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

--oo00oo--

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.