Raab Update

This from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies eBulletin yesterday:- 

Is the Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, prepared to take decisive action to address the multiple injustices of the imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence?

Speaking to the House of Commons Justice Committee earlier this week, he acknowledged the many problems with this dreadful sentence. He also told the Committee that, had he been an MP at the time the sentence was introduced in 2003, he would not have voted for it.

Perhaps.

Despite the “foul stench” of injustice the IPP sentence continues to represent, Raab showed little appetite for the decisive action required. He appeared to reject the Justice Committee’s central recommendation of a resentencing exercise for all those currently subject to an IPP.

Given the government is yet to give its formal response to the Justice Committee report, we must hope that his remarks do not represent a settled position.

Raab also appeared daunted by weight of history. “I am stuck with the legacy of something I didn't vote for,” he said at one point, “but that is the way our system works.”

“So we are stuck with an injustice because it was done in the past?”, the Committee Chair, Sir Bob Neill, replied, leaving Raab thrown and flailing for an answer.

The eleven-minute section of the Committee hearing dealing with IPP (you can watch it on the Centre’s Youtube channel), concluded with a revealing comment by Raab. “I will be responsible, and held responsible, for mistakes that are made in relation to public protection and risk”, he said.

If the government were to accept all the Committee’s recommendations, including on resentencing, Raab will gain plaudits from some quarters as a bold reformer. He also faces political risks, including from unforeseen and unpredictable developments over which he has little or no control.

Put bluntly, when it comes to IPP reform, what’s in it for Raab?

Politics, of course, is a risky business. Politicians have to be prepared to make the big calls, accepting the risks that come with them. If not, they are merely enjoying the trappings of office, without accepting the responsibilities that come with it.

If Raab is not prepared to take the big decisions to address a major injustice, then he should make way for someone who is. Given the current difficulties he is facing from other quarters, the decision may, in any case, be taken out of his hands.

Richard Garside
Director

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Oh and there's this:-

A whiff of scandal

Last month, we called for the use of electronic monitoring (so-called ‘tagging’) as part of a criminal justice sanction to be based on proper evidence and guided by clear principles. Our call came in response to a report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which painted an alarming picture of government failure and waste.

According to the Committee, nearly £100 million of public funds have been wasted, with the Ministry of Justice still unable to determine if tagging works. Yet the government still plans to press ahead with a £1.2 billion programme, expanding tagging to an additional 10,000 people over the next three years.

Our submission to the Committee was the only written evidence that it published.

Our Research Director, Roger Grimshaw, said, “The whiff of scandal over EM should be a wake-up call for a much more informed and wide-ranging discussion, developing a platform for reform which delimits a place for EM in a modest, humane and purposeful system”.

Read more about it here.

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Finally, I saw this in the Telegraph:-

Prisoners treated as 'residents' despite demands for no more 'woke' terminology

Prison Service admits the term should not have been used and has since been removed from HMP Moorland in South Yorkshire

Prisoners have been treated as “residents” in jail despite demands by Dominic Raab for staff to stop using “woke” terminology.

HMP Moorland in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, put up a sign directing “residents” or prisoners in the jail to facilities despite an instruction from the Justice Secretary that inmates must no longer be called by such “politically correct” terms.

The language which has also seen offenders called “clients” or “service users” has been part of efforts by prison officials to avoid “labelling” people as offenders in order to help them move on from their lives of crime.

Other prisons have renamed cells as “rooms,” prison blocks as “communities,” holding cells as “waiting rooms” on the basis that deprivation of liberty is sufficient penalty and to help rehabilitate offenders.

Woke terms 'undermine public confidence'

However, guidance issued in April by Mr Raab to prison governors and their staff made clear they should stop using woke terms for offenders because it undermined public confidence that they were being punished for their crimes.

Instead, the Justice Secretary told them that inmates should be called “prisoners” or “offenders” rather than “residents”, “clients” or “service users”. In addition, cells should not be labelled “rooms”, as they are known in two of the newest and largest jails in England and Wales.

On Wednesday the Prison Service admitted the term should not have been used and had been removed.

"We are very clear that this term should not be used and have directed that all communications should follow strict rules. The sign was painted without the knowledge of the prison’s leaders and has been removed,” said a spokesman.

What else is being missed?'

Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and ex-adviser to Government on extremism in jails, said: “HMP Moorland holds high risk high harm sex offenders judged by a recent inspection to be failing to manage them safely.

"I'm told this sign was up for six weeks. If prison 'leaders' which I take to mean senior managers and the governor haven't been visible enough to notice this sign after a month and a half in one of the prison's House Blocks what else is being missed?"

HMP Moorland has also raised eyebrows by putting up a 12-foot high map of the prison on a main walkway, including a “you are here” sign.

“It is a bit contentious when you're locking up people in secure conditions who you're trying to stop escape,” said one insider. “The obvious risks include being able to coordinate drugs being thrown into prison/delivered by drone.”

There was this comment from a reader:-

"Dominic Raab needs to stop using "the public" to justify his every argument when it is clear he is wholly out of touch with what the public actually want. Apart from the ignorant "throw away the key" mob, most people do not want prisoners "punished" as the loss of liberty is quite sufficient.

We want the focus to be on rehabilitation so that the prisoner can be part of society again and benefit from prison time, rather than prison time mean that that person is forever shunned and scorned.

As for Dominic Raab's reaction to the scandal of IPP where prisoners have done years above their tariff often for very minor crimes originally, his response that "he hadn't voted for it" as if that meant there was nothing he could do now, was lame to say the least. He is the justice minister!

Justice is in total decay. It is time MPs woke up to it, because it would appear they are taking no responsibility for it at all and any issues arising are seen as simply too much of a "hot potato" to confront. Sad times, and terrible for so many innocents implicated in something which never happened, because the system in so many ways has gone wrong and there appears to be no accountability whatever."