In a curious
symmetry, penal policy in 2019 has mirrored the decade as a whole.
The year opened
with then Prisons Minister Rory Stewart proposing to abolish short prison sentences, followed by
his boss David Gauke giving perhaps the best ministerial speech on sentencing
since Ken Clarke spoke at King’s College
London just after the 2010 election.
While Clarke’s
plans to reduce prison numbers went with him to the back benches in 2012,
Gauke’s seem to have departed with him from the Conservative Party altogether. The new Prime Minister wants to toughen up what he sees
as “our cock-eyed crook-coddling criminal justice system”. While Boris
Johnson’s sights are set on longer periods in prison for the most serious sexual,
violent and terrorist offenders, this could easily have the effect of raising the going rate for a much
wider range of crimes.
Sentencing
for serious offenders has become more severe over the decade with the custody
rate for indictable offences rising from a quarter to a third and the average
length of a jail term for all offences up from 13.8 to 17.4 months. But because
of falling clear up rates and prosecutions, the prison population is slightly
lower now than 10 years ago. Sentence inflation has occurred in spite of the
guidelines produced by the Sentencing Council which marks ten years of operation
next year and whose impact leaves much to be desired.
Johnson’s
line has been hardened by November’s dreadful events at Fishmonger’s Hall which
tragically cut short the lives of two inspiring young people involved in an
initiative to open up educational opportunities
for prisoners. A
month earlier, former prisons boss Sir Martin Narey had controversially called
for prisons to forget rehabilitation, and with the new government
pledging a root-and-branch review of the
parole system and
talk of shifting responsibility for sentencing, prisons and probation back to the Home Office, the new decade looks set for a
repressive turn.
It might
have been different. But David Cameron’s hubristic promise of prison reform as a defining, progressive cause
for his government disappeared with him and his lieutenant Michael Gove
after the EU referendum. While Gove subsequently returned to the May government
in other roles, his successors at Justice belatedly abandoned his lofty rhetoric
about redemption and instead focussed much needed attention and funds on addressing
the major operational crises created by reckless staff reductions and the
increasing availability of drugs in prison. Promised new prison legislation has
never materialised but controversial measures such as the introduction of incapacitant spray for prison staff are on their way.
Alongside,
the probation service, sacrificed on the altar of
privatisation by Chris Grayling in 2014, suffered a widely predicted decline in performance, charted in forensic
detail by former Chief Inspector Glenys Stacey.
In May this year, Gauke bowed to the inevitable by announcing the
re-nationalisation of probation supervision.
The last
years of this decade have thus been spent on urgent repairs to the largely self-
inflicted damage wrought on criminal justice institutions. Had the numbers of
people sentenced by the courts not fallen by
more than 40% in the
last ten years, prison and probation services would have collapsed.
Youth
justice has fared a little better- if only because numbers in custody have
continued to fall through the decade, with fewer than 800 under 18-year olds
behind bars in October 2019 compared to more than 2,000 ten years ago. Black
and minority ethnic over-representation among children locked up remains
shockingly high and the fall in numbers has not led to better conditions or treatment for those who continue to go to custody.
Much
criticised Coalition plans to build a very large Secure College were abandoned after the 2015
election and it would not be a huge surprise if a similar fate awaits the new Secure School due to be opened
by Christian charity Oasis next year but already postponed
until 2021. Many of the more radical
proposals in Charlie Taylor’s 2016 Youth Justice Review were dispatched to the long grass
but in the face of decades of experience, the belief in the need for yet another form of youth custody has proved enduring.
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