Blair Gibbs is Policy Exchange’s Head
of Crime & Justice.
Michael
Howard is fiercely proud of his record as Home Secretary so it was no surprise
that he quickly became the most senior Conservative to take issue with Kenneth
Clarke for his first
speech yesterday on criminal justice.
But the press
headlines and a lot of the reaction from the right of the Conservative Party
has run far ahead of the content. Though
light on policy detail, this was a bold speech, but perhaps not the one some
penal reform groups had hoped to hear – that prisons were to be closed,
short-term sentences abolished next Tuesday, and billions from the prisons budget
diverted to social enterprises.
The speech
at King’s College was important politically in laying down some markers on
sentencing, courts and legal aid reform, and spelling out the fiscal reality facing
the Ministry of Justice in much the same way as Theresa May has had to do with
the Home Office – both departments facing 25% cuts over four years. By next spring, big decisions will have been
taken on the size of the courts estate, the reform of legal aid and the sentencing
of offenders.
These
decisions demand a genuine debate about how to cut crime and keep the public
safe when the Government has less money to spend on conventional law and order
measures. What can be safely sacrificed
without hampering effective crime reduction?
Unfortunately, the obvious savings that can and must be realised early
on – from court closures, estate
sales and rationalising back office functions – are not where the real
money is.
There is
scope for big savings if – as Clarke indicated – wholesale reform of the legal
aid system is in play. Looking at the
scope of civil legal aid provision, and even – he hinted – more use of
before-the-event insurance, could all yield big savings. But in a department required to make £2.3
billion cuts, even this is not enough. The
prisons budget cannot and will not be immune.
Exactly where
the Prison Service cuts will fall in the next few years is still being discussed
internally, but the Ministry of Justice has clearly decided that it will not
let the prison system expand uncontrollably. Howard has attacked the suggestion that
short-term sentences could be abolished, but this was not in the speech, and is
anyway opposed by David Cameron. Clarke wanted
more “intelligent sentencing” and more emphasis on reduced reoffending and
alternatives to custody, where they are proven to work.
This
element of his speech was not some radical new departure – it just sounded
fresh coming from Ken. Strong proposals
like payment by results for reduced reoffending and a ‘rehabilitation
revolution’ to cut the prison population over time were developed by Nick
Herbert in Opposition, and restated recently in a speech he
gave to Policy Exchange . Both have lots
of potential if the policy is properly developed and real measures of success
can be determined.
Oddly,
Clarke admitted to having no “competitive objective” of a lower prison population,
but even if you accept the arguments for prison, it actually does make sense
fiscally and socially to have a goal of imprisoning fewer people. The Californian example of grossly
overcrowded prisons which consume more of the state’s budget than higher
education is not one to follow. But unless
Clarke is contemplating more drastic proposals like restricting the sentencing
options of magistrates, limiting the use of indeterminate sentences, or
reintroducing early release, then new ways need to be found of stemming the
flow into prison.
The problem
is timing. Sentencing reforms that could
help reduce the prison population take time to feed through, and will not become
legislation before next summer. In the
meantime, official
projections of prison population growth have typically underestimated the
real figure, so Ministers often end up with less time to provide the new
capacity – a further 9,000 places by 2014 – than they planned. This was Jack Straw’s constant headache.
Attempting
to cut the prison population by restricting magistrates’ use of short-term
sentences would not help much because they are not really where the problem lies
(prisoners serving less than 6 months make up only 10% of the prison
population). Real progress would come
from cracking the perennial problem of ineffective community sentences.
It is the
failure of the Probation Service and community sentences that leads to the glut
of short-term recidivists cycling through the system and this inflates the
overall prisoner numbers. The Government
needs to get serious about trialling new non-custodial methods and devising a
tough and visible alternative – delivered by the private sector – that sentencers
can trust and the public see as credible.
The policy
decisions that get prison numbers down are rarely quick and simple. The prison population in England and Wales is
partly a reflection of our high crime rate, and it cannot be reduced by
sentencing changes alone. It needs a
strategy to reduce overall reoffending rates through effective rehabilitation
and resettlement programmes, and more focus on crime prevention and tough non-custodial
punishments to reduce the flow into the prison system. That way, you cut the prison population by
cutting crime, and not the other way around.
