What's Ken Up To?

The next few weeks are going to be quite significant for the Criminal Justice System for all sorts of reasons. No doubt Ken Clarke, the new Justice Secretary, will not want to disappoint his many fans when he makes a keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday. Now I quite like Ken. He strikes me as a decent, honest politician not particularly prone to bullshit and not always 'on message'. His Daily Mail interview some weeks ago signalled his direction of travel in terms of trying to get prison numbers down but somewhat alarmingly I think I'm right in saying that, since taking office, he's not mentioned the probation service once. As a prelude to his speech and in an interview with the Guardian on Saturday 2nd October it's reported that:-

'Backed up by sympathetic allies among the Lib Dems, Clarke has been talking about a "rehabilitation revolution" in the justice system. Plans include widespread restorative justice, diverting drug addicts and the mentally ill out of jail, and a sentencing overhaul. The result could be thousands of people convicted of minor crimes being given community alternatives to prison.' 

Now that all sounds very promising to me, but of course begs lots of questions. Funnily enough it's 'rehabilitation' that has been so effectively hampered in the 'new style' bureaucratised probation service and in fact is last in the list of NOMS priorities. For political reasons the emphasis was shifted to protecting the public and enforcing court orders ages ago. Do I hear a wheel turning?

The mention of plans for 'widespread restorative justice' is very good news and long overdue in my view. Of course probation have been pioneers in this field for years with early experiments in mediation schemes, but it won't please everyone because it's not about punishment or coercion. It has to be a process not lightly entered into and very carefully orchestrated by well trained and skilled facilitators. It won't be cheap to fund, but has real potential for changing behaviour, helping victims and saving society much money and heartache in the future. 

Diverting drug addicts and the mentally ill from prison has to be a very laudable aim, but as we all know is nothing but that if the community facilities are simply not available to deal with these two groups adequately. As a PO on the front line, I can tell you they are not. That's why they're in prison Ken.

A 'sentencing overhaul' sounds ominous to me and I can already sense our magistrate friends taking a deep breath. It's sort of code for basically restricting the sentencing powers of predominately Magistrates Courts. Previous governments have been down this path before and ended up not just irritating a lot of magistrates, but also invoking the Law of Unintended Consequences. Ken has already stated that he wants thousands of people currently remanded in custody pending plea or sentence, to be bailed instead. That is an interesting aim. How is he going to do that, given the current Bail Act already clearly states that there is a presumption of bail being granted, unless certain exceptions apply?

Since probation hostels were prevented from taking all but the riskiest bailees some time ago, we've had three years mixed experience of the national Bail Accommodation and Support Scheme (BASS), since April run by a 'third sector' contractor. Additionally, there's been the option of Electronic Tagging for some considerable time, run by private sector contractors. Of course magistrates already have wide scope to add any number of other conditions to bail, such as residence, non contact, exclusion zones, police reporting etc etc, so what else has he got up his sleeve? A new Bail Act that seeks to further reduce the scope for magistrates to remand in custody? Surely not? 

Like many others, I'm very concerned about Ken Clarke's plans for the future of summary justice and in particular the court closures to save a measly £30million a year. Then there's the back door move towards reducing the Lay Bench in favour of professional District Judges. I really do not see how the cause of justice is going to be better served in this way, or indeed provided at lower cost by replacing volunteers with expensive Judges.  We await with interest to hear what Ken has to say.