‘Tough on crime’? An asinine soundbite if there ever was one

Oliver Harvey

Ken Clarke’s vital reforms to Britain’s justice system are in danger of being permanently sidelined.

Earlier this year, the Justice Secretary was forced to drop his plea bargaining reforms after describing some rape cases as ‘less serious’ than others during a BBC radio interview. Then August’s appalling series of riots seemed to have firmly ruled out any possibility of sentencing reform, prison population reduction or the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ seeing the light of day.

Earlier this month, the repeal of greater sentencing powers for magistrates - introduced towards the end of the last Labour government - dropped out of the Legal Aid, Punishment and Sentencing of Offenders Bill (Lapso) after it was opposed by the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve.

None of this, however, has altered the arguments for justice reform. Unless we are to continue living with public disorder and criminality at least part of the solution must be a proactive approach to rehabilitation and a focus on non-custodial sentences.

Britain has one of the highest prison populations in the world, currently edging towards the 100,000 mark and almost doubling over the last fifteen years. This has been credited by successive Home Secretaries from Conservative and Labour governments as the main cause of falling crime rates.

In fact, this suspicious cross-party consensus tells us that the views of Home Secretaries move in lockstep with the police. Different metrics measure different crime rates in different ways. A cleaner statistic is this: over half of Britain’s current offenders have already served custodial sentences.

We are operating, at a colossal cost to taxpayers, a revolving door for criminals to return to communities and to reoffend, with all the social and economic costs that entails.

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