Quakers and criminal justice
After a recent regional gathering at Wilmslow, Alan Russell asks why the public fear of crime is so great when crime rates are falling
Levels of crime are falling. Since 2002 they have dropped by more than twenty per cent across England and Wales alone. Even prison numbers are going down. Alternatives to prison are being more widely adopted. Offenders are being treated ever more humanely, and this is reducing the crime rates yet further. The causes of crime are being given increasing attention. A revolutionary change of attitudes is permeating the whole of the criminal justice system in Britain: the Ministry of Justice, the courts, the police and the prisons.
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