Manifesto Destiny. Criminal Justice Ideas for the 2017 Election

Chances are we won’t get much about criminal justice in any of the manifestos. But Labour’s surprisingly Blairite promise of 10,000 more police officers suggests that domestic policy may not be entirely absent from the parties’ offerings to the electorate.  It’s a reminder too of how strongly received wisdom shapes policy development in the field, even in a radical party committed to transforming the country. Would not 10,000 mental health workers do more to address the crisis of well being which brings so many into conflict with the law – and free up police time to prevent and respond to more serious harm?    

Here are five criminal justice priorities I’d like to see featured:

1) Sensible Sentences

The prison population has been fairly stable since 2010 at about 85,000, but with a 25% fall in the numbers sentenced for serious crimes over that period, we should really have seen prison numbers go down. The reason they haven’t is that the proportion of cases being sentenced to prison has risen – from 22% to 27% -as have average sentence lengths for almost all types of crime from 16 to 19 months. Sentences have got longer not only for violent and sexual offences but for theft and drug offences too. Further sentence inflation is neither desirable nor manageable. We will introduce a strong presumption against short prison terms and require the Sentencing Council to produce a wider range of guidelines, based on fuller consideration of the cost and effectiveness of different sentences. Stronger limits will be placed on courts preventing them from exceeding guideline levels and new pilot problem solving courts will be encouraged to impose less severe punishments when it is in the interests of rehabilitation to do so.

2) Developing Youth Justice

Youth justice has offered a ray of light in penal policy, with big reductions in numbers in court and in custody in the last ten years. Now’s the time to extend the successful leadership of the Youth Justice Board and the multi-agency approach of Youth Offending Teams to the young adult age group of 18-21 year olds. For the under 18’s, it’s time too to phase out Young Offender Institutions and Secure Training Centres  and expand the number of small secure children’s homes – the only model that has proved consistently able to offer appropriate and constructive regimes for young people in custody. Responsibility for meeting the entire costs of custody for under 18's will be transferred to local authorities and Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). In due course local bodies will be able to commission secure and other accommodation for under 18’s rather than simply purchasing what is currently available

3) Promoting Probation

Half of the £1.3 billion being used to build four new prisons, will be used to invest in community based alternatives to custody for the 50,000 people a year given short prison sentences – through more investment in supervision provided by probation, Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC’s) and other organisations; by improved dialogue with judges and magistrates and better links with the public. Priority will be given to keeping women and people with mental health problems out of prison environments and strengthening the availability of community and residential treatment services instead. We will conduct a genuine and wide ranging review of Transforming Rehabilitation to ensure that when current CRC contracts end, a suitable model is in place for a reinvigorated probation service.

4)  Safeguarding Prisons

We will redraft the Prisons Bill with much stronger duties on the authorities to provide decent conditions, avoid overcrowding, and treat prisoners with humanity, fairness and respect for their dignity. Prisons will be required to ensure proper staffing ratios based on 2010 levels and a task force established to drive developments in education, vocational training and work in prisons. Mental health services will be strengthened and a programme to develop life coaching for prisoners expanded across the estate.

 5) Rehabilitation Devolution

We will develop a Justice Reinvestment Taskforce to identify  the best ways of transferring responsibilities for justice services to a more local level, with a view to devolving budgets by the end of the parliament.  Police and Crime Commissioners will be invited  to chair new Justice and Safety Partnerships with CRC’s, local government, health and judicial participation which would give a greater regional voice in the system and create a commissioning vehicle to which criminal justice budgets might be devolved. Pathfinder initiatives will be agreed with Mayors in London and Manchester through which savings resulting from reductions in prison numbers will be reinvested in prevention and rehabilitation programmes.

There is a lot more that a new government should do- not least committing to take seriously David Lammy's recommendations on race equality in criminal justice; expanding the availability of Restorative Justice and considering a new approach to illegal drugs. But action on these five might help bring to an end what has been an increasingly unhappy period for criminal justice in England and Wales.