Darren McGarvey: The State We’re In
BBC2
★★★✩✩
What a week for the UK justice system. Every night this week The Jury: Murder Trial has tested the efficacy of our jury process, and now we have Darren McGarvey: The State We’re In examining crime and punishment.
At an overcrowded Glasgow prison, inmates trudged around a small yard in light Scottish drizzle for their daily exercise. It didn’t look much like a “five-star hotel”, as some members of the public described UK prisons. Maybe they meant a Britannia hotel, the proud UK’s worst hotel chain award winner for 11 years running.
McGarvey, a social commentator and a watchable, down-to-earth TV presenter, saw someone he used to know waving from a cell. “F***ing hell,” he said. He wryly trigger-warned “rural Conservatives” that he was about to show something upsetting. It was a prison in Norway where inmates enjoyed rooms with en suite showers and TVs, and could shop for food and clothing at a small supermarket, making their meals in a swish kitchen. Norway’s strategy is rehabilitation not retribution. Its reoffending rate is 20 per cent. In the UK it is 49-59 per cent, McGarvey said. Norway doesn’t do life sentences because Norwegians don’t want inmates “punished for the rest of their lives”.
That low reoffending rate is impressive, and the value of redemption over revenge is persuasive. But it is an oft-repeated argument. And does rather cut the victim out of the picture. As McGarvey said, the families of murder victims have no choice but to suffer “for the rest of their lives”. Such as Leanne White, the mother of Ava White, 12, who was stabbed to death in Liverpool by a boy of 14. The killer was sentenced to 13 years. Leanne called that an absolute joke. “I feel the justice system failed Ava.”
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The boy will be under 30 when he leaves custody. Leanne will suffer indefinitely. McGarvey said “courageous leadership” was needed to reform the system. Maybe we shouldn’t hold our breath.
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