Photo: .v1ctor. (Flickr)
In order to reform the criminal justice system and cut the prison population, taking radical decisions is inevitable, writes Daniel Boomsma.
Since Friday the 19th of August the prison population in England reached a new record of 86,821. Already plans to accelerate the opening of new prison buildings have been made. Prison service tried to calm things down and assured that they are ”developing contingencies to increase usable capacity should further pressure be placed on the prison estate”. The truth is, however, that there’s something wrong with the criminal justice system. Since the mid-1990s the prison population has even doubled – but at the same time (recorded) crime has fallen since 2000. It’s time to rethink the system as a whole.
The failing prison and criminal justice system isn’t (entirely) new. New Labour, keen on ‘reform’ in the broadest sense of the word and trying to out-tough the Tories on crime, didn’t come up with fresh new ideas. Tougher sentencing turned out to be Tony Blair’s ‘reform’. Ironically, Blair’s own strategy unit wrote a report a couple of years ago that proved his failure; 22 per cent increase in the prison population accounted for only 5 per cent of an overall 30 per cent drop in crime. Tougher sentencing didn’t seem to work at all. Just locking people up won’t solve anything on the long term. In the New Statesman Andrew Neilson pointed out that reoffending rates ”reveals that people become more likely to reoffend after each spell in prison”.
In June 2010 justice secretary Ken Clarke announced that he had plans for a radical prison policy change. Now, more than a year later, we can see the results. Clarke then made some great remarks though. ”Locking people up ”for the sake it is a waste of public of public funds,” he said. Clarke even proclaimed that prison proved to be “a costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens”. Clarke also called the rates considering reoffending a big problem: ”More than half of the crime in this country is committed by people who have been through the system”, he said.
When reconsidering an entire system one should be careful with cutting away too many resources. Unfortunately, the justice secretary forgot about that. Shadow home office minister David Hanson said: ”he is now planning to cut the resources to the justice department and to probation by 25% over the next four years.” In order to reform properly, cuts like these aren’t going to help. On the long term, it’s even going to cost more. It was quite depressing to see Clarke’s huge ambitions become worthless after he announced his budget cuts.
In order to reform the criminal justice system and cut the prison population, taking radical decisions is inevitable. That’s what the cross-party Justice Committee already pointed out in January 2010. Chairman Sir Alan Beith was perfectly clear: ”Whoever forms the next government, they face a choice between unsustainable ‘business-as-usual’ in the criminal justice system, and making some radical decisions.”
Daniel Boomsma
Statisfied 