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July 2008

By the summer of 2007 prison numbers had reached 81,000. Lord Carter recommended that the building programme should be expanded so that by 2014 there should be 96,000 places, and that so-called Titan prisons should be built with a capacity of 2,500 inmates each. (Lord Carter is obsessed with size: his review of legal aid recommended chivvying solicitors into forming large firms.) Since June 1995 the prison population, he said, had increased by 60%, more than 30,000, and the choice was to continue with prison expansion or to plan so that custody was used less frequently.

However, as a proportion of sentences passed in all courts there has been only a 1% increase in prison sentences over the 10 years 1995-2005. More people, it seems, are going through the courts. Probation officers can no longer exercise their discretion about whether a person should be summoned to court for breaching an order. Unsurprisingly, from 180 people in prison for breaches in January 1995 the number rose to 1,200 in August 2007. Similarly 150 people were in prison for breach of prison licences in January 1995; in August 2007 there were 5,300. Add to this the longer sentences now prescribed by law, giving the judge little discretion, for firearms, "third strike" burglaries and people categorized as "dangerous offenders" and the increase in prison population is predictable.

In January a little publicised Sentencing Commission working group was set up and a consultation paper was produced inviting responses by 2nd June. A summary of responses is expected in September. The Commission advocates the introduction of prescriptive guidelines which courts would be obliged to follow. They suggest that a framework for sentencing should be imposed by the Commission who would work with "a set of planning assumptions" covering 4 or 5 years ahead. The behaviour of judges and magistrates would be monitored to ensure compliance and possibly departures from the guidelines would be publicised. Not only would the guidelines prescribe the range of sentences available but also the factors which could be taken into account as mitigation would be reduced to "fewer and more readily available criteria".

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MGH

August 13th, 2008
5:08 PM

What's also missing is any evidence that anything but lip service has been paid to the aims of providing purposeful community disposals (programmes that really do affect offending behaviour, such as those that exist for drink impaired drivers, men who have committed domestic violence and those that are designed to 'replace aggression'), or of identifying and treating in appropriate settings those suffering from mental health problems. If but a tiny fraction of the vast sums (£2.3 billion in capital costs alone, plus an extra £250 million a year in running costs) earmarked for Lord Carter's Titan Prisons were to be spent on providing effective community alternatives and finding more appropriate means of dealing with women (18,000 children a year see their mothers locked up), increasingly criminalised children, and those with mental health problems were to be spent on properly resourcing the Probation Service, we might see the current trends reversed (see the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation's new "Manifesto" on Rethinking Crime and Punishment for more detail). Instead (despite a paltry one-off £40 million top-up earlier this year), Government plans to cut Probation funding by 3% per annum for the next three years! There ARE other ways of addressing offending, such as restorative justice, but also curfews and joint working with local authorities to deliver locally identified community enhancement projects. The structure of the new Guidelines may well deliver greater consistency, but it remains to be seen whether they reach the parts that other never-ending reams of legislation have failed to reach, in particular alcohol and drug fuelled anti-social behaviour, or result in anything but at best a short term dip in low level custodial sentences. I have my doubts!

mcmrjp

August 12th, 2008
10:08 AM

Jan Davies is spot on with her assessment. As a serving Magistrate, I entirely agree with final her remark.

John H Smith

July 29th, 2008
5:07 PM

I hope that this article is widely read. For people who actually think about the consequences of the new regime, it ought to cause a great deal of concern

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