Cures?

As usual after an event like the English riots everyone and their uncle start putting forward their solutions to the problems highlighted. Sadly most of them become tainted by the desire to exact revenge and punish. Perfectly understandable of course especially if you happened to be the owner of one of the pillaged businesses. But a more reasoned look at the cause and effect shows, I believe, that the hang-em and flog-em brigade are barking up the wrong tree. I make no apology for yet again singing the praise of our friends from Scandinavia. Not only do they have lower numbers of people incarcerated in their prisons but they also have lower levels of criminality and anti social behaviour/obesity/teenage pregnancy etc.

Bring back corporal punishment, its the only way to instil respect in the young is a cry sometimes heard. The riposte to that idea is the fact that for the last 25 years or so Sweden has banned the smacking of children and as shown above has lower crime rates, lower anti social behaviour etc. So we really should be concentrating on the old adage that prevention is better than cure. We should start by accepting that inequality which is rife in the UK must be addressed before we slip further into the mire of lawlessness. Secondly we need to accept that prison incarceration without an attempt to rehabilitate is doomed to failure. The re-offending rate is 70% in the UK, that 70% of the male prison population suffer with two or more Mental health problems and it costs £41,000 per prisoner per annum, prison looks like an expensive failure.
I am open to be convinced otherwise but I cannot think of any modern western democracy that shows that a more draconian punishment and prison regime works. Can you?