Articles & News

March 4, 2008

Tories unveil plans to reform public sector prisons

By Jon Land for 24dash.com

Prison governors could be given new powers to oversee inmates' resettlement after release and earn rewards if they do not reoffend within two years, under plans floated by the Conservatives today.

Under the Tory scheme, every public sector jail in England and Wales - except the eight high-security establishments - would become an independent fee-earning Prison and Rehabilitation Trust, able to commission private companies and voluntary organisations to assist in its job of making sure inmates go back on the straight and narrow.

The proposal forms part of a package of reforms to the criminal justice system in a green paper launched by Conservative leader David Cameron today, which would also see:

* Thirty Victorian jails in city centres sold off for redevelopment, to fund the construction of new prisons on cheaper land, bringing the maximum capacity to more than 100,000 and ending overcrowding by 2016.
* Tougher community service, with offenders wearing uniforms and having benefits docked if they fail to turn up.
* An "honest sentencing" policy, under which judges and magistrates would name the minimum and maximum terms an offender should spend behind bars, which Tories estimate would lead to an average 10% increase in time served.
* An end to automatic early release after half the full term - instead, prisoners who have passed their minimum term would earn their release with good behaviour, work and progress on rehabilitation programmes, such as drug treatment.
* A Victims' Fund, which inmates would pay into through work in prison, to provide additional compensation to victims on top of the existing criminal injuries scheme.

Launching the proposals in London after visiting Wandsworth Prison today, Mr Cameron said: "Almost everything in our criminal justice system is going wrong and our prisons are in crisis."

Victims and the public feel "cheated" when offenders serve only half the term handed down in court and do not feel confident that community service sentences represent a real punishment, he said.

Meanwhile, prisons are "hopelessly over-crowded", forcing the Government to release around 20,000 inmates a year early to make space, he said.

And a lack of purposeful activity and rehabilitation programmes are contributing towards high reoffending rates.

The Government is committed to building an additional 10,500 prison places by 2014, in order to ease the overcrowding crisis which last week saw the inmate population in England and Wales top the maximum intended capacity at a record 82,180.

But Mr Cameron said Tory plans would deliver an additional 5,000 places over and above Justice Secretary Jack Straw's plans, and would not rely on massive 2,500-inmate "Titan prisons", which he said would make rehabilitation more difficult.

"For too long, Labour have refused to build the prison places that are needed," said Mr Cameron in a foreword to the green paper. "And for too long, they have allowed prisons simply to warehouse criminals rather than reforming them.

"The result is our chronic rate of reoffending: two out of three ex-prisoners are reconvicted within two years of release."

Under the Tory plans, the new Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts would be responsible for offenders after they have been released as well as in prison.

The Trusts would be paid by results, with a premium awarded on a national tariff if the offender is not reconvicted within two years.

Shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert said that this new incentive for governors to make rehabilitation a priority could bring reconviction rates down by as much as 20%, resulting in a reduction in prison numbers and massive cash savings.

The Tories' "rehabilitation revolution" would ensure that the prison population was stabilised by 2020 at a level 6,000 lower than the current predictions of 100,000, said Mr Herbert.

And he said that, on top of the premiums to Trusts, the savings would produce up to £259 million a year to invest in rehabilitation programmes.

The green paper stated: "We will not give criminals a break. Unlike Labour, we will not let prisoners out early, shorten sentences or fetter judicial discretion. We will not put the public at risk.

"We will reduce the prison population over the long term in the only acceptable way: by making sure there are fewer criminals committing fewer crimes."