Conference Calls

As an unusual Party Conference season draws to a close, what have we learned about where the parties stand on criminal justice and in particular sentencing?

The Lib Dems confirmed their commitment to reduce the prison population not only by pledging a presumption against prison sentences of less than 12 months, but cutting numbers remanded and recalled to custody; ending imprisonment for drug possession and repealing mandatory sentences for possession of knives and corrosive substances. So far so good, although their proposal for weekend and evening custody looks impractical as it is unnecessary.

Labour’s offer on short jail terms is more modest -a presumption to end ineffective "super-short sentences" of six months or less for non-violent and non-sexual offences. Much more ambitious is their pledge not only to end future prison privatisation but to bring existing PFI prisons back in-house- although Jack Straw’s similar promise prior to 1997 foundered on Gordon Brown’s spending cap. Labour plans to fund diversion for women properly looks more doable.

As for the Conservatives, only three months ago Robert Buckland told the Justice Committee that he believed “the British public are with us on this; they do not want to see their taxpayer resources wasted on short-term prison sentences that do not reduce victims of crime. They want to see their taxpayer money used on effective solutions”. This was not a belief the Justice Secretary chose to test with his Manchester audience however, instead telling the Daily Mail that David Gauke’s plans to scrap short jail terms have been, like Gauke, ruled out.

 Buckland used his speech to decry automatic release at the half way point of prisoners on determinate sentences as “madness”, blaming Labour’s 2003 Criminal Justice reforms. In boasting of the “great strides in criminal justice in the past nine years of Conservative Government”, he did not explain why the full review of sentencing policy carried out when the Tories took office in 2010 left the “madness” undiagnosed let alone treated.  

In fact, the 2010 Breaking the Cycle Review maintained “the basic structure of the determinate custodial sentence, because it can enable effective resettlement and public protection”. The 2010 review found that “surveys have shown that the public tend to understand the logic of the licence period once it is explained and promised steps to ensure it is better understood and explained”. Now, according to new Justice Minister Chris Philp “the public expect someone who is sentenced to serve the majority of their sentence. Releasing them at the halfway point undermines public confidence in the sentence that is handed down”. By describing the sentence in this way- as if it's only the custodial part that counts, Philp's doing just that.   

Courts have been given powers to require certain serious and violent offenders to spend more than half their sentence in prison and a longer period of supervision on release. It is these extended sentences which it seems will become applicable more widely and perhaps mandatory.  Where does that leave the need identified in Breaking the Cycle to simplify the sentencing framework and reduce elements of the law that constrain judicial discretion?

We’ d find out the reasons for the change in emphasis if the latest Review, on which these proposals are allegedly based is published. We’d see the survey evidence too about the change in public attitudes. We might also learn what plans are in store for toughening up community penalties beyond the roll out of sobriety tags announced this week. I, and many others no doubt, have asked to see the Review. But it’s now being described as  "internal," so unlikely to emerge.

What’s really needed is not Buckland's dystopian vision where "only criminals who earn their liberty should have it"; but what the Lib Dems have proposed – “a full review of sentencing with the aim of reducing excessively long sentences.” In Nietzsche’s words “Beware of all those in whom the urge to punish is strong”.