Frances Crook
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 June 2011
The coalition government's considered approach to the challenges in the justice system was welcomed by penal reformers, who considered this a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver real change. Plans designed to reduce the prison population by 3,000 men, women and children, and to make better use of effective community sentences, were a necessary change of direction. But unfortunately the government has gone into reverse, putting political goals ahead of effective jails.
We expect draft legislation and a white paper next week with much awaited policy detail on a package of reforms. We can only guess what they will be. The context of these reform proposals, however, is crystal-clear. Our prison system is in crisis, filled to the rafters, and the government has to find immediate solutions. Our prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years; new prison places are found, and new prison places are filled. Ever longer sentences have contributed to this phenomenon. From 2000 to 2008 the average time served in prison increased by 14% for those released from determinate sentences. The introduction of the indeterminate sentence for public protection created a procedure whereby pehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifople enter the prison system and never leave.
However, sentence length is the tip of the iceberg. The difference between cutting sentences by a third and a half for those who plead guilty early on is a technocratic issue that would have had little impact on prison numbers. Rather than squabbling about a third or half of a sentence, we should admit that the real problem lies in sending too many people – and the wrong people – to prison in the first instance, and we should push for more courageous sentencing that would keep people out of jail altogether.
Click here to read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/jun/08/prison-crisis-reform-population-doubled-sentences?CMP=twt_gu
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