He insisted that he had the Prime Minister’s support ahead of plans to reform the prison system and reduce the rate at which criminals are sentenced.
In an interview with the Times, he said the current number of people being sent to prison was “financially unsustainable”.
He said: “It is just very, very bad value for taxpayers’ money to keep banging them up and warehousing them in overcrowded prisons where most of them get toughened up.”
Insisting that he was not “soft on crime” he said that offenders would be given tougher community service punishments involving doing unpaid work for up eight hours a day.
“I want them to be more punitive, effective and organised,” he told The Times. “Unpaid work should require offenders to work at a proper pace in a disciplined manner rather than youths just hanging around doing odd bits tidying up derelict sites.”
He said proposals to tackle reoffending and reducing sentencing was the “collective policy of the entire Government from top to bottom”.
The Justice Secretary’s new Bill, which will be published next month, is designed to curb reoffending as well as reduce the prison population by 3,500 by 2015 from the current level of 85,361.
To read the full article, click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8455298/Kenneth-Clarke-prison-is-a-waste-of-taxpayers-money.html
He said proposals to tackle reoffending and reducing sentencing was the “collective policy of the entire Government from top to bottom”.
The Justice Secretary’s new Bill, which will be published next month, is designed to curb reoffending as well as reduce the prison population by 3,500 by 2015 from the current level of 85,361.
To read the full article, click here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8455298/Kenneth-Clarke-prison-is-a-waste-of-taxpayers-money.html
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