16. Memorandum submitted by
the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
England and Wales has a high prison population
due to a harsh sentencing policy and the lack of prosecutorial
diversion, judicial oversight of sentences and treatment provision
for drug addicts and the mentally ill. Ways of reducing short
prison sentences need to include boosting sentencer and public
confidence in alternatives (such as those being pioneered through
the Rethinking Crime and Punishment project) and making decision
makers aware of and responsible for the costs incurred (such as
happens through Justice Reinvestment initiatives in the USA)
INTRODUCTION
1. ICPS welcomes the opportunity to submit
evidence to this important inquiry. ICPS is based in the School
of Law at King's College London. We undertake research and practical
work about the use and practice of imprisonment around the world
and in the UK. Our work is based on the international norms and
standards produced by organisations such as the United Nations
and Council of Europe. These make it clear that no one shall be
deprived of liberty save as a measure of last resort, that extending
the prison estate should be an exceptional measure and that prison
population inflation should met by decriminalising offences and
the development of alternatives to prosecution, alternatives to
pre trial detention, community sentences, the avoidance of long
terms of imprisonment and the use of parole and early release.
2. ICPS is undertaking two projects in England
which are particularly relevant to this inquiry. The first is
coordinating a follow up to the Rethinking Crime and Punishment
Project (RCP) which involves increasing the understanding of sentencers,
local communities and the general public about community sentences.
RCP are making a separate submission to the inquiry. The second
is Justice Reinvestment which is mapping the concentrations of
offenders in particular communities and encouraging locally based
responses to their offending. Findings from these projects are
discussed below.
GENERAL COMMENTS
3. The data we collect and publish about
prison populations in 200 countries finds that more than three
fifths of countries (61%) have a prison population rate below
150 per 100,000. The rate in England and Wales—148 per 100,000
of the national population—is above the mid-point in the
World Prison Population List. We welcome the acknowledgement by
the government in recent consultation papers that there are types
of offenders who should not be in prison, particularly women,
the mentally ill, and juveniles.
4. The last nine years have brought a 26%
rise in the number of people locked up with 16,000 new prison
places since 1997. The 80,000 people held in prison in May represent
the highest rate among major countries in Western Europe, far
in excess Germany, France, Italy, Denmark and Ireland. This is
not because we lack alternative sentencing options. As well as
the harsh political and media climate, it may reflect weaker systems
of prosecutorial diversion; lack of judicial oversight; and shortages
of treatment provision for juveniles, drug addicts and mentally
ill.
5. The government's response to the various
crises last year has been to promise—not for the first time—tougher
measures rebalancing the system in favour of the law abiding and
bringing criminal justice to bear more harshly on those who break
the rules. Given the substantial financial, social and ethical
costs of prison, there is an alarming political consensus that
prison numbers are bound to rise and only greater use of prison
can protect the public from harm.
6. There are good reasons for thinking that
delivering more and more punishment is not the policy most likely
to produce safety, fairness or value for money. Recent tragedies
have shown that the priority must be to enable criminal justice
agencies to concentrate their efforts on serious and dangerous
offenders—something which they have manifestly failed to
do according to recent inquiries by the Chief Inspector of Probation.
To allow this to happen there is a need for a radically different
approach to lower level criminality. Given the enormous overlaps
between imprisonment and deprivation, equipping health, education
and social care systems to get to grips with people in trouble
could produce a much greater dividend in safety than the revolving
door of prison. If combined with robust locally based services
for solving problems, there could be an opportunity for a system
which delivers social as well as criminal justice for offenders,
victims and the wider community.
SHORT SENTENCES
7. More than 50,000 offenders each year
are sentenced to prison for less than six months. The largest
group of these offenders are convicted of theft or handling stolen
goods, followed by motoring offences such as driving whilst disqualified.
About a fifth of the shortest sentences are served by people who
have committed one of a range of unspecified crimes such as breaching
anti-social behaviour orders, drunkenness or minor public order
offences. Such sentences bring few benefits to anyone, although
it is said by some sentencers that in the case of the most persistent
offenders it is important to express society's view that enough
is enough. Set against this must be the damage to offenders' jobs,
accommodation and family support which research shows keeps them
out of trouble in the future; and the danger that incarceration
can harden anti-social attitudes or even introduce offenders to
gangs, drug addiction or potential accomplices.
NET WIDENING
8. Recent years have seen a growing reach
of the criminal justice system. As well as cracking down on anti
social behaviour, police officers, under pressure to meet targets
to bring offenders to justice, arrest and process a growing number
of young people whose misbehaviour and associated problems could
be much better resolved informally through mediation programmes
in schools and neighbourhoods. Once in the system, offenders are
subject to higher levels of intervention than was historically
the case, with community orders, previously used as genuine alternatives
to prison, all too often imposed on low risk offenders. Increasingly
demanding requirements in such sentences have led to a sharp increase
in numbers sent to prison for failing to comply with them.
9. This expansionist or net widening approach
results in the criminal justice agencies, particularly prison
and probation services, seeking to resolve a wide range of deep
seated social problems in the name of reducing re-offending. The
Home Office has been setting up a new organisation to do this—the
National Offender Management Service (NOMS)—but it is far
from clear that such a highly centralised model, divorced from
the local communities that produce and suffer from crime is the
most sensible structure. Were a further review of correctional
services to be undertaken now it would seem as likely to recommend
locating prison and probation services within the ambit of local
area agreements as within a struggling Whitehall department with
regional offices. Making local agencies—particularly councils—responsible
for the supervision and resettlement of offenders could unlock
a much wider range of rehabilitation resources than is achievable
through NOMS. This is the approach is being taken in Scotland.
10. A more local approach would also enable
the people most affected by crime to set priority tasks for offenders
to undertake as part of unpaid work sentences. This could help
instill community confidence so that sentencers feel more able
to impose such orders as alternatives to prison. Community penalties
organised remotely at the regional level could struggle to have
such an impact.
DRUG AND
MENTAL HEALTH
TREATMENT
11. Alongside a more sparing role for criminal
justice and a much more local organisational structure for services,
there is a need for substantial investment in residential treatment
provision for people whose offending is driven by mental ill health
and addiction. England has about 2,550 residential rehabilitation
beds for drug addicts—about 40 per million of the population.
This compares to 90 in the Netherlands and 150 in Canada—both
of which countries lock up prisoners at a lower rate than in the
UK. If Finland, with a tenth of our population, locked up children
at the English rate, one might expect a prison population of 300.
In fact there are just a handful of boys in prison. Looking at
psychiatric provision however, Finland has about 4,000 beds for
adolescents, compared to a total of 1,128 in England. What this
data suggests is that we are seriously underpowered in respect
of intensive residential placements for difficult people. Prison
fills the gap.
BOOSTING JUDICIAL
AND PUBLIC
CONFIDENCE IN
COMMUNITY SENTENCES
12. As part of a follow up to the Esmee
Fairbairn Foundation Rethinking Crime and Punishment project,
ICPS together with the Probation Service and the Thames Valley
Partnership has set up a project to test ways of engaging local
community groups in decisions about unpaid work. The Making
Good initiative, involving town, parish councils, tenant and
resident groups, and neighbourhood action groups is pointing the
way to how the organisation of unpaid work and selection of placements
might encourage greater community confidence. Early results from
pilot projects in Slough, Bicester, High Wycombe and Milton Keynes
are encouraging with a final report on the project due in 2008.
13. The project has also established a structured
programme to enable sentencers to visit community based alternatives
to prison, meeting the offenders and the operational staff and
discussing their reactions. The potential for boosting judicial
confidence in alternatives to prison is suggested by the report
of the judges' programme which took place in 2005-06 in the Thames
Valley region. The report is attached at Annex B. The programme
involved Crown Court judges visiting a range of community based
programmes including a domestic violence programme, drug treatment
centre and unpaid work projects.
JUSTICE REINVESTMENT
14. A more radical approach to sentencing
could see financial incentives introduced so that in areas where
prison numbers are reduced, the resultant cost savings could be
invested locally. In the US so called Justice Reinvestment has
focused political attention on the costs of imprisonment and the
opportunities to spend resources locally in a more socially constructive
way. Concentrations of prisoners in the most deprived "million
dollar blocks" have led to calls for investment in public
safety by reallocating justice dollars to refinance education,
housing, healthcare and jobs.
15. An ICPS project is exploring the relevance
of the US approach to the UK by mapping concentrations of offenders
in Tyne and Wear, discussing implications with stakeholders, and
developing practical project ideas.
16. This replicates earlier work in Scotland
by showing a correlation between social deprivation and imprisonment.
Across the five boroughs of Tyne and Wear, out of 5,000 plus people
known to the probation service last year, almost a third came
from the poorest 10 out of 111 electoral wards. The concentrations
of those who went to prison are even higher.
17. The implications of this suggest local
neighbourhood justice centres, patch based probation, (young)
adult offending teams and more local authority involvement in
community payback and resettlement.
18. A more radical approach could see prison/criminal
justice costs made much more transparent locally and even met
from local taxes. In 2004, Gateshead magistrates sent 126 people
to prison for an average of 2.3 months at a cost of almost £1
million. Southampton Magistrates sent 241 offenders to jail for
2.6 months. The £2 million plus could have paid for 370 people
to undergo 12 week residential drug rehabilitation courses.
19. If local authorities were required to
meet some or all of the cost of juveniles sentenced to custody,
they might work harder to develop preventive programmes or community-based
alternatives. There is currently an incentive for "cost shunting"
in which local authorities fail to make interventions for which
they have to pay, in the knowledge that, should the child offend,
custodial costs will be met centrally. Youth Offending Teams could
be given a sum based on the costs of average use of custody over
the last three years. It then is charged for using custody in
the following year but can keep any savings. This form of "justice
reinvestment" has proved successful in reducing juvenile
incarceration in the US states of Oregon and Ohio.
20. There is also a Justice Reinvestment
approach to restoring the market share of the fine among sentencing
disposals. A move to a fully fledged day fine system should be
considered. So too should the possibility that fine revenue (or
a proportion of it) should be available to spend on crime reduction
initiatives locally, perhaps by the Crime and Disorder Reduction
Partnership. This would provide an incentive for courts to impose
fines and possibly for offenders to pay them.
Rob Allen
Director, ICPS
March 2007
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