The most important thing to remember about the latest Sentencing Review is that it has been conducted in the shadow of one cold, hard fact: we don’t have nearly enough prison places, and aren’t going to get them anytime soon.
At least, one must hope this is the only reason that David Gauke, the former Conservative MP and minister who led the review, is describing it as ‘the right thing to be doing’. (He would presumably not describe his own recommendations any other way, of course.)
Gauke’s stated objective is, in his words, to ‘end the dangerous cycle of emergency releases’. There is merit to this. If the Government is going to be letting people out of prison early, far better for all concerned that it is at least doing so in a planned manner. This allows more time to properly consider which prisoners should be released, and better ensure they can receive support, if needed, to transition to life on the outside.
For too long, prison policy – like so much else in British politics – has been run on denial mode. Ministers have set tougher and tougher sentencing policy while consistently failing to build enough prison space to meet demand.
More egregiously still, the previous government actually closed quite a lot of prisons, some of which are, for wont of planning permission, currently tourist attractions… as prisons. (Judge Jules dropped a set at Shrewsbury Prison just last month.) Perhaps the most outrageous of these was HMP Lancaster, a recently modernised prison with the second-lowest recidivism rate in the country, shut by Ken Clarke in 2011 because he’d wanted to do it in the 1990s and the council wanted to make it, yes, a tourist attraction.
But none of this means that letting criminals out early is in itself a good idea. It can be defended as making the best of a bad situation, ideally temporarily until the Government finishes the three new prisons it has announced.
Some in government will think differently. James Timpson, the prisons minister, is a high-profile sceptic of the whole idea. I have written previously for this site about the gaps in his reasoning – not least the fact that his company’s rightly celebrated work scheme for ex-convicts is extremely selective about who it takes on, and thus provides little guide to the overall practicability of rehabilitation.
Nor should anybody fall for the line that Britain is a country which is overfond of sending people to jail (‘addicted to punishment’, in Timpson’s words). Writing for ConservativeHome, David Green of Civitas spelled out what the data actually tells us: that our incarceration rate is largely correlated to the fact that we have a lot of crime.
Far from being too quick to lock people up, it’s quite the opposite: in 2023, almost two-thirds of those convicted who had at least 75 prior convictions received a non-custodial sentence; for the subset convicted of violent crimes (violence against the person, sexual offences, and robbery) it was 30%.
This situation is enormously damaging. The vast majority of crime is perpetrated by a relatively small slice of the population. The best way to dramatically reduce crime is to keep that section locked up – even if they have only committed innumerable ‘minor’ offences.
It’s not that there isn’t a place for non-custodial sentences. Prison can have a criminalising effect, undermining an individual’s prospects for gainful employment while introducing them to criminal networks. As a means of avoiding that danger for a low-risk convict on their first offence, non-custodial sentences make sense.
Giving one to someone who has 20, 30 or 100 previous convictions is a joke. It is not going to change their behaviour and it is not going to protect the public. But can we really blame the judges if they have softened their approach? They know as well as the politicians that the prisons are full.
There is, of course, one other bold move that Labour could do to reduce incarceration rates: bring back residential hospitals (asylums) and day hospitals for the mentally ill. A substantial share of that serial criminal element are simply people who, for a variety of reasons, are incapable of living independently; for many, prison is the most stable environment they know.
Have you ever wondered what happened to the people who used to live in asylums? In 1954, the population of such institutions peaked at about 150,000 people, about 0.4% of the population. Per capita, that would be 196,500 people today. Obviously not all those people were violent or dangerous, but it’s telling that this is almost twice the size of our current prison population.
Many of these people simply cycle in and out of prison or short-term residential care under a care-in-the-community ethos which prioritises professional distaste for ‘giving up on someone’ over the clear reality that some people can’t live on their own. This inflicts significant costs on the state, and misery on their neighbours.
It seems very unlikely, however, that we’ll get anything so radical. Instead, the state will simply release violent offenders, and try to persuade itself, and us, that this was the enlightened thing to do.
Click here to subscribe to our daily briefing – the best pieces from CapX and across the web.
CapX depends on the generosity of its readers. If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.
