Offenders could avoid jail under new proposals

Minister says they could ban sentences under six months

NEARLY 700 offenders in Leicestershire could avoid jail if ministers go ahead with plans to scrap short prison sentences.

Prisons minister Rory Stewart said at the weekend that the Ministry of Justice is considering banning prison sentences of less than six months in England and Wales.

Offenders could potentially be given community sentences instead.

Ministry of Justice data shows that, of those convicted in the Leicestershire police force area in 2017, 663 were given custodial sentences of six months or less.

Those offenders made up 5% of all people convicted - compared to 4% across England and Wales as a whole.

More than a third of short sentences in the area in 2017 - 247 out of 663 - were for theft.

This included 154 cases of shoplifting.

Other crimes punished with short sentences included three cases of sexual assault against women, six cases of racially or religiously aggravated common assault, 11 home burglaries, 104 common assaults and 30 cases of possession of an item with a blade or point.

The plans being considered by the government could see courts prevented from imposing prison terms of less than six months, unless the sentence was for a violent crime or a sexual offence.

Mr Stewart said the move could relieve pres- sure on crowded jails and would be better for offenders, saying short sentence were “long enough to damage you and not long enough to heal you”.

He told the Sunday Telegraph: “You bring somebody in for three or four weeks, they lose their house, their job, their family, their reputation.

“They come [into prison], they meet a lot of interesting characters (to put it politely) and then you whap them on to the streets again.

“The public are safer if we have a good community sentence... and it will relieve a lot of pressure on prisons.”

Prison reform charities have long argued that short prison sentences are ineffective and need reform.

In July last year, the Prison Reform Trust called on the government to follow Scotland’s lead and introduce a presumption against short prison sentences as part of their efforts to restore safety and stability to our struggling jails It said figures show that nearly twothirds of those given prison sentences of less than 12 months reoffend within a year of release. Of those given short sentences in 2017, four in five people had committed a non-violent offence.

Separate data shows that in the year ending March 2018, a quarter (24%) of prisoners in England and Wales were held in crowded conditions.

Figures from the Ministry of Justice show that reports of self-harm and assaults - on both staff and other prisoners - were at record levels last year. So too were failed drug tests.

In-prison protests and seizures of drugs, mobile phones and SIM cards were also rising.