David Gauke’s sentencing review seems to have met with enthusiasm in the penal reform sector, but I am not so sure it’s quite as radical or as positive as everyone seems to think. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I think some healthy scepticism and clear-eyed criticism will help to push a government that has hardly shown itself to be a brave reformer into doing something worthwhile.
Recommendations for sentencing and prisons
It is worth looking in some detail at his various recommendations, bearing in mind that the whole point of the exercise was not to have a deep think about the purpose of the justice system but simply to ease the prison crisis. We need to ask whether it will achieve its limited objective.
The document is 192 pages, so quite a tome. A helpful synopsis of the recommendations reveals how cautious it is. The purpose of the exercise is set out at the start as dealing with the emergency overcrowding crisis in prisons. It could have been so much more radical. Instead, we have a smorgasbord of suggestions that really don’t tie up to make a coherent whole. However, if the government does implement them, it will temper the worst excesses of the penal system.
Gauke does criticise the ‘tough on crime’ political narrative and the constant emphasis on punishment, but the report fails to provide a new vision. Gauke’s criticism of politicians rushing to speak about toughness deserves to get through, but I am not hopeful it will. The document falls into its own trap by referring to people as “offenders” throughout. This ignores well-established research which shows that labelling people as offenders embeds that identification into them and into the services that deal with them. One small step out of offending is to see yourself, and be seen, as a person who is or does something else.
‘Alternative’ sentences and probation
Another problematic theme is the references to “alternatives to custody”, which yet again places prison at the heart of the system against which everything else has to be judged. Yet at any one time some 240,000 men and women are serving probation orders, several times more than are in prison. Community responses to crime should be the centre of the system; prison should be talked of in hushed terms and be the exception.
I welcome the recommendation that short prison sentences should be restricted but just one look at the statement put out by the Magistrates’ Association in response to this shows that whilst they are the culprits who impose these short sentences they insist on the power to keep doing it. Indeed it was not long ago that the magistrates succeeded in their long campaign to enhance their powers to impose yet more short sentences by increasing the terms to a year. The only way out of this mess is to take away their power to sentence to prison.
I am genuinely not sure about the idea proposed to have deferred sentences. It is an odd one when a case can more often than not take many months or even years to come to court, thereby effectively deferring the outcome and imposing a sword of Damocles over the defendant.
The idea of progression in prison is seductive but unachievable. Too many prisons are struggling to get men out of their cells for even an hour a day, there is little or no opportunity for education or work, the food is stodgy and there’s too little of it, contact with family is intermittent, and violence prevalent. How such a prison could possibly encourage people to go to non-existent work to earn early release is just pie in the sky. The suggestion that people could earn early release by good behaviour is pretty insulting when the prison itself is fostering violence and conflict.
Technology and limited recalls to prison
The review rests a lot of hope on the idea of technology being a means of moving prisoners into the community. It must be remembered that tags are basically electronic leg shackles that simply restrict movement and impose curfews. Some can also monitor alcohol intake. But overall they are a negative compliance enforcement tool and nothing more. The other problem is that they often don’t work and the private security companies profiteering from the tags have been fined for poor service repeatedly.
Technology cannot help get someone a home, listen to their problems and find a solution, get them a job and help them keep it, or provide a helping hand towards desistance (long-term non-offending).
The review suggests a new model for restricting recalls to a limited number of days which is to be welcomed. But it would have been better to end the nonsense of administrative recalls altogether. Missing a probation appointment should trigger intervention by the trained and professional probation office, not a move back to jail for months.
Ministers playing nasty for The Sun helps no-one
Finally, the red meat thrown to The Sun newspaper as an exclusive was the idea of the chemical castration of sex offenders. It is currently a medical intervention for a very small number of men to help with reducing the sex drive, but as we know with the case of Alan Turing, it can lead to unpleasant side-effects – which in his case led to suicide. The sight of the Lord Chancellor telling parliament that she is considering whether she could make it mandatory was a low point.
Sentence inflation is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with but nothing in this review will achieve that. What is needed is a different way of sentencing – based on achieving agreed outcomes – which includes public safety but sees it from a long-term perspective, not just as a temporary breathing space while someone is locked up.
We all know that the best chance of someone leading a law-abiding and constructive life is for them to have something to do all day, somewhere decent to live and someone to care for them and for them to care for. Prison today works against this and is part of the problem, not the solution.
