The Andrew Goff Column

SHOP! HORROR! THIEVES TO BE KEPT OUT OF PRISON

25-08-2006

Much outrage today at the idea that shoplifters should be kept out of prison - Andy Goff can't see what all the fuss is about…

No jail for shoplifters? What! How can this even be hinted at let alone suggested by the Sentencing Advisory Panel.

Retailers are up in arms at the idea. As far as they are concerned a shoplifter is a shoplifter, regardless of any consideration about the person involved. A spokesman from the British Retailers Consortium said they were “disgusted” by the plan.

Now, call me a namby-pamby liberal but I think it's quite a good thing that we no longer hang people for stealing a loaf of bread, that we no longer send our criminals by boat to Australia (although for many this was a great improvement in fortune) and we no longer chop bits off people to reflect our collective distaste at their actions.

Our society moved on and, as we became more civilised, we started to try and understand what makes people act in ways that are detrimental to our collective well being.

In this new age of un-enlightenment it seems this process is grinding to a halt.

Now we are shocked at the very idea we could consider a better way than prison and that the Lord Chancellor wants to engage victims in considering how perpetrators should be dealt with.

Well it seems to me that jail does work if all we are trying to achieve is the removal of some people from society but fails if we are trying to deal with the reasons they are being considered potential prisoners.

Shoplifters come in all shapes and sizes and shoplift for all sort of reasons, or no reason to those of us that don't.

In the past confused older people have been lumped in with organised gangs, depressed mums trying to make budgets stretch have been fined or worse which does nothing to help the situation that caused them to be stealing in the first place and retailers just blindly hand them over to the judicial system.

Surely it's time for retailers to accept some responsibility.

Walk round any shop and goods are there to be picked up, handled, fondled and coveted. All so very, very tempting.

Stop putting sweets at child eye level, stop making shoplifting tempting and stop complaining when our already overstretched prison service start talking about another way of dealing with the problem.

If shops were really bothered by shoplifters they would do what banks learned to do. Put that which is most tempting out of sight!