It's All Been Said Before

In amongst all the recent nonsense being talked about lie-detectors, I note the right-leaning Reform think tank has taken the opportunity afforded by a new right-leaning Tory government to say something about our failing prison system. 

Of particular interest to us in probation is what they have to say regarding the numbers of people we are sending to prison and why it would be sensible to reduce this. Of course it's all been said many times before and likely to fall on deaf right-wing ears, but lets give it a look anyway:-

The Prison System 

Priorities for Investment

About 

Reform is established as the leading Westminster think tank for public service reform. We are dedicated to achieving better and smarter public services. Our mission is to set out ideas that will improve public services for all and deliver value for money. We work on core sectors such as health and social care, education, home affairs and justice, and work and pensions. Our work also covers issues that cut across these sectors, including public service design and delivery and digital public services. We are determinedly independent and strictly non-party in our approach. Reform is a registered charity, the Reform Research Trust, charity no.1103739. This publication is the property of the Reform Research Trust. The arguments and any errors that remain are the authors’ and the authors’ alone. 

About Reform Policy 

Reform Policy are in-depth research reports focusing on a specific challenge facing public services. They provide a detailed and evidence-based examination of the issues and put forward implementable recommendations to government, public sector bodies and other key stakeholders to help deliver better public services for all.

Recommendation 1: The Ministry of Justice should launch a consultation on the use of custodial sentences and consider the impact of implementing a ban on, or presumption against, short custodial sentences. It should also consider how to make magistrates more willing to use and improve their understanding of a community sentence, as they are less expensive than prison sentences and, on average, more effective at reducing reoffending. 

Recommendation 2: The Ministry of Justice should develop a strategy for future prison closures which considers various factors such as their location, efficiency and effectiveness or whether they would be too difficult to replace. This will help the Government to create a more fit-for-purpose estate. 

Recommendation 3: The Ministry of Justice should devolve a portion of the facilities management budget to prison governors. This could allow for minor maintenance problems to be addressed more quickly by local provision. 

Recommendation 4: The Government should fund the Ministry of Justice £900 million to address the growing maintenance backlog in prisons, to improve standards of decency and safety. 

Recommendation 5: The Government should ensure that the Ministry of Justice receives additional annual funding to sustain new and improved prison security measures, so that prisons can continue to disrupt the supply of contraband in the long term. 

Recommendation 6: Her Majesty’s Treasury should ensure that Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service has enough funding to close the pay gap between Closed and Fair & Sustainable pay grades by 2027, to end the two-tier pay system for Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service staff.

Introduction

In 2016 the Government published a landmark White Paper, ‘Prison Safety and Reform’, which promised to deliver much-needed changes to the prison system.  It committed to address poor safety for staff and prisoners, high levels of assaults, the poor condition of the estate, poor retention in the workforce, and ultimately poor outcomes for reoffending. 

Since the Government laid out its plans for “the biggest overhaul of our prisons in a generation” progress has been poor in several key areas: 

• Prisoner-on-prisoner and prisoner-on-staff assaults have increased by 30 per cent since 2016.  
• Incidents of prisoners self-harming have increased by 65 per cent since 2016.  
• The leaving rate for Band 3-5 staff – operational prison officers – has increased by 32 per cent since 2016. 
• In the 12 months to March 2019, 17 per cent of drug tests on prisoners were positive. 
• Nearly £529 million intended for spending on the prison estate has been diverted to spending on the day-to-day running of prisons since 2016. 

Significant resource pressures on prisons are likely to have held back the progress of reforms. The White Paper promised prisons the “resources, authority and tools” to address these challenges, but real-terms resource spending on prisons fell in 2016-17 and 2017-18. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) has highlighted that “reduced resources, both in terms of staff and investment [has] made it extremely difficult” to run prisons.

Increasing spending is an opportunity to make progress – if targeted effectively. In 2018- 19, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s (HMPPS) resource budget rose by 4 per cent in real terms to over £3.9 billion. Several further commitments have been made: £2.5 billion for 10,000 additional prison places, £100 million for enhanced security, and £156 million for maintenance. To make the most of this increased spend the Government should focus on four priorities: more effective sentencing policies, creating a fit-for-purpose prison estate, improving prison safety, and developing the workforce.

1 Smarter Sentencing

Sentencing policies affect key outcomes of the justice system, such as levels of crime, and also have an impact on the size of the prison population. The courts must not only protect the public by imprisoning people who have committed serious offences, but it should use sentences and sanctions that make them less likely to reoffend in the community. However this is not currently the case, as three quarters of all crime is reoffending. It has a huge cost to society, estimated at about £18.1 billion a year, five times what the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) spend annually on prisons. To address high levels of reoffending and unsustainable levels of overcrowding the Government should ensure that prison sentences are used proportionately. 

1.1 Towards effective sentencing

Some types of sentences are used heavily even though they result in consistently high levels of reoffending. Nearly half of all prison sentences are ‘short’ custodial sentences of six months or less. The majority of these, some 11,500, are for theft offences. These carry a very high reoffending rate of 65 per cent – for theft offences specifically, it is 82 per cent – and this has remained around this level for over ten years. Convicted offenders who are not sent to prison may instead receive a community sentence. If they are personalised and properly enforced, these flexible punishments may entail unpaid work, restrictions on activities or a curfew, and rehabilitative measures, such as treatment requirements for addictions or mental health problems. While reoffending rates are not directly comparable, the reoffending rate for suspended sentence orders and community sentences is only 33 per cent, illustrating how high the rate is for those on short custodial sentences.

Reoffending following short sentences costs an estimated £4.4 billion a year, which could be avoided in part if other types of sentences where used. Short sentences can break a prisoner’s ties with housing, employment families and leave little time to focus on prisoner’s needs, making them more likely to reoffend. While short-sentences prisoners make up only a small proportion of the prison population at any one time, the high churn that they create puts disproportionate and sustained pressure on the criminal justice system. Community sentences could be used instead for many offence types.

The MoJ has shown in repeated studies that these are on average more effective at reducing reoffending. Evaluating levels of reoffending between two groups with comparable offender characteristics – created from 150 variables including offending history and other data like employment history – the MoJ has shown that those on community sentences reoffend 4 per cent less than those on short sentences, and those who do reoffend commit fewer crimes. 

Therefore, to reduce reoffending and deliver the best value-for-money, the use of short prison sentences should be reduced in favour of non-custodial sentences. At just under £4,500 annually, a community sentence costs just over a tenth of the cost of imprisonment.  Given the evidence that community sentences are often more effective, if these are used instead of short custodial ones, reoffending should decrease and the costs associated with repeat crime should fall. The MoJ estimate that if all those who currently receive a short prison sentence instead received a community sentence, there would be 32,000 fewer crimes every year. This would create savings for the police, the prison service, and the public. It has been estimated that the Government would accrue savings of at least £83 million a year if community sentences were used instead of short prison sentences for theft and non-violent drug offences.

1.2 The decline in community sentences

In the last ten years the numbers of custodial sentences and community sentences passed have decreased, as shown in Figure 2. However, despite the evidence in their favour, community sentences have declined at a much faster rate, with their use more than halving in the last decade. 

This decline in the use of community sentences is likely to have been driven by poor confidence in their effectiveness, against a background of continued poor performance by probation services. Despite the evidence that they result in less reoffending on average, in a 2017 survey of 582 magistrates, 37 per cent said that they were not confident that a community sentence is an effective alternative to custody. In addition, 65 per cent felt they did not reduce or deter crime, and three quarters felt that they did not effectively protect the public. 

Magistrates will often lack a full understanding of community sentences due to poor training or available information. In the same survey, 28 per cent of respondents said they did not feel their training had adequately prepared them for dealing with community sentences. The use of pre-sentence reports by the National Probation Service to sentencers, which recommend what a community sentence should include, declined by 22 per cent between 2012-13 and 2016-17. The Centre for Justice Innovation has suggested a link between this and the decline in community sentences. Similarly, as probation services for low-risk offenders are currently provided by private Community Rehabilitation Companies, who are not permitted to access courts and advise magistrates, sentencers will often not be fully informed. 

Sentencers may lack confidence in probation services to enforce a sentence properly. The “implementation and delivery” of probation services by all Community Rehabilitation Companies inspected by HM Inspectorate of Probation in the 12 months to March 2019 was rated at best as “requires improvement”, with the majority rated as “inadequate”. Investing in a larger, better trained workforce could result in higher-quality supervision and enforcement, and therefore begin to offset the costs of reoffending. The Government plans to spend at most an average of £329 million a year on Community Rehabilitation Companies’ services between 2014 and December 2020, which is less than one fiftieth of the annual cost of reoffending. 

In 2021 under a new proposed model for probation, the management of offenders will return to the National Probation Service and some elements of community sentences, such as unpaid work, will continue to be outsourced. Whilst it cannot yet be said whether this will result in more personalised, well-delivered community sentences, it is likely that investing in this part of the system could create better outcomes. 

To move towards a more effective sentencing policy for those who currently receive short sentences, the Government could consider doing two things. First, it should invest in better training for sentencers. Spending on training for magistrates fell from £72 per person to £30 per person between 2009-10 and 2013-14, and it is reported that this trend has continued. If magistrates were better informed about community alternatives, they could be more willing to use them. Second, the Government should consult on how to decrease the use of short prison sentences. This should consider how to affect this change, such as with a ban or a presumption in favour of community sentences.

Recommendation 1: The Ministry of Justice should launch a consultation on the use of custodial sentences and consider the impact of implementing a ban on, or presumption against, short custodial sentences. It should also consider how to make magistrates more willing to use and improve their understanding of a community sentence, as they are less expensive than prison sentences and, on average, more effective at reducing reoffending.