Saturday 9 November 2024

Sentencing Review 5

I want to start this post by highlighting the following from a much-respected follower and supporter, because it puts into words much of what I have been feeling since Wednesday, but was having difficulty in adequately articulating:-  

Cri de Coeur

I feel like I have nothing more to say, and little to contribute. On the fear and loathing following the inevitable election of Trump: while the inequality that leaves millions living stressed and impoverished lives is not tackled head on, those millions will vote for change. I would.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you aren’t housed, warm and fed, no chance of being engaged in high-flying arguments about the need for global stability, the defence of democracy, the rights of anybody outside your front door (if you have one). Throwing insults from middle class keyboards about their “stupidity” is just being part of the problem. Reform are lining up to tug the same strings here in UK. Hand-wringing is not an option, and here I am wringing my hands. 

On criminal justice in the UK, and Probation in particular, it's all been said. The academics have said it, the practitioners and the agitators have said it, the commentators have said it. I have run out of words to convey the importance of a Probation Service that understands the social context of crime, the need for a professional, respected and competent agency embedded in and nourished by the “establishment” to argue authoritatively for a humane and person centred approach to its clients. 

The government will build more prisons wont they? And there will be painstaking arguments about sentencing and the need to divert people away from custody, but while that dribbles on, and people I admire enormously work away at it, those damn prisons are going to be built, at huge profit to some, and cost to the nation, and they will fill. As surely as eggs is eggs and the M25 is queued up this Friday evening.

Pearly Gates

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This from the Times and brought to my attention by another long term contributor 'Getafix:-

Sir John Major: Prisons are ‘an utter disgrace and unacceptable’

The former prime minister said the appalling state of the country’s jails was a moral issue for all political parties and there must be reform.

Sir John Major has said there are “far too many people in prison” and the appalling state of Britain’s jails is a moral issue for all political parties.

The former prime minister told The Times Crime and Justice Commission that judges should be given far greater discretion over sentencing to curb the “excessive zeal” of politicians attempting to prove they are tough on crime.

He said: “The prison population has to come down. We put lots of people in prison who should not be there. Once you put someone in prison, there is a scar that will affect them for the rest of their life. When they try to get a job, when they try to rent a property, when they try to do anything to lift them out of the slough of despond, the mark that they have been in prison affects them for ever.”

Major described the state of Britain’s jails as “a total and utter disgrace”, adding: “There are prisons that were built in Victorian times with cells for one occupant but which are now accommodating two or three prisoners. That is unconscionable. It is completely unacceptable.

“This is a moral issue. If people misbehave, society has a right to punish them but the punishment should be suitable for the crime and you should not make it worse by incarcerating people in circumstances in which no civilised person should live.”

This week the government appointed David Gauke, a former lord chancellor, to chair a review of sentencing policy. Major described the choice as “inspired” and urged Gauke to be bold in making the case for radical reform. “We overuse prisons. We undervalue alternative sentences,” he said.

Major pointed out that the jail population had more than doubled since he was a minister in the 1980s. He said: “I was there on the day Willie Whitelaw [Margaret Thatcher’s home secretary] discovered that the prison population had hit 40,000. He was apoplectic about that number. Today there are 87,000 people in prison and yet crime is falling, including violent crime.

“There are far too many people in prison. What’s happened is that the sentences have become longer and home secretary after home secretary has decided he or she must be tough on crime. Whenever there is a scandal or a public outcry, the home secretary of the day says ‘we will toughen the law and make the sentence longer’ and it is wrong on almost every count.”

Major said the “ratcheting up” of the prison population was no longer sustainable and the politicisation of sentencing must end. He added: “If parliament wants to set a tariff, let it set a very wide tariff. It mustn’t keep setting ever-higher tariffs just so that the minister can say they are tough.

“Our judicial system is intended to be independent. I think we should trust the judges. I would go back to a system in which we give the judges much wider discretion.”

Major argued that there should be a greater use of non-custodial sentences for low-level crimes. “Too many vulnerable people are imprisoned,” he added. “I’m not speaking as some woolly liberal who thinks you should accept everything, but people who are mentally ill or addicted to drugs need treatment without the curse of a prison sentence hanging over them.”

He pointed out that many inmates had suffered trauma or adversity. Major said: “A very large percentage of the people in prison can neither read nor write, that’s a total educational failing. A large number of them were in care as children. A large number of them were abused as children. In most cases, these are not adults who have had the same life chances as the public at large. This does not excuse their crime but explains the circumstances behind it and that should be taken into account.”

Many of the women in prison could be given community sentences, he argued. “Very few are violent, many of them have done very minor things. When you send a mother to prison it raises a whole series of additional problems about who looks after the children.”

He added that short sentences were “very ineffective” and “in many cases pointless.”

Major argued that prison overcrowding meant the amount of education and rehabilitation available for offenders was “a tiny fraction of what it ought to be”.

He said: “You have to have compassion and it is about fairness as well. It is fair to send people to prison if they have committed a bad enough offence. That is fair to society and it’s fair to the prisoner but it’s not fair to then have them in their cells for 23 hours a day. It’s not fair to deny them the right to improve themselves if they wish to. It’s not fair to not train them. It’s not fair to not educate them.”

Lord Howard of Lympne, the former Conservative home secretary, famously said that prison works — but Major insisted that the mantra was too simplistic. He said: “Michael was right about serious and violent crime. If you have been attacked by someone and injured, from your point of view prison works because the person who attacked you is locked away. But I do not think it works for everybody.

“If nothing is done to change the attitudes of someone who has committed a crime, and they are poorly treated and made to feel even more alienated, you are actually making the problem worse when they are released. Prison can be a university of crime.”

Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, told the commission that Britain’s jails were producing “better criminals” and “we have to find a way to incentivise prisoners to try to become better citizens.”

The former prime minister said one of his greatest regrets was not reforming prisons. “The failure to update and modernise the prison estate is a failure that can be laid at the feet of every government, including the one I led,” he said.

With strong political leadership, he thought the public could be persuaded to support a different approach that would lead to a reduction in the prison population. He said: “If we say only that we’re going to be tough on crime, without actually talking about the social implications of that policy, then we risk both hardened and alienated prisoners being released at the end of their tariff. That is not acceptable, nor in the public interest.

“But, if senior politicians are prepared to have a grown up conversation and point out the reality that we need reform and rehabilitation in the justice system, then I believe many people will understand and support that.”

The Times Crime and Justice Commission is a year-long project which will draw up recommendations for reform of policing, the courts and prisons. The final report will be published in April.

Monday 4 November 2024

Sentencing Review 4

This from Frances Crook:-

Response to crime doesn’t have to be punishment
Labour has got itself trapped in the punishment vortex 

A justice minister, Heidi Alexander, gave a long and discursive interview on Sky News that only talked about how to punish people, by imposing longer prison sentences or placing people in the community on highly restrictive terms. The word she kept using was punishment. Whilst she mentioned victims, it was always in the context of increasing and imposing punishment. She is an experienced politician, a returning MP, so it was not a mistake but a deliberate and considered policy of government.

What was missing was any reference to the evidence of what works to prevent future offending or help for victims. There is a substantial body of academic and practice evidence showing that indiscriminate and increasingly nasty punishments do not work to reduce individual offending, nor do they deter others from crime and they certainly do nothing to assuage the misery that crime can inflict on victims. Yet this is being ignored. The government seems to be an evidence-free zone.

Meanwhile the government is squandering billions on building more and more prisons when all the evidence is that new prisons simply replicate the infestation of criminality within their walls and feed the problem when people are released.

Take a step back. Two thousand years ago laws were introduced based on proportionate revenge: you hurt me so I will impose a penalty of pain that equals it. We have a criminal justice system based broadly on this principle ever since, except that in many cases the penalty is more extreme than the offence. It is time to do things differently as this system is not working.

Restorative justice, or transformative justice, whatever terms are preferred, are based on different principles aimed at trying to make things better for everyone - society, the victims(s) , the taxpayer, justice workers and of course, the person who has wronged. It is probably the most researched part of the justice system and this shows that, when carried out properly, is effective and popular.

We know also that olden days probation based on helping an individual to find a stable life, a home, something to do all day and people to care, is the most effective at preventing future anti-social behaviour and crimes.

All the evidence and experience is there. Yet it is being ignored. The conversation being led by politicians is profoundly wrong-headed, based on leading a lynch-mob and will not lead to good outcomes for anyone. Labour has history of doing this, having presided over an explosion in the use of prison and community punishments for the vulnerable, the poor and children during its last administration. I had hoped that this time it would be different and it would use evidence to turn things round. My hope, ironically, lies with a former Conservative justice secretary, David Gauke, who is leading the sentencing review. Things can get better, but they need to be done differently.

Frances Crook

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This from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies:-

Earlier this week, I attended the latest debate in parliament on the awful Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence

During and following the debate, some of those present expressed understandable frustration that so little appeared to have changed since an earlier parliamentary debate they had attended in April 2023.

The Labour minister, Nic Dakin, for instance, continued the previous Conservative government’s rejection of a resentencing exercise for those serving the IPP sentence, while, as the previous government also did, talking up the ‘action plan’ and other widely-discredited policies. A slightly changed cast, apparently, reading from much the same script.

The stubbornness of ministers in the face of strong evidence for, and powerful arguments in favour of, urgent action to resolve the IPP scandal is incredibly frustrating. It is also deeply distressing for IPP prisoners and their families.

One way of managing these frustrations is to remind ourselves, however difficult this can be, of what has changed over the past eighteen months.

To take a specific example, during the debate last year, the then government Minister, Damien Hinds, rejected the Justice Committee proposal to reduce the post-release licence period, for those serving the IPP, from ten to five years. Eighteen months on, the now government Minister, Nic Dakin, reminded those at this week’s debate that the post-release licence period will be reduced, from today, to three years; lower even than the Justice Committee had proposed.

The argument for further reform – particularly around the question of resentencing – also has a higher profile in parliament than it did in early 2023. The government continues to wrestle with the prisons capacity crisis. Reports suggest prisons could again run out of space by the summer of 2025. Lord Woodley is taking a Private Members’ Bill on IPP resentencing through the House of Lords. These and other developments could continue to focus ministerial minds in ways that might be helpful.

Governments often oppose innovations right up to the moment they agree to support them. While a full resentencing exercised still appears, at best, some way off, we should remind ourselves that effective campaigning on IPP has delivered results and that some of the government’s current red lines will not necessarily remain red lines in the future.

We should retain hope in the possibility of further change – and act accordingly – while savouring this hope with a robust realism about the obstacles ahead.

Further reform is possible. It will, though, require organisation, determination and relentlessness.

Richard Garside
Director

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This from InsideTime:-

Judge John Samuels makes his case

His Honour John Samuels was a barrister for 33 years, a judge both part-time and full-time for 32 years (part-time role overlapping with his time as a barrister) and a Parole Board member for 10 years, the maximum allowed, after his age disbarred him sitting in the Crown Court. He was also a member of the appeal court and on the advisory panel of Inside Justice. Perhaps this combination of interests gives the clue as to why John Samuels differs from most other members of the bar. Whereas many barristers consider their role ends after a case, Samuels felt a growing responsibility and, just as importantly, a real interest in how the life of the convicted man or woman and their rehabilitation continued once they had been sentenced. This gives the title to his book.

Gradually, he formed the belief, which he tried to turn into a practical reality, that there should be courts which reviewed the progress of the already sentenced. This would be called Judicial Monitoring. The idea crystallized when he discovered the International Association of Drug Treatment Court Professionals. Sitting in on a drug court, which included Probation and defence lawyers, he saw how far it accelerated improvement in those appearing before it. His own work was towards a Greater London Community Court.

Despite much support for the principle, issues, primarily financial, constantly stopped any progress. The nearest he came to success was in 2016 when Michael Gove, then Lord Chancellor, announced that five pilot Crown Courts would be established to put into practice the proposals of a working group. This plan lasted for one day, before Gove lost office in a reshuffle.

Despite this disappointment, the long career of John Samuels has been an example of the judiciary bridging the gap between themselves and the people who appear before them in their courts. He has been chair of the Prisoners’ Education Trust and of the Criminal Justice Alliance, and has held roles in many other organisations. At all times, he has continued to put forward the need for the judiciary to follow up their sentencing.

From 2016, he was mentoring prisoners for Cambridge University’s Learning Together programme. It is no surprise, perhaps, that it was one of his mentees, Steve Gallant, who played such an important role in saving lives on that tragic day in November 2019.

John Samuels is a man of high principles who formed a view that ran contrary to the opinions of many of his colleagues at the criminal bar. This memoir tells much more than that; detailing his growing up, some of his cases, and includes a severe setback in his career. This did not deter him, and his passionate advocacy for change or at least development in the way the judiciary deals with those they convict, is a legacy that may yet lead to a positive outcome.

Mentor and Monitor: A Role for the Judge, by His Honour John Samuels KC, will be published by Whitefox Publishing Ltd on November 7. It can be ordered for £20 from WH Smith.