SIO163: Live at QED with Emma McClure on Prison Reform

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:00 Thomas: So there's five more minutes, that's 300 seconds, so I want a loud countdown. 300, 299,

[0:00:06] everybody together.

[0:00:11] You're listening to Serious Inquiries Only.

[0:00:36] Hello, and welcome to what, unless I'm having a serious memory lapse, I believe is the first ever live Serious Inquiries Only recording. Thank God. I was totally ready to do a Jeb Bush please clap. I really was. And then have to explain that. Well, no, you guys follow probably American Podcast. No, thank you so much for coming, and I'm sorry that you got turned away at the other two events.

[0:01:06] But no, I'm glad you're here.

0:01:09 Thomas: No, it's great. It looks like a full house, and we have at least, when I post this, there's at least 10 to 12 people listening online. So thank you all. I'm really excited to be here. I'm really excited to do this episode. I have, of course, Emma McClure, who you all will be more familiar with than you are with me. I'm sure she was here last year, right? Yeah, last year. And I'm very excited to be talking to you. We're going to talk about, well, it's hard to put it in, we still can't figure out how to put this in a concise, like, I don't know, fortune cookie-like phrase, prison and what

[0:01:39] we're trying to do and what it should be for and what it is and all that good stuff. But first, Emma McClure, please introduce yourself, especially to the people listening at home who might not be familiar from QED last year and tell us what you do and a little bit of your backstory. Okay, so I'm Emma McClure. I am, when I'm

0:01:58 Emma: Feeling pretentious, I describe myself as a human rights lawyer. More specifically, I represent people who are detained either in prison or in hospital at proceedings where they are arguing that they shouldn't be detained anymore. I've done that for quite a few years. And I also do a lot of public speaking in relation to the issues around that and the the problems and the difficulties and then trying to get

[0:02:25] more public awareness of what's going on in those areas. I'm sure there's more you could say, but okay, we'll stick with that.

0:02:31 Thomas: I just wanted to start off, I think, by talking about what I would understand, you know, I assume we're pretty much all atheists here, I think, maybe not, I don't know. But one thing that I

[0:02:44] think is interesting is how we should, maybe should, maybe we are, but how we ought to be thinking about things like prison, punishment for crime, that sort of thing, rehabilitation, in light of not believing in a God, or at least also recognizing the role of moral luck in our lives. I, for one, was very smart to have been born where I was and when I was, but I know you all didn't work

[0:03:15] for it. I did.

0:03:17 Thomas: I coordinated before I was born exactly when and where I wanted to be. It was hard work, and I deserve credit for it. But most people don't do that. We don't really get to choose that. And I think that it can be uncomfortable, I'm sure, to see what can often be

[0:03:35] really viscerally horrible crime be committed, but also to try to react to it in a way where if we were just a bunch of robots who were all maximally rational, if there is such a thing, how would would we treat that criminal robot? Well, I suppose we'd just reprogram them or something. There'd be some bleeps and bloops. I'd be like, we fixed it. And they'd be like, why did you bleep and bloop? We're all robots. You don't even need to bleep. It's cosmetic. It's just for fun. Bleeps and bloops. No, that would be exactly what would happen.

[0:04:04] But no, like how should one person?

0:04:10 Thomas: They're probably a robot. No, how should we think of it in light of that? And comparing that to how we actually do think about and treat prisoners and offenders and people who have committed crime and who might, you know, have mental illness, have background reasons, you know, substance reasons, whatever it is, where when you take those away or when you treat those, they may no longer be a threat. I know in the U.S. we have something called American exceptionalism. Maybe you've heard of it. We imprison the most people, so I know you're jealous, but we don't even try to compete. We were talking before, and I think we both had been confused on one statistic, but the U.S.

[0:04:53] actually does imprison the most, both per capita and just in total. I'm amazed at what we're able to achieve. Just go America. I guess you guys have a few people that you have to Imprison. Prison, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about, uh, maybe prison population and your quaint little situation you have here compared to our literally 2.5 million people we we incarcerate. Yeah.

0:05:21 Emma: So, um, as of yesterday, um, because it's every Friday, the, uh, Ministry of Justice produced their statistics. There were 83,232 people in prison in England and Wales. There's about 10,000 more for Scotland the night, if you add them on. And that's, um, out of a total usable capacity in the prison system of 85 464 So we are almost full, um, but we certainly couldn't fit millions.

[0:05:45] in, like, uh, like Thomas has.

0:05:48 Thomas: Like, I did. I did play some, uh, no small role in that, uh. Yeah, and you know, I do, I do just have, it's not exactly what we're talking about today, but I do just have to hit on the fact that in in the U.S., this is vastly disproportionately black men. 40% of the total prison population is black men, and they are only 13% of the actual population. And it's a huge issue. It's something that I care a lot about. But it's kind of a different discussion on its own, but I have to mention it. And there's another stat that I just wanted to throw out there. By age 23 in the U.S., 50% of black men have been arrested at some point in their life. That's just mind-blowing. But also, you know, in other good news, we've realized there's an untapped market of people we could put in prison, and that's women. This is totally true, the rates of incarceration in the US of women are skyrocketing, they're going up more than men. There, I guess, again, because there's an untapped

[0:06:44] market, we were like, oh, stupid, of course we can put everybody in prison, next, next will be pets and, you know, things like that. For the, really, out of the figures that the figure I just gave, the 80, 83,000 figure, and it's just under 4,000 of those are women. So yeah, it is still, yeah, it's still vastly men, but, but the rate of increase is a lot higher for women right now. So yeah, the

[0:07:09] overcrowding is interesting. You had a, a story about a particular facility that I found interesting, you want to talk about? Well, there's a few, um, Victorian, um, prisons that were built during

0:07:21 Emma: The reign of Victoria, and specifically around this area there's, and there's strange ways and there's Liverpool prison, um, nearby, and so they were built in the Victorian area, and the cells that are there were designed for single occupancy, so one prisoner at a time, and at the moment in Walton jail you've got four people in cells that were designed for

[0:07:40] one person during the Victorian era, so that, they're a little bit full, and which is a is not useful when you're trying to do, to to rehabilitate people when they're in such cramped conditions. Yeah,

0:07:53 Thomas: And what about that window story? Oh, the window, yes. Yeah, mention that.

0:07:56 Emma: I had a client who was in Liverpool prison, and he was complaining, um, to me about the fact that he had no window. He kept telling me he had no window in his cell, and at

[0:08:09] first I was a bit confused, I was like, well, you are in prison, there's going to be some things you don't have for a little while, and but then, so after a bit of a back and forth, that transpired what he was saying wasn't that he had no window, it was that he had no glass in the window in the cell. This was in January,

[0:08:27] um, because, um, Liverpool prison has gotten a little bit better recently because they've come under a new governor, and they are making changes, but earlier on in the year, what was happening was, because there is such a problem with, um, illicit substances getting into the prisons via various means, including drones, and people who are involved in that are banging out, the bashing out the windows, and it's happened, and it's happening so frequently that the prison just stopped replacing them.

[0:08:52] and this particular gentleman is sat in a cell in January with no glass in his window. It's like, if they have food fights, you're like, fine, no more food. That's the... Wait, that does solve that.

0:09:04 Thomas: Yeah, no, it is really horrifying. If we had your U.S. equivalent, I'm sure there'd be a really fun one-upsmanship that could go on for hours. But we don't have that, so we'll have to talk about the U.K. system. But I guess philosophically, we should talk a little bit about, you know, what is this for? And certainly, again, in my very exceptional country, it is for being really awful to people who

[0:09:32] did bad things. It's like, people did bad things, how do we make them miserable, is basically what it is. I mean, I mean, that's what you'd think looking from the outside, knowing, that's what you'd assume. Well, and honestly, it's pretty explicit sometimes. I mean, I mean, there are people, tough on crime is is the only option. I'm going to talk more about that later, but there is no, let's maybe not be so tough on crime, option politically in the US. It's just not, I don't think, anyway, that I've seen. I don't think it's tenable. There are programs, there are things we can do to help them to make their lives better and to make them more able to succeed afterward. And oftentimes, it's hard to even get that done because it's like, well, why are

[0:10:17] we even doing that? They're bad people. We've, you've put them in a bad place, and then that's what should happen. And it's really distressing.

0:10:24 Thomas: It doesn't serve anybody, really, except for a sense of vengeance that I think, interestingly enough, has kind of been tied to evangelical Christianity in my country. And I would just think, there's all these things I have as an atheist and as somebody who speaks to religious people sometimes. There's all these assumptions that I would have. Like, if I were religious, and I thought, you know, okay, we have this one little dance we all do here for no reason for 70 years-ish. I don't know why we're doing that, because we have infinite time after that. But I would think, okay, well, if after that is when all the punishy stuff happens, what are we wasting our time, you know?

God, you're in charge of that after. And by the way, it's going to be a lot longer, infinitely longer and more effective. So I never understand that. Somehow, though, if you're religious, it's like, no, we got to put them in prison forever and then they'll suffer an eternity after that. I feel like what's the difference of a few years? But no, that's very much the attitude. Do you find first off, I guess I'll ask you, what would in your ideal world, what do you think we should be trying to do? What do you think the purpose of of prison should be? And then maybe how do you see the UK system

[0:11:38] falling short of that, or maybe not? I could answer that for the rest of the podcast, but I'll be brief. No, I come

0:11:44 Emma: At it from, um, the similar place to you in terms of, I am an atheist, and so if I think about what I want to achieve, I then don't have the, the sort of the faith-based thing where sort of the idea of sin and badness, and then if you just sort of fight, if I take Christianity as an example, then find Jesus and then, and my sins are forgiven, and that's that, fixes

[0:12:03] it, that it doesn't work as an an explanation for me, so I, we need to try and work harder to work out what the causes of people causing very serious harm is. So the purpose of prison

[0:12:15] should be that when someone has committed very serious crime or caused some very serious harm, and they are, they are an ongoing risk to society, they should be quarantined in some way, in a prison setting, in a sort of secure setting, until we are as sure as we can be and that they are not going to do something similar again. And obviously you would hope, while they were in quarantine, that you could do various things or try and identify what's caused the problems, so that we when they go back out again they're not going to then do the same thing. And that's, why I deal ideally, that's what should happen, and that's what they try to do.

But the problem we've got at the moment with the prison system is that in order to Try and rehabilitate people or to sort of to help them, they need first of all being a stable environment. The environment has to be stable for learning, and the current prison system is in a complete crisis. You, you see some of this in the news at the moment. There are, and there was something about HMP Lindholm near Doncaster yesterday, where, um, the Ministry of Justice haven't said anything officially about it, but the BBC were reporting it, and a prison officer was strangled to unconsciousness by an inmate, and then some of the staff were refusing to go back on shift, and that's just one thing that happened yesterday. The number of staff has greatly reduced, and not only that, the experience of the staff has greatly

0:13:41 Emma: Reduced. I saw an interesting statistic, so in 2010, which is before austerity in the UK kicked kicked in, there was about 25,000 operational staff in the prison system, and, um, only 1.25 percent of them had experience of less than a year. As of June this year, um, the staff numbers is 2,000, so 21,600, and, um, 22 percent of them, so about 5,000 of them, have less than a year's experience. And so you've got, um, not enough staff there, um, who are inexperienced, and you've got too many prisoners for them to look after, and that's the crux of the problem, and then a whole load of other things follow on from that, because all the problems, so because there aren't enough staff, there's powerful and organized criminal elements, because it's a prison, there are criminals in there, get involved in there, and the drug trade and things like that, and they, they, the organized criminal element take the place of where there

[0:14:39] should be, and experienced and staff who, who can control the situation, because prisons only work through the consent of the prisoners. If the prisoners in the prison didn't consent to the, most of them didn't consent to the regime that was going on, they'd completely collapse immediately.

[0:14:58] You're looking at a quiz that you can't solve. Oh, yeah, no, here we, sorry, here. In the US, where this is being broadcast, no, I can't recover that. I don't know that I would say that that applies there. I think one thing we were talking about, which is interesting, is that

0:15:13 Thomas: Being a prison guard, being a corrections officer in the U.S. is actually a very well-paying job. And I think we have, I'm sure you could always use more, but I think it's pretty well staffed there too. I think it's a good industry. It seems that's an interesting difference that here it's

[0:15:31] not, it seems like it's not a well-paid job. It's not. It's the worst job. I couldn't imagine taking that job. You couldn't pay me, yeah.

0:15:38 Emma: You personally could not pay me to be a prison officer in the UK at the moment, and it's, it's absolutely appalling, and it creates this completely chaotic environment, and there's no way that you can successfully even try to rehabilitate people in that environment, um, especially because, because of the, the way that they deal and try and, um, bring some order is stuff like you might, may have seen in the news, they've just approved, um, the use of, um, synthetic pepper spray. They're going to give the prison officers synthetic pepper spray to, um, to

[0:16:09] deal with incidents now, um, they, we, we have guns, yeah, um, which might, which might is, is might help temporarily the symptoms of what's going on, but that is not going to help. I am waiting with bated breath

[0:16:21] as to how that's going to go disastrously wrong, probably quite soon. Well, it's, it's here that I always like to turn to the, I

0:16:28 Thomas: Don't know, uh, the the Thomas Jefferson of our time in terms of commentary, which is The Onion, uh, which has the most, but, and I, I've, I quote, quote this all the time, is the best, The Onion headline was, "15 Years In Environment Of Constant Fear Somehow Fails To Rehabilitate Prisoner." Yeah, well, that's what we do. And I'm curious, that's also happening here. But that is definitely what

[0:16:51] we do in the US, we subject people to what is hell on earth, like literally the worst thing.

0:16:58 Thomas: And then when they're done, it's like, okay, so you should be fine now, right? Like you should totally be better. You know, you just went through absolute hell. Can you imagine that being a realistic expectation? And I also want to tie in something, if you don't mind, just a quick little tangent, but it relates. In a couple times when I've been arguing on the merits of Me Too and that sort of thing, one thing that gets brought up is sort of the gotcha kind of thing is, well, did you know more men are actually the victims of sexual assault when you count the prison population in the U.S., and it's true.

A, it's also men who are doing it, so that's all men, pretty much. But B, when I think about Me Too, and this is something I found kind of interesting when I was thinking it through, I think one of the, from my interpretation anyway, one of the biggest benefits as a society of this moment for us is recognizing that we don't believe victims and women often enough, that we don't let them tell their stories, we don't properly weight their stories in terms of evidence. And when you compare that with what's going on in U.S. prisons, that's not at all an issue. Every

[0:18:14] American knows it's happening and is fine with it. If you if you if there were an inmate who went on TV somehow and was like, I was sexually assaulted in prison, everyone would be like, yeah, that's prison. That definitely happened. There's no there wouldn't be the same like, do you have proof? Do you have whatever? Like, it's really interesting. It's disturbing. But I think that's true. I think I think as a society, we're somehow fine with that. Yeah, I remember back when a major celebrity, towering figure in U.S. culture, Jared from Subway, when he turned out to be awful. You know, I think I had a lot of arguments with skeptics and atheists about making prison rape jokes about that.

0:19:01 Thomas: You know, oh, he's going to be, you know, this will be happening to him in prison. And it's, yeah, it's not funny. You know, it's really awful. It's really, really awful that this is just a thing we do. We just subject human beings to sexual assault and rape and the worst kind of punishment as like that they deserve it and that's a tool. It's kind of biblical in a way, in a horrible way, in a way that the Bible is horrible. And it's disturbing that we're just okay with that. And then, as The Onion says, then it's like, okay, now you should be fine. If anything, you're probably worse after

[0:19:38] going through that. That, so, sorry for the the tangent there, but I mean really, how do we expect people to be better after going through that experience and have less of a chance of re-offending

[0:19:50] You can't, it doesn't, it doesn't work in any other area of society. And then on top of that, once you've, um, come out, and then there's no, there's a very clear lack of support for people who come out of custody.

0:20:02 Emma: Quite often, um, people, um, who are released, um, in in the UK will

[0:20:09] get their 46 pound, um, discharge grant, and that's it, off you go, go and sort yourself out, yeah, with no other support. Well, let's, let's talk about parole a little bit, um, I think we both tried to research the

0:20:22 Thomas: U.S. system a little bit. It's hard because there's 50 states and they're all different, and we couldn't, yeah, it's hard to find exactly if

[0:20:28] if there's any set guidelines, I don't think there's any like federal, this is what needs to happen.

0:20:34 Thomas: But I did come across a story that I think is interesting. I don't know, should I tell that now?

[0:20:40] Or should you want to? I don't know. Okay, I'll keep talking. I did happen to come across a story that I think illustrates the point pretty well about how much Americans anyway, and I don't know how much this applies to the UK, but how much we just want people to go in a hole and stay there forever, and we don't really care about whether or not they're better, uh, which is that apparently in New York, and this will, this will, uh, transition well into some other stuff that you were going to talk about, um, it just happened a few days ago, this is a big topic of Republican Fox News ire, in New York, uh, someone who was convicted of killing, they were part of a group, they were part of the Black Liberation Army, and he was, this, this man, Herman Bell, was part of a group of of this Black Liberation Army, who was responsible for killing two police officers in 1971. So, um, you know, obviously serious crime, um, no arguing that, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life, uh, for whatever that ends up meaning, it's hard, it means, seems like it could be anything, uh, under our system, but he was eventually, really, so he's released this year, I believe, which is, doing some math, you know, 46, seven years later, so 25 to life, you get 40 on going on 50 years, that feels like, okay, that's, you did the 25 to

0:22:07 Thomas: Life, you know, that, I feel like you've served your time, uh, but there's uproar for him having been released, for the parole board granting him release. And then, because of something the, what is the governor? Yeah. Governor Cuomo did, which, which I think is good. And again, going to transition to what, what Emma's going to talk about here. He granted certain felons the right to vote, because that's another thing we do in America. Again, it's really exceptional country. We, we systematically imprisoned Black men then way more frequently than any other group. And then we take away their right to vote forever, you know. And then we don't give them jobs and that kind of thing. And it's a serious issue. And this was an uproar. And here's the thing that I find maybe the most

[0:22:57] disturbing about this, is that when Republicans and Fox News started going nuts about this, about the fact that this man just voted, and he probably voted for a Democrat, you know, even though he served going on 50 years, is Cuomo had to say, the, the Democrat had to say, well, clearly that was the wrong decision to let him out, I wouldn't have made that decision, but the parole board was appointed by, you know, Republicans, so don't blame me for that, and and essentially caved, as though like, if you got 25 to life, that means you should just die in prison forever, like no matter what the circumstances, no matter what you've said or done or your behavior, none of that, irrespective of that, you should just stay in there there forever. And furthermore, you shouldn't ever be able to vote. And it's just it's it's amazing to me. One

[0:23:46] thing. Oh, I meant to say this, too, when we're talking about parole. Let's talk about how the parole system works in in the UK. And also, I wanted to ask you when you were talking about the fact that, you know, some sentences are, it is, you, to some extent in the UK, you are trying to minimize the likelihood that someone's going to re-offend and eventually let them out. And certainly a lot sooner than in the US. How do victims play into that? Do they? Do they get a vote? You know, because that's what happens in the US is this police officers, I think wife is still alive. And she says, this guy should die in prison. And so everyone's like, Well, yeah, if the victim says that, then forever. And how does you know, how does that play out here?

[0:24:31] So this is, there's been some news about this going on at the moment, because there was some high-profile cases where victims

0:24:38 Emma: Hadn't been notified that people were coming up for parole, were eligible for parole. In fact, it was a surprise to them that they were ever going to be eligible for parole, which is a failing in the system. But in terms of the part they play in the parole system, they are entitled to be kept informed about when someone is eligible for parole. They can submit a statement about how they feel about that and any concerns that they they have about that person being released and they can come to the parole hearing, they can they can say it to the to the parole panel in person if they if they wish, and then obviously the the parole board will take that into account, but the parole board's role is to determine whether or not that person's risk of serious harm is manageable, and that is it. So obviously some of the conditions that might go on somebody will be there to protect that victim from further serious serious harm of accidentally running into that person or anything like that, but the victims

[0:25:35] don't get to determine what happens. Yeah, and hypothetically, you know, they should, they don't in our system. It's

0:25:41 Thomas: Just the political pressure, I think. But so, and and just the overall cultural attitude. And and certainly I don't mean to say that they shouldn't be taken into account in some, in probably most parts of the system. But this idea that if if the victim wants truly unethical and, you know, just overwhelmingly, uh, excessive punishment, that that's what we ought to do every time, then that, you know, that that to me just, just seems, there's, there has to be some limit.

[0:26:12] You know, if it comes, it comes back into sort of maybe skepticism more than atheism. Is, I, I am

0:26:18 Emma: Lucky enough to have never been the victim of a serious crime. So I don't know exactly what it would feel like to be the victim of a serious crime. But I have people close to me who have been a victim of a serious crime. And I think about the person that did that to my relative. And I think I could stab them in the eyes. But I, before the fact, recognized that I am being irrational. And that wouldn't be the best thing

[0:26:43] to do.

0:26:45 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of what I was getting at in the beginning. It is really hard to keep that in mind at all times. You know, if I envision a family member being a victim, it really, I don't know any that I can guarantee at all that I would be able to treat that person rationally. But like, that's why we need not me to decide

[0:27:03] what happens to the person. If we, I wanted to come back to the thing you were saying about voting. Yes. Yes. So in

0:27:09 Emma: The UK, people who've been in prison are allowed to vote. When your sentence is finished, you're allowed to vote. So we

[0:27:15] are. No matter what. What? When you're out, you're voting? You're allowed to vote. Okay, yeah, we don't have that. So the argument that was had in this country, it started about a decade ago at this point, was about whether or not people who were serving sentences could vote. And the argument for that is that you...

So out of those 83,000 people who are currently in prison, all but about 70 of them have, at least theoretically, a time when they will be back in the community, because in the UK there's only about 70 people who have whole life tariffs who will never be eligible for parole, and you want them to be engaged in society so that they are, you know, so if they have an investment in society that they are less likely to do things that damage it. And that's the argument for it. But a lot of people, and especially politicians, and it was David Cameron who was prime minister at the time, and that this was going through the courts, said that the idea of prisoners voting made him feel physically ill, which he's, he did some things that made me feel physically ill, um,

[0:28:20] I get that.

[0:28:24] I'm referring to the Brexit referendum. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I hate that. Okay, good.

0:28:28 Emma: But there, so the European Court of Human Rights, which we are still a member of at the moment, came down and said that you, you need to, it can't be a blanket ban on all prisoners. You need to think about this and allow some prisoners to vote. Some of them have on very short sentences

[0:28:41] and this doesn't make any sense. And the government were just like, no, no, they, and then they they did make one exception but it was such a small exception that applied to about 12 people, um, but that's where we're at. And then whilst that litigation was going on, there are a few prison, there are a few prison newspapers, um, which are circulated throughout the the prison system, just as, this is an interesting side note, anecdote. So there's, um, Inside Times, which is the equivalent of a broadsheet, um, newspaper, and there's, and then there's Converse, which is the equivalent of a tabloid newspaper. Just as an aside, the firm I work for advertising the Converse newspaper, and we have a full page advert, which, you know, occasionally I will write stories about things that I've been doing, um, for the firm's purposes, and that advert is on

[0:29:24] and it's got my photograph on it, and that that advert is on page three of that newspaper, just just my face. But, um, back to the, that I do get, because she explained it to me, I'm very confused still, but at least I understand what's happening. So, um, you can, you, for my American listeners, though, you may need to explain why there's a, there's a tabloid newspaper in the UK that every day, um, on page three, and publishes a picture of a topless woman.

[0:29:49] Yeah, you say that, and it's the second time I've heard, I still don't understand, that's just a thing. Like, yeah, just a, just a thing, just like, there's, yeah, there's a giant tomato in the middle of this city, forever, no explanation. Like, that's, I don't get it, like, okay. Anyway, anyway, so to come to the the elect, so those news, one of the newspapers ran a pretend election with the prisoners to see if they were allowed to vote, what would happen. And obviously Thomas was saying there about how the Republicans were saying they would obviously vote Democrat crap because, you know, liberal, whatever, they're actually quite conservative, because what happened was, first of all, the turnout was

[0:30:26] appalling, and the BNP would have won. Yeah.

0:30:32 Thomas: I actually, it's funny, I made a joke about this a long time ago on one of my shows, because it was in the news, you know, like, should felons get, and, and for the record, you know, that that's already, what you have is already way better than what we have, which is not

[0:30:45] only can they not vote in prison, but once they're out, you know, that, that there's just a really good John Oliver, you guys, that is, he good? Here, okay, good, that's not, he's not one of the the ones that left that you hate, okay, yeah, uh, no, he, I, he's fantastic, and they did a really, it was, it was really rage inducing this program about, uh, in Florida, this panel that Governor Scott, I think it is, uh, has, that's just like three people, that one One of them, they're just nonsense people. They're just absolute nonsense people. And these ex-felons, you know, one black man who was probably in his 70s, you know, had served his time, has been living out there, totally respectable life for decades, and he's just trying to get the right to vote. And they're just, it's very religion-based. They're just like, well, I'm going to pray on

[0:31:35] it, but I don't think so. So and it's just, it's demeaning. And it just makes me sick to think that these these, you know, this panel of of assholes that someone decided get to choose whether or not they get their constitutional rights, you know, after they've served their time. It just made me so mad. But I made a joke a few years back before this when when I was thinking about it, I was like, I don't even really understand what the problem is. Do people think that if you give prisoners the right to vote, they're going to elect like a prisoner as president?

Like, there's going to be, oh, I'm definitely voting for, like, Voldemort for, like, they're all evil. They're, like, voting for the, you know, the Dementors to be in charge. No, they're just going to vote for whoever is running. And especially here, when, again, you have a paltry 80 ,000 or so prisoners. I mean, that's statistically not very significant. But even in the U.S., yes, nationally, it's, you know, 2.5 million, which is still not a whole lot in terms of, I mean, if all of them voted, it's a pretty big effect. But but when you look at like if you divide it out where it is, it's not like that's gonna make a huge effect. And as you say, if they're pretty split anyway, it's just, it's so mind-boggling to me, like, they should just have their right to vote for the most part. Was there any

[0:32:50] more you wanted to say on the voting rights for?

0:32:53 Thomas: Just explain Page Three a few more times

[0:32:57] Okay, does anybody have an example no Not to buy this one, what did you say? I said I'm going to tell everyone not to buy this one. Okay, okay.

0:33:09 Thomas: Let's talk about the sentencing differences in, again, the U.S. versus U.K. Because we were, again, trying to find some statistics. And I'll just, here, I'll give my side. Okay. What I can find is that in terms of life sentences, there's something like, wait here, let me make sure I have it right. Right. In the U.S., there are 162,000 inmates serving a life sentence, which I think is 25 years, I guess. And then a further 44,311 people are serving a virtual life sentence, which is 50 years or more. And it's defined as any sentence where it's likely they will die in custody. So 44,311.

[0:33:55] What is that number here? Year in terms of how, out of the 83 odd thousand.

0:34:01 Emma: Um, people, 14 of them, which I haven't done the maths on that, but about 14 of them have what are called indeterminate sentences, which means that they'll have a minimum period of time they have to serve, which is known as the punishment part, and then after that they are theoretically then able to be released by the parole board if the parole board think they are safe to be released. So those people could technically be in prison forever if they're considered to be dangerous, but possibly get out. Then there's only about 70, as I I mentioned before, who have whole life orders, and that's 68 men and two women. You have to be, but you have to be quite bad to get one of those in the UK, so.

[0:34:39] You kind of buried the lead there, but, uh, that was 44,300 versus 70. I think that's a stark, that's a stark difference. Um, but yeah, no, of course you had to be precise in your stats.

0:34:51 Thomas: Because you're responsible you want to make sure people properly understood the numbers you were using. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, no, that is really, again, I think that highlights that difference in philosophy. And, you know, we

[0:35:03] Want to throw you, lock you up and throw away the, I was going to say, throw you away and throw away the key. I don't know, it's not that much different. Lock you up and throw away the key versus here it does seem like there's at least some more consideration given to when someone is safe to leave. So do you want to talk about maybe that, what, what goes into that difference, and then also again, parole, how is that supposed to work here, how does it work, all

[0:35:30] those questions and more right now

0:35:33 Emma: In terms of parole, so as I mentioned earlier, when some when someone becomes eligible for parole, the parole board are deciding whether or not their risk of causing serious harm is manageable in the community. And that's very specific to serious harm. And so if someone, if there's loads of evidence the first thing someone's going to do when they leave is go and steal some vodka from Asda, um, for example, um, but that's it, then the parole board don't care about that because that's

[0:35:57] Not serious harm. I'm very curious about that, Evan. It's just a journal, like a diary, like, "Oh, I just really need some vodka." Well, no, I have had clients, um, clients who have, um, substance misuse problems who are, um, who commit very large numbers of thefts, um, to fund their drug habit, but they're not, they're not violent.

0:36:17 Thomas: And so are we talking different levels, so when you're talking about this parole board in particular, is

[0:36:23] this just serious offenders you're talking about, like people have committed serious? So the people that I, the people that I went into, generally

0:36:29 Emma: Are on the more serious end anyway, because they have, they have, have received indeterminate sentences, and you only get an indeterminate sentence if you've committed a serious crime. But that's the bulk of what I do. But I also represent people, the parole board, also deal with people who have been released on license who are recalled back to custody having

[0:36:48] breached their license. But the bit about the vodka was, you're saying that if they're evaluating whether

0:36:54 Thomas: They can be released, they're just looking at serious harm. They're not even... Like if, if they think this

[0:37:00] person is going to steal, they're still going to release them? Because, oh, okay, it's a, it's a, it used to be, watch your vodka everybody, hang on to you, the test used to be sort of colloquially known as

0:37:12 Emma: A life and limb test. Um, you know, and and that can include serious psychological harm, it's not just physical harm, but that's what they have to look at. And so the way that they determine that is by, um, seeing it, do they have a good enough understanding of why it happened the first time, or the, or the previous times, and have we got compelling evidence that it's going to be different next time. Um, and the way that you do that is hopefully you've, um, there, are this is where it gets a bit difficult, because at the moment it's hard to do because of the state of the prison system, and also even if you can get on some of the courses that they have to try and improve people's behavior, the evidence base for those courses is extremely poor. Last year, there's a course that used to be run for people who committed sexual offences called the Sex Offender Treatment Programme, which last year the government produced a study. That course has been run for decades all over the prison state.

[0:38:15] I don't know if it was in the US, it was definitely in Canada as well. So this is a programme to try to make sure somebody, to reduce recidivism. Yeah. Address the causes of sexual offending. And they discovered that at best, it was doing nothing.

0:38:31 Thomas: It's not a good start. I don't think there's any way you can finish that that's good, for sure.

[0:38:37] And at worst, it was making people worse. At worst, it gave you a million dollars. Yeah.

0:38:42 Emma: I'm now in a position where I have some clients who have committed sexual offenses and we're coming to parole hearings. And they've done those courses.

[0:38:48] And I'm now having to We're trying to argue the fact that they're not worse. Yeah. Oh, wow. That that's not made them worse. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. That's horrible.

[0:39:00] And it's been replaced by another course that's not accredited or tested either. That is interesting. It would be nice if we had solid data, you know. That seems like something worthwhile to research, what outcomes and what. Yeah. It's quite hard sometimes to get the Ministry of Justice to give. The only reason that we got that study was because journalists were pressuring them to to release it, because they, they quietly stopped, so they, they stopped doing the course without really explaining why, and then that came out. And then at the moment everyone's, um, FOI-ing them at the moment for the, they did a small pilot study on the synthetic, um, pepper spray, because they've been testing in a couple of prisons, and they did that, they said that was

[0:39:37] for taste? They said it was, they said it was successful, but we've got no idea what the criteria for success were. Properly spicing your food. So, you know, we've got about 10 minutes left. I want to make sure we talk about the kinds of people you've there's some specifically, yeah, specifically, I've talked about a specific case on another podcast, Skeptics with a K, before, which I cannot talk about.

[0:40:09] Yeah, but that aside, in speaking in generalities, you know. So I don't like to sort of, not categorize, give a hierarchy to what the worst offenses are. But I've represented, in my head, I do have everyone's, I still have a hierarchy of what's really, really bad and what's not so bad. And so I've represented people who've murdered children, for example, or committed child sex offenses, and all, and the whole gambit of

[0:40:41] things. And even as the hyper-rational robots that everyone in this room is, that sounds hard to do. Yeah. And how do you, how do you feel when you do that, and how, what do you, what is that like? So part of it, um, from

0:39:52 Thomas: Represented. You know, I know, and as a disclaimer, of course, there's plenty specifics you can't talk about. Yeah,

0:41:00 Emma: Form, it, it actually isn't that hard for me, which I think is something, says something I don't, I don't going to want, but something about my personality, um, and I'm able to, um, separate myself from the emotion of what they have done with my job, which is to advise them in relation to whether or not it's likely that they're going to be, um, released. But one thing that does help is that, um,

[0:41:24] with the exception of like very few people, none of these people who've committed the absolute worst of things had what I'm going to describe as a happy childhood. And they've, quite often, there's quite often very clear, obvious societal reasons, um, that have made them, not, not necessarily, um, guaranteed they'll do something, but made them much more susceptible to something like that happening. And even the people who've got psychopathy, who are diagnosed as being

[0:41:54] psychopathic, they didn't choose that either. Right, right, and so, but also, something you've, you said to me

0:42:00 Thomas: Uh, before this, that I want to make sure to say, because I think it, it, it also helps people realize you're not just trying to get child killers up on the street as a hobby, is that you do seem to have a real

[0:42:12] trust in the parole board and in that system. You talk about that, so, um, yeah,

0:42:19 Emma: So people will go, "How on earth can you represent and help and argue that, argue that this child killer should be back in the community? How on earth can I be that person's advocate?" Um, and the, the, for the first of all, the answer to that is that the parole board don't just release people, the parole board also make other decisions about what else needs to be done in someone's case. And quite often, if I think that someone is not ready for release, so I, I think that um they're not going to be successful at a release application, I, I pride myself that I'm quite good at advising people and they will take my advice about what we're actually asking for in the first place. Um, but even if um we are making a release application in a case that I think

[0:42:55] that person is is dangerous, and just to highlight, you just, just fill it in, you are good and you advise them, you're good at advising them, like, "Hey, this is too much doubt, you're not going to get," managing their expectations. However, they still have the right to tell you, they have the right to make, and if they pass the minimum term, they have the right to ask for release.

0:43:14 Emma: That's their right, and if they still want to do that after I've told them it's unlikely, um, then, then we do that, and I do that to the best of my ability, but I still, I have a reasonable expectation based on, I was going to say faith, but I don't have faith, I have a reasonable belief based on evidence that the parole board generally make the right decisions. I know they've been in the press um this year with some of the decisions that they, that they've made, and and concerns about them releasing terribly dangerous people, but the rate at which people released by the parole board commit

[0:43:45] serious offenses is is under one percent and it has been consistently for a long time, despite the fact the number of hearings they've been having has gone up very, very large amounts in recent years, and but the reoffense rate has stayed the same, which indicates to me that they're actually doing quite a good job. Now, it can be hard to try and justify to the public what, if it happened, because, because they will often have the view, if it happens once, it's gone wrong. They expect the system to be perfect. And another thing that comes down to having a rational and skeptical outlook is understanding that it won't, it can't be perfect. Yeah, yeah.

[0:44:23] Because the minute there's a car accident, we better get rid of cars, for sure. Thank God that hasn't happened yet. We still have cars. I have never represented someone who I thought was still a danger to society who then got released. I've had plenty of clients who've gotten released and then gotten recalled.

[0:44:39] Um, because they breach their conditions, but that is not the same as them going and murdering somebody or something like that, but it is

0:44:46 Thomas: Yes, and it, but it is a possibility, I, and I would, that, that must be very, I mean imagine that would be very difficult, but I'm so, you've, you know the data, you know the numbers, and that has given you the ability to think rationally and say that the chances are, are so small that this, you know, that tiny chance is probably a lot less than the chances of some everyday awful thing happening all the time, but when it's in the news that this one person that they let go did this one awful thing, it just has such an impact

[0:45:23] on society, but that hasn't seemed, seem to, so far anyway, affected how harsh they're being? Well, at the present time,

0:45:36 Emma: In my experience, this is an anecdote, not data, but in my experience, since quite a high profile case at the start of the year where the Parole Board made a release decision that was highly unpopular in the press and they were then successfully sued, so I had to remake that decision, um, I'm not sure that the outcome is known um about what happened with that, or if it's happened again yet, but the um, since then, they have been significantly more conservative in terms of the decisions, in my experience there, they are deferring cases and adjourning cases for lots more information that they previously weren't. That's how it

[0:46:13] starts you're going to be at 2.5 million for a few decades no really it's a tough thing it does seem like kind

0:46:19 Thomas: Of a spiraling thing of just, always no, we need to play it more conservative, more conservative, you know, but um, wow, we're already pretty low on time. I did want to make sure to ask you, there's certain interesting statistics and and maybe counterintuitive things you've mentioned to me about who are the people who are likely to re-offend, like what, generically, what kind of person is someone where you're thinking statistically, "No, this person probably will re-offend," seriously, seriously, versus "No, actually they won't," even though it seems like they might, they won't. Can you give some examples?

[0:46:51] There's things like, hypothetical, well, there's things like whether or not someone admits they did it and whether or not that's evidence

0:47:00 Emma: Of them being more or less likely to be offend. Um, the, there isn't a great deal of evidence, but the studies and things that have been done seem to suggest that maintenance of innocence actually is a protective factor, that people are less likely um to re-offend if they say they didn't

[0:47:18] they didn't offend in the first place.

Yeah, um, but I think there's a lot of emphasis, I forget if you said it was in the US or the UK, but some, in the US, or there's somewhere, there's a lot of emphasis, so, as you said before, it's a bit hard to get proper data on the US system because it's all different, but from what, I mean, I watch a lot of Law and Order, yeah, I watch a lot of documentaries about, oh yeah, that's what I meant too, I watch a lot of very serious things, from, from what I can tell, from the US system, that is much more based on whether or not someone has shown enough remorse yet and stuff, and they're quite often, they don't seem to be represented at all, and, yeah, I don't think they are, we're trying to

0:47:56 Thomas: Figure that out, unfortunately, it is, again, it's it's probably different everywhere, but I, I don't, it doesn't seem like they are, um, so that, that doesn't have any effect. And I think statistically thinking through that, I guess there could be some offsetting amount of people who are actually innocent, and so that's why they're maintaining their innocence, and so therefore they don't re-offend because they never offended in the first place, but that's also even still, it's very curious that that has, that has no effect that you can see. Is there anything else like that you want to share? In the Oh, we have one minute. Okay, what are you, give me your best knock knock joe, no, what do

[0:48:26] you got, give me something, I wanted to, um, um, it was just in terms of we were talking about what prison is for and

0:48:33 Emma: Um, how, what people, we want to be in prison, and I just wanted to um, um, highlight something that, there's, in the prison population is increasingly aging, and there are a significant number of people in custody who are quite old, and there's a growing proportion of people who are in custody for committing historic sex offenses, and so these are people who've committed offenses decades ago, there's no evidence of anything in the middle, and then they've been

[0:48:57] obviously the the victims of their offending have come forward or whatever, they've been convicted and they're serving a sentence, and I've had the unfortunate experience now of of people who are extremely elderly in custody who have

[0:49:10] dementia, who have to be, every morning when they wake up, they have to be told where they are and why they're there, and I just, even, even when someone's committed the most horrible of offenses, like a child sex offense, is that really the best use of resources um when someone doesn't

[0:49:29] even know why they're in prison. Yeah, well, on that note, I think it's

0:49:35 Thomas: Time, I want to thank you guys so much for coming, this was really fun to do, super fun

[0:49:41] topic, you know, really zany, everybody's like loving it, no, thank you for coming to the first ever live SIO, and thank you, Emma, so much for sharing everything

[0:50:22] Thank you.