spent the past year consulting with academics, experts, voluntary-sector workers, and those who are feeling the effects of poverty and social breakdown. The result is a report called Breakdown Britain, which outlines the grim facts of relative poverty in the UK, points to the government policies that have exacerbated it, and outlines a way forward that can help people trapped on what it calls the five "pathways to poverty": family break-down, educational failure, economic dependence, indebtedness, and addiction. Highlighting failed Labour initiatives such as tax penalties for marriage, means-tested benefits that can make working parents less well off than those who don't work, and drug policies that seek damage limitation rather than abstinence as a goal, the document claims that the government is failing citizens and out-of-touch with what they want and need.

In our next issue, The Difference will be interviewing Iain Duncan Smith about the findings of the consultation and we want your input. This is a unique opportunity to question a senior Conservative policy-maker about their vision. Do you think the analysis in Breakdown Britain is accurate? Are there viable solutions to the problems it highlights? Do these findings throw light on the real issues?

If there's a question you would like Iain Duncan Smith to answer, then now is your chance to ask it. Post your questions in the comments here by 9am Monday and we'll bring you his answers!

Prisons Need Inner Change

Earlier this week Lord Falconer announced that as many as 25,000 prisoners will be released early due to prison overcrowding in England and Wales, as though this will somehow help the Government to be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime."

The fact is Labour has failed when it comes to crime: Our prison population is now the highest in Western Europe (having doubled since 1993, approximately 147 people out of every 100,000 are now in prison in England and Wales) and two thirds of prisoners are reconvicted within two years of being released. Just last month the Lord Chancellor told the Probation Board Association, "The challenge we face is that of how to turn the offender into the citizen ... by giving people a future to follow, they can leave their past behind," yet it seems every month we hear about another prisoner released on licence who has gone on to rape or murder.

What a pity then that politically correct concerns about diversity last year forced the closure of a voluntary pilot project called "Inner Change" in Dartmoor Prison. The programme, discussed briefly on the Today programme just after eight-thirty this morning, originated in the States and is accredited with reducing reoffending from 55% to just 8%.

The problem with the programme, for all its potential and promise of success, was it didn't satisfy this Government's liberal agenda. It was criticised by the Prison Service's Area Psychologist, who thought its belief that "the root of offending is in individual sin" "lacks basis in specific scientific research" and its promotion of the virtues of heterosexual marriage was "discriminatory."

In this Orwellian society in which we now find ourselves, I hadn't realised that NewLabour had introduced a form of NewSpeak, where "tough" means "reckless," "diversity" means "uniformity," "tolerance" means "intolerance," "inclusive" means "exclusive," and "multi-faith" means "anti-Christian." Once again, I find myself wondering whether our whole approach to justice is fundamentally wrong.

Justice: Retributive or Restorative?

What is so wrong that the former Deputy Director of the National Crime Squad and head of Northern Ireland's anti-terrorist intelligence unit in Belfast believes that answers to the problem of paedophilia need to be found outside the criminal justice system? Quite clearly, having passed the best part of 400 acts of Parliament and in excess of 32,000 statutory instruments over the last ten years, part of the answer is this Government's unhealthy obsession with new legislation.

Yet, today's call by the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), Jim Gamble, for child sex offenders to receive a police caution and be managed within the community, rather than sent to jail, also raises a number of fundamental questions about how we understand justice and the role of prisons.

At present, crime is treated as a violation of the state and its laws and justice seeks to establish blame and administer punishment. However, there are alternative models. Indeed, the long term use of incarceration as a method of legal punishment is a relatively modern idea, introduced in the late 18th century with the aim of improving prisoners through a mixture of work, discipline and personal reflection. As a friend pointed out to me over the bank holiday, the Old Testament legal system made no provision for prisons. Instead, crime was treated as a violation of people and their relationships and justice sought to identify who had been hurt and what could be done to make things right.

So, instead of simply asking, "Who is to blame?" and seeking retribution, perhaps we should also be asking, "Who has been hurt?" and seek restoration. A greater focus on responsibility and reconciliation, restitution and rehabilitation would certainly be cheaper for the victims of crime and innocent taxpayers, who presently pay £32,888 a year to accommodate each of the country's 80,000+ prisoners (almost one in six of whom come from abroad, costing us almost £400 million a year).