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.