Can punishment break the cycle of cruelty?

The crime was described in court as “barbaric” and “abhorrent”. The punishment, said the judge would reflect the public’s repulsion.

Now four weeks into a 16-week prison sentence for killing three badgers and a litter of unborn cubs at Howsham near Malton last January, the men responsible are back home.

When Judge Kristina Harrison sent the core members to prison she said it was “the ultimate deterrent”. After the trial at Scarborough magistrates in January, the prosecuting barrister, Sobia Ahmed, said she couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome.

The public applauded the justice system cracking down hard. But how many members of the public realise the badgers baiters have spent only a quarter of their sentence in jail. Nor will they be aware that the sentence given to the teenage member of the gang is not quite what it seemed.

For the past four weeks Alan Alexander, Richard Simpson, Paul Tindall and William Anderson have been free to work, take their children to school and walk their dogs – a significant degree of freedom for men who considered it sport to let their dogs maul badgers to death. Extreme animal rights activists have targeted the men and one has called for police protection.

The Yorkshire Post has learned that this week the electronic tags monitoring the men’s movements were due to be removed. As these four resume their lives, what of the teenage member of the gang? Aged 16 at the time of the attack, he had laughed as the dogs ripped into the badgers. His sentence was a year’s rehabilitation order, with a specific direction that he attend 10 sessions with the RSPCA to teach him “how to behave properly around animals”.

It is rare for a judge to issue such direct instructions to the youth service. Police sergeant Paul Stephenson, who had a pivotal role in bringing the gang to justice, says he was “particularly impressed” by this.

“By ordering him to work with the RSPCA, the judge showed that she wanted to break the cycle of behaviour and help him to see wild animals in a different light, rather than as something to kill,” says Sergeant Stephenson.

Enquiries with the RSPCA reveal what this rehabilitation order actually entails. Helen Spicer, an RSPCA prevention education and training officer says the order did not mean the young man would actually work at an RSPCA animal centre. “It would not be appropriate for someone convicted of animal cruelty to work with live animals,” she said.

In fact the convicted teenager never left the classroom. He has sat with a youth worker following lessons developed by the RSPCA to “help him address his crime’. This means watching film clips of animal cruelty as part of a programme entitled Breaking the Chain which has been trialled in Scarborough during the past year. Steve Walker, the Scarborough Youth Justice Service manager, defends the film material as “hard hitting and challenging”. One of the case studies involves a young boy who gets drunk and batters a family tortoise to death with a baseball bat.

It represents a new development in the RSPCA’s approach to animal cruelty. The organisation has traditionally focused on prosecution and the resources it allocated to prevention have been relatively low. Helen Spicer, whose remit covers Yorkshire and East Midlands, is one of just three RSPCA education and training advisers delivering the material to youth offending teams and institutes across the country. She has trained teams in Barnsley, Bradford, Harrogate, Leeds, Sheffield, Barnsley, Hull, Wetherby and Scarborough.

The scheme is beginning to gain momentum and youth teams have begun suggesting it to magistrates as an option when they are sentencing offenders.

A similar preventative programme has been launched for schools and there is also a new scheme to work more closely with agencies such as the police and social services.

“The RSPCA is at last recognising that you can’t help animals without helping people,” said Helen Spicer.

By this she means that the sadistic inflicting of pain on animals is often part of a general pattern of cruelty in the day-to-day behaviour of the offender.

There’s an example from the trial of two young brothers from South Yorkshire who tortured two boys, aged nine and 11.

It emerged that the brothers belonged to a family whose members were known for violence. One had been observed hurling young ducklings against a tree. Had this offence been reported to the RSPCA, suggests Helen Spicer, it might have rung alarm bells sooner and forestalled a bigger crime. In the public mind, getting teenagers to “talk” about their crimes against animals may hardly seem to rate as punishment. But Steve Walker insists this kind of work is more effective than jail.

“So far we haven’t had any young people who have re-offended,” he says. “Facing up to the harm they’ve caused isn’t an easy option, especially when it involves making amends to the victims and the community. Some young people find it much easier to serve a custodial sentence than to be confronted with the consequences of their behaviour. Custody often isn’t the best answer, the re-offending rates are quite high and it is very expensive.”

According to Steve Walker it isn’t possible to calculate comparative unit costs for youth rehabilitation orders. Andrew Neilson of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said adults convicted of sentences of less than a year have no obligation to prove remorse.

“Most would be better off with community sentences which specifically address their crimes,” he said.

Sergeant Stephenson believes the badger baiters’ punishment has been a serious one. “Those men have lost quite a lot. Landowners won’t let them on their land; they cannot keep firearms for the next five years.

“Their access to that kind of life they had has changed dramatically.”

Adding up the costs

The average cost of a month’s stay in prison is £4,500.

Two thirds of adult prisoners on short sentences re-offend.

The cost of electronic tagging, according to G4S, the private security company contracted to carry out the service, works out at roughly £900 a month.

In the case of the adult members of the badger baiting gang, the cost to the public purse doesn’t end there since the police are now obliged to investigate vigilante threats made towards gang members.