“It’s not long enough” – Mick Philpott, Sentencing
Policy, and Public Criminology
Last
week saw the sentencing of Derby man Mick Philpott, his wife Mairead, and
friend Paul Mosley for the manslaughter of the Philpott’s six children in a
house fire last May. The story has
naturally captured the public’s imagination and bought to the fore several
debates about the UK’s approach to sentencing and the Welfare State. In this post, I try to unpack some of the
pertinent issue and address some of the misconceptions being reinforced by
recent press reporting of this case.
The Manslaughter of Six Innocent
Children
Mick
Philpott’s living arrangements – unemployed and living with two different
women, along with 11 children – have been widely publicised and commented
on. His wife, Mairead, and his lover
Lisa Willis, took it in turns to sleep with him in their caravan on alternate
nights, and this was covered in a 2007 edition of The Jeremy Kyle Show – a ‘reality TV’ programme that is tantamount
to human bear-baiting, designed to put some of Britain’s most desperate people
on television, playing out their out-of-control lives for the satisfaction and
pleasure of those in more fortunate, if not perfect, positions.
When
Lisa Willis left the home last February, Mick Philpott sought to reclaim her
presence (and her child benefit money) through a host of different strategies,
such as “sweet talking … cajoling … and bullying”, according the Mrs Justice
Thirlwall’s sentencing remarks. When she
didn’t he hatched a wicked plan in order to blame her for a crime she didn’t
commit – that of arson against her former family home, such that she would be
prosecuted and Mick would obtain custody of the five children with whom Lisa
left.
Mick
Philpott was responsible for dousing his hallway in petrol and setting it
alight. The Crown accepted that he had
not intended to kill his children, or even to cause them significant physical
harm, and subsequently charged the three co-defendants with manslaughter as
opposed to murder, with the assertion being that Mr Philpott had planned to
enter the house, rescue the children, and be considered a local hero. This unfortunately went horribly wrong, no
rescue attempt was possible, and the six children inside tragically died.
Sentencing policy
Many
people have commented on the sentence being handed down to these offenders –
particularly the one given to Mick Philpott.
The sentences passed were as follows:
- Mick Philpott – Life imprisonment with a minimum term of 15 years
- Mairead Philpott – 17 years imprisonment
- Paul Mosley – 17 years imprisonment
These
sentences, when set against the context of the unlawful killing of six innocent
children, have been described as too lenient by some members of the public, with
others on the social networking site Twitter calling for a reintroduction of
capital punishment for child killers.
However,
it should be noted that the judge, Mrs Justice Thirlwall, passed the maximum
sentence possible for manslaughter. Life
imprisonment is the most severe punishment available for this index offence
and, in setting the minimum tariff to be served by Mick Philpott, she stated:
The law
requires me to impose a period of years that you will serve before you are
considered for parole. To reach that period I must identify the determinate
sentence you would have served had I not imposed a life sentence. The
determinate sentence would have been one of 30 years’ imprisonment. I am
required by parliament to halve that to reflect that were this a determinate
sentence you would serve only half. The minimum period you must therefore serve
before you are considered for parole is one of 15 years. From that I deduct 307
days to reflect the time you have already served on remand to give a term of 14
years and 58 days. Whether or not you are ever released will be a matter for
the parole board.
Whole-life
sentences, whereby “life means life” and there is no possibility for parole, is
one option being mooted as a compromise between life sentences and the death
penalty. This case is certainly one that
shakes my own personal beliefs, but I reassert that the idea of whole-life
tariffs raise some serious concerns. My
view of prisons is that they should be fundamentally places for reformation and
rehabilitation. I have written
previously that only the most dangerous criminals should be given prison terms
(a theory supported by the risk-need-responsivity model of offender
rehabilitation) – and that it is only by doing this that you can focus on doing
intensive therapeutic work without passing on “tricks of the trade” to lesser
criminals, such as those with acquisitive or public order offences.
Politically,
though, it is wise for the Government to continue the trend of increasing the
number of prisoners serving long or whole-life sentences. This satisfies a certain Lombrosian culture
that seems to fester in the vast majority of criminal justice rhetoric in the
UK, and the concept of whole-life sentences seems to support this ideology by
suggesting that some violent offenders are beyond help.
Another
important point to raise is that, if a prisoner knows there is no chance of
release, what do they have to lose? They
may as well behave however they like, and, with few opportunities for rehabilitation
(why waste money of offending behaviour programmes on those beyond help?),
prisoners on whole-life sentences have the perfect excuse to take their
frustrations out on other inmates, or indeed police officers. The press would no doubt report these
incidents as ‘proof’ that these “beasts” should be locked up for the rest of
their days – but they actually contribute to these events.
There
have also been complaints about the fact that, if their sentences run as
planned, Mairead Philpott and Paul Mosley will be “out in 8 years”. Whilst it is true that these two will be
released from prison-based custody at the half-way point of their respective 17
year sentences, it is not the case that they will be completely free, as some
media outlets and commentators would lead you to believe. Any offender that is released prior to the
end of their allotted tariff must serve
up until the end of their sentence on licence – where they are still subject to
strict sanctions which, if broken, could still lead the to be recalled to
prison. This licence period lasts until
the end of the originally passed sentence (or for life, in the case of a life
sentenced prisoner), and is accompanied by a variety of restrictions, including
curfews and electronic tagging. To suggest
that those on licence are as free as the rest of us is a misleading fallacy.
Conclusions
All
in all, I feel that the sentences passed are fair, and take into account the
varying factors relating to each individual defendant. Mick Philpott is clearly a controlling and
callous individual with his own self-interest at the heart of everything he
does, and the fact that he has received the maximum possible sentence for his
actions is absolutely right.
My
only hope is that those involved in criminology and criminal justice engage
better with the public and the media to allow for more balanced,
evidence-based, and factual accounts of the sentencing process to be produced.
Craig Harper is a postgraduate student
of forensic psychology based at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research interests lie in desistance from
crime, offender reintegration and public criminology.
