Will 2024 be the Year of Prison Reform?

 

 

There’s growing recognition across the political spectrum that radical change is needed in criminal justice. This year’s converts to the cause include John Major who argued in May that “we over-use prison and under value alternative sentences; ” former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett “struck by the genuine meltdown in the criminal justice system”, and perhaps most surprising of all, leading Brexiteer Lord Frost who recently wrote of a duty to revamp our disgusting prisons.

But how should a new government set about addressing the myriad problems facing the penal system?

Some, like Justice Committee Chair Bob Neill think we need a “proper and honest debate about what prison should be for, who should go there and the costs”. While it might be tempting to try to persuade the public that the approach we’ve been taking for decades is not working, there’s no guarantee what conclusion they’ll reach.   

After all, for Frost, getting a grip on the crime problem means sending more people to prison, not fewer, for short sentences and “minor” crimes. Neill himself supports a proposal from think tank Policy Exchange for mandatory minimum prison terms of at least two years to be imposed on ‘Hyper-Prolific Offenders’  a measure which could overwhelm prisons with people convicted of theft.  There may be little evidence behind Frost’s view that unless people think they might actually end up in prison, there will be no deterrence - but many probably share it .

Instead of a debate, what’s needed is some systemic change to drive and oversee reform. As former Lord Chancellor David Lidington put it, the politics of prison reform “ is horrendously difficult for governments of  any party”, if it means spending more on prisons at expense of other, more popular public services and/or reducing significantly the numbers  we send to prison. 

So, let’s find ways of taking the politics out of it.

One way is to look at New Labour’s post 1997 reforms. They inherited a slow, cumbersome, and inconsistent approach to children in trouble, both in custody and the community.  They set up an expert Task Force to establish priorities, subsequently creating the Youth Justice Board to oversee local multi agency work with offenders and to commission and set standards for secure establishments. 

Outcomes haven’t always been perfect by any means, but it marked a major structural overhaul which remains in place, focusing attention and investment on a neglected area and keeping politicians at arm’s length. The prison and probation service arguably now needs this kind of external supervision and oversight if they are to have any chance of overcoming the current crisis and adopting a genuine rehabilitative agenda.

A new government should immediately commision a Criminal Justice Task Force to establish what changes are most urgently required. In prisons these are likely to involve action on training and recruitment of staff, the development of regimes and improved reintegration. Reducing the 600 people who leave prison each month without a home seems an obvious target.

On the community side, restoring probation’s place as a primarily local agency looks inevitable. While a recent report from the House of Lords Justice committee cautioned against yet more large-scale restructuring in the coming years, it’s call for much stronger links between probation and local treatment and other social services in fact argues for just that.

A new government could also alter the ways funds are made available for criminal justice services in order to create stronger incentives for local agencies to prevent crime and reduce imprisonment.  At a macro level, with two proposed new prisons struggling to get planning permission, some of the funds earmarked for more custodial places could be switched to strengthen capacity in the community – hostels, restorative justice programmes and women’s centres would all benefit from expansion.

At a micro level, if localised multi agency probation services succeed in keeping people out of prison, a proportion of the costs they have saved could be transferred to them. Creating such a virtuous spending cycle would help further enhance the way local communities can safely supervise and reintegrate people outside prison. A new Criminal Justice Board could be set up in law to monitor the system as a whole, working alongside the current inspectorates. 

A further measure would be to revisit the role of the Sentencing Council whose guidelines were in part originally intended to keep a lid on the prison population. It hasn’t achieved that in part because  New Labour backtracked on explicitly linking sentencing levels with available resources, in part because courts have found ways to sentence more and more harshly.  Requiring government to submit its criminal justice proposals for independent scrutiny by the Council could bring down sentence inflation as could a more rigorous obligation on courts to follow the guidelines.  

A College of Policing review published last month found that on average, custodial sanctions increased reoffending compared to noncustodial sanctions. It said that “it is likely that individuals who are in custodial settings are more exposed to risk factors associated with criminal activity and behaviour and have less access to protective factors to protect them from this behaviour”.  

There are strong reasons for looking to drive down the numbers who go to prison and drive up the standards for those who do go. Let’s hope a new government has a plan to make it happen.