Go soft on prison sentences? That would be a crime
Ilike the look of Rory Stewart, and not just because of the floppy Hugh Grant fringe. The prisons minister appears sensitive and thoughtful, he has real-world experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has written a bestselling book about his travels and found time to set up and run an excellent charity. When Stewart said he would resign if drugs and violence in prisons didn’t improve within a year, you found you actually believed him.
So it pains me to say I profoundly disagree with Stewart over a plan to scrap prison sentences under six months because “they are long enough to damage you and not long enough to heal you”.
Try explaining that to a widowed friend of mine whose house was burgled over new year by three masked men. She was out, thank goodness. I can assure you she is not unduly bothered about the varmints who ransacked her home having sufficient time to “heal”. Catching them and getting them to hand back her late mother’s jewellery would be her first preference. Followed by a significant jail term to stop the thieves causing misery to others.
Stewart cites research that shows criminals jailed for a short time are more likely to reoffend than those put away for between one and two years. At which news members of the public might, quite reasonably, roll their eyes and cry: “Lock ’em up for longer, then!”
Forgive my cynicism, but the sudden enthusiasm from the Ministry of Justice for not locking up offenders just happens to coincide with a record prison population. The number of people in jail has doubled to more than 80,000 since the Nineties, and there is clearly pressure to free up space. Short-term prisoners – 60 per cent of whom reoffend within a year of being released – are the criminal equivalent of NHS bed-blockers. Quite simply, the Government would much rather not put them inside if it means it can avoid investing money in a prisonbuilding programme.
Some 47 per cent of the 65,000 offenders jailed in 2017 were given sentences of six months or less. Stewart says: “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 whop 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.”
Actually, Rory, the public is not safer if criminals are wandering about outside. Community sentences are a joke. Eight private firms that run 21 “community rehabilitation companies” (CRCS) have come under fire and will have their contracts terminated in 2020. According to one damning report, CRCS are monitoring offenders on the telephone, with overstretched staff handling up to 150 cases each. A brief call every six weeks is deemed to be sufficient. (“Hello? Oh, you’re just trying to jemmy the lock on a sash window, well, I won’t disturb you…”)
Meanwhile, those actually doing the community service are being made to carry out meaningless work, such as moving mud from one pile to another in graveyards, or turning up to find no one there. The number of offenders given such punishment has fallen from 190,000 in 2008 to 102,000 in 2016. You can understand why courts have become increasingly reluctant to hand down such sentences.
Ministers like Stewart say they want to stabilise and then reduce the prison population. A noble aim, but not if they achieve it by altering sentencing to suit how many cells we have available. Outrageously, we see the same warped arithmetic infecting the police. Under guidelines announced by the Metropolitan Police, car crime, criminal damage and shoplifting are among the offences that officers may not look into as the force tries to save £400million by 2020. The Crime Assessment Policy says that some assaults will not be investigated unless a suspect is already identified. So, ladies and gentlemen, please make sure to be attacked by someone in your immediate circle if you can help it!
What all this adds up to is justice on the cheap, a tactical capitulation by politicians and police at a time when every new day seems to bring more disturbing evidence that the criminal element has gained the upper hand. Only last week, a 14-year-old boy was knocked off a moped and stabbed to death in east London by men travelling in a black Mercedes. I don’t care whether Jaden Moodie was caught up in gang activity or not. He was just a kid, murdered in cold blood by brutes whose shameless conduct mocks the law of the land.
It was financial considerations, dictated by the Treasury, that arrived at a catastrophically lenient policy towards knife possession. Only a third of those convicted of an offence involving knives ends up with a custodial sentence. Unbelievable, eh? What may have looked enlightened caused a vicious spiral with even more blades being carried by nervous lads to protect themselves against the real thugs who should have been locked up.
The public, I’m glad to say, is waking up to this lunatic state of affairs. There was outrage when Joshua Gardner, 18, who was filmed attacking a car in London with a “zombie” knife, was given three prison sentences for attempted grievous bodily harm, but the punishment was suspended for two years, meaning he avoided jail.
The Met’s Supt Roy Smith spoke for his frustrated colleagues when he said: “My personal thoughts are that this sentence does not provide any form of deterrence. Nor does it lead front-line officers to feel that they are being fully supported by the rest of the judicial system.” Overcrowded prisons are no excuse for demoralising police officers who catch a volcanic individual like Gardner, only to see him set free.
Of course, there are cases where leniency is entirely appropriate. I fully support plans to “break the cycle” of sending women to jail. Fewer than 40 women behind bars in England and Wales have committed a violent offence, and most others are serving just a few months for things like shoplifting.
I will never forget chatting to a young man in South Wales whose rather fey, hippy mother was jailed after she was found guilty of drug dealing (actually, she was minding his violent father’s cannabis stash). The lives of that poor boy and his sister went into a rapid downward spiral when they fell into the “care” of an abusive uncle.
But is it really beyond the wit of the criminal justice system to distinguish between a desperate woman who needs help and a cutlass-wielding maniac?
And all of the above is happening on the watch of what was once called the party of Law and Order. Conservatives, I can guarantee, did not vote for this Government in order to see jail sentences of six months scrapped because they give criminals inadequate time to “heal”. If it means dipping into the £13billion foreign aid budget to build more prisons, most would consider it money better spent.
Stewart says he expects a backlash from people like me against “soft justice”. Well, yes, guilty as charged. If you can be guilty of being on the side of the innocent.
This all adds up to justice on the cheap … and the criminal element now has the upper hand