Get tough on drug addicts to cut jail population – minister

HANDING criminals with drug and alcohol problems tougher community punishments will lead to a reduction in the prison population, the Justice Secretary will say today.

In a major speech aimed at setting the direction of the justice system, Liz Truss will say strengthening non- custodial sentences for low-level offenders will ultimately keep more people out of jail.

But she will reject calls to impose shorter sentences in a bid to slash the 85,500 criminals behind bars – warning that sex attackers and violent offenders will still face years in prison.

She will dismiss Labour’s calls for sweeping sentencing cuts as a ‘dangerous attempt at a quick fix’. Shorter terms for the most criminals would be ‘reckless and endanger the public’.

However, for lesser offenders who would be hit with community sentences – such as shoplifters, thieves and burglars – the courts must ‘get better’ at using treatment programmes to break the cycle of crime.

The system ‘does not work as well as it should’, says Miss Truss.

She is expected to say: ‘I want to see the numbers of people in our prisons go down but it has to be for the right reasons – that we are successful in intervening early and tackling the scourge of drugs and alcohol that risks turning lesser offenders into hardened criminals, and that we are getting better at turning lives around in our prisons.

‘The wrong approach would be reducing sentences for serious crimes or letting people out early.’ Community sentences can include unpaid work, or treatment programmes for drug addiction and mental health conditions.

Ministry of Justice research shows community sentences are most effective when they tackle problems that contribute to the offender’s crime.

Miss Truss will add: ‘Early intervention is not a “nice to have” added extra to the justice system, it is vital if we are ever to break the cycle of crime, punishment and more crime.’

The speech, her first on sentencing since her appointment last summer, comes amid renewed con- cern about out- of- control jails in which prisoners have access to drink and drugs and prison officers struggle to keep order.

This month’s flagship Prisons and Courts Bill – dubbed the biggest shake-up of jails in a generation – will focus on reducing reoffending with a rehabilitation revolution, as well as tackling this spiralling jail violence and drug use.

Miss Truss has secured an extra £104million a year, to be spent on funding 2,500 extra frontline prison officers, following years of complaints from the prison unions about dwindling numbers. She will also aim to distance the Govern- ment from Labour and shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti, who has demanded that the prison population be slashed.

The Justice Secretary is to say that the rising prison numbers are ‘right’, because of an explosion in the number of people being sent to prison for the most heinous crimes.

Speaking at the Centre For Social Justice think-tank, Miss Truss will say: ‘What has actually happened is that the criminal justice system has got better at catching and convicting criminals who have perpetrated some of the most appalling crimes imaginable. Sentence lengths now better reflect the severity of crimes like domestic violence, rape and child abuse.

‘It’s not that the sum of human wickedness has doubled – it’s that we have driven that wickedness out from the shadows and put it where it belongs, behind bars.

‘The wrong approach would be reducing sentences for serious crimes or letting people out early.

‘There are those in Labour who want to turn back the clock and cut the prison population to the size it was in 1990, at around 45,000.

‘ This would be reckless and endanger the public.’