Time was ripe for tough approach to soft jail sentencing
FOR many years now there has been a growing disconnect between the political class and the public it is supposed to serve. Brexit may be the most obvious example, but there is another issue that affects our quality of life at least as much and for which MPs across Parliament have taken one approach while the British people have been crying out for something different.
That is in the field of law and order, where soft sentencing and so-called “community punishments” (I have always suspected that they are called that because generally they punish communities by leaving prolific offenders in their midst) have become the norm.
Before this summer’s change of prime minister, even the Conservatives – the traditional party of law and order – were proposing to scrap prison sentences for anyone sentenced to less than six months. That would have opened the door to several baleful consequences – such as the end of effective deterrents against serial shoplifters and the swamping of the probation system with even higher caseloads.
BUT since Boris Johnson moved into 10 Downing Street there has been a welcome change of tone. First off, the new Home Secretary Priti Patel ruffled feathers among the liberal Establishment by declaring she wanted criminals to “literally feel terror” at what a reempowered police force would have in store for them.
Opposition parties naturally complained about that one, with Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Ed Davey even branding her “out of touch” – until an opinion poll showed three quarters of voters agreed with her. With crime at a 15-year high, that should have come as no surprise.
Now we have a welcome reinforcement of the new approach from Ms Patel – who about prison, driven as it is by liberal campaign groups, has focused on the single aim of rehabilitation. And turning criminals into law-abiding citizens is indeed a laudable aim. It is also true that prison isn’t very good at it but neither are those “community punishments” I mentioned above. Reoffending rates are similarly high. Criminals tend to go on to commit more crime – the clue is in their name.
But there are other legitimate aims of prison which it undoubtedly is good at.The first is containment, where it is 100 per cent effective. While offenders are banged up, they can’t commit further crime in their communities.
NO WONDER the big rise in the prison population instigated by Michael Howard a generation ago coincided with a major fall in crime. The second purpose is deterrence. It was notable that at the height of the 2011 riots the criminal justice system imposed exemplary prison sentences on the first raft of offenders to come before the courts and it seemed to do the trick.
The third purpose is the oldfashioned notion of punishment – that while we no longer believe as a society in “an eye for an eye”, we do still believe an austere penalty is ethically the correct response to ruthless, self-serving criminal activity.
If the tough words of Ms Patel and Mr Buckland are followed through by further tough policies then law-abiding people can hope to see their quality of life significantly improve. The streets will be and feel safer. Confidence in the police will return. Lives will be saved if gangs are broken up and ringleaders taken out of circulation.
There is no doubt many of those who end up in jail have mental health problems or are the result of abusive upbringings and that we must get better at addressing these issues. But going soft has not worked and toughening up is long overdue.