Whatever happened to the short sharp shock?
Behind the bluster the government is shifting its position on shorter custodial sentences
I remember a right-wing political activist in the 1980s who said of prisons policy that she did not believe in the “short sharp shock”.
“No,” she said, with her eyes opening wide with keen delight, “it should be a looooooooooooong sharp shock”.
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The statement yesterday of the Justice Secretary to the House of Commons about prisons policy is worth a close read.
The statement came in the midst of a political controversy about the government running out of space in our prisons.
And so the statement may have just have been thin and defensive and perhaps partisan.
Yes, it is a wordy statement, as were his responses to questions in the debate that followed.
But hidden by the verbosity was something interesting.
The statement did more than it needed to so as to just get this cabinet minister in and out of the Commons as soon as possible.
For as well as bluster and playing to his backbench constituency, there were some fascinating and indeed sensible passages on short custodial sentences.
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Readers of this blog may recall an introduction I once wrote to an FT piece on prisons:
I have never been convinced by the need for prisons, other than as a means of public protection and, exceptionally, as punishment for the worst crimes or the worst repeat offenders.
Prisons otherwise seem to be an expensive means of making offenders worse and making it more likely that people will offend again.
Of course, our political culture is fixated about prisons being the norm for punishment - and there is real (and affected) horror when someone receiving a non-custodial sentence “walks free from court”.
And so one does not expect a government minister - Tory or Labour - to say anything other than “prison works”.
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Yet in his statement yesterday the Justice Secretary said the following:
“…prisons should not ruin the redeemable.
“It is clear that all too often the circumstances that lead to an initial offence are exacerbated by a short stint in prison, with offenders losing their homes, breaking contact with key support networks and, crucially, meeting others inside prison who steer them in the wrong direction.
“When they are released just a short time later, they all too often reoffend, fuelled by addiction or mental health issues that cannot possibly be addressed effectively in such a short space of time.
“The fact is that more than 50% of people who leave prison after serving less than 12 months go on to commit further crimes.
“The figure is 58% for those who serve sentences of six months or less.
“However, the figure for those who are on suspended sentence orders with conditions is 22%.
“Meanwhile, the cost of this is £47,000 per year per prisoner.
“The taxpayer should not be forking out for a system that risks further criminalising offenders and trapping them in a merry-go-round of short sentences, so the Government are determined to grasp the nettle and deliver a better approach.”
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No liberal commentator could have put it better.
This is a welcome approach by this or any government.
Of course, the justice secretary is framing this approach as being part of being “tough on crime”:
“…if we are to protect the public and reduce crime, we need to go further to use our prisons better. At the heart of the long-term plan for prison reform that I am announcing today is a simple mission: cut crime.”
But he continued:
“To deliver that, we need to […] ensure that more lower-level offenders get the tough community sentences that are shown by the evidence to cut reoffending and hence to cut crime.”
The Justice Secretary also said in response to one question:
“Those who are sentenced to short custodial sentences—under 12 months—statistically go on to reoffend 55% of the time.
“Yet for those who have suspended sentence orders with conditions—such as unpaid work or to address mental health issues or whatever—22% commit further offences.
“There is a massive reduction. We want to ensure that once people have served their sentences and atoned for the crime they have committed, they can go on to become law-abiding, contributing members of society.”
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Some may say that “tough community sentences” are a contradiction-in-terms.
Perhaps they are.
But if you repeat what the Justice Secretary said with the word “tough” taken out, there is little for any evidence-based liberal to disagree with:
“we need to […] ensure that more lower-level offenders get the […] community sentences that are shown by the evidence to cut reoffending and hence to cut crime”.
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And what is that evidence?
Well.
The evidence is from the government itself, in a 2019 research and analysis paper on the impact of short custodial sentences, community orders and suspended sentence orders on reoffending.
It is a paper well worth reading.
The summary of its findings is as follows:
It is strange and somewhat refreshing to read a government document on prisons policy set out in terms of evidence.
There is also this useful House of Commons research paper on shorter sentences from earlier this year.
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An ideological conversion to a more liberal approach to penal policy was too much to hope for.
It will never happen - and we should remember that until recently “Labour Home Secretary” was one of the most illiberal phrases in the political lexicon.
But a conversion forced - at least in part - by financial necessity is not unwelcome.
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And, on a final note, there was also (for once) a genuinely funny joke in the Commons debate: