UK: Sentencing policy in chaos
01 March 2002
The government's criminal justice policies become less coherent by the day, according to caseworkers from Miscarriages of Justice UK. With a prison population at a 70,266 record high, prison service director-general Martin Narey has called on judges to sentence offenders to custody only as a last resort. Mike Newell, president of the Prison Governers' Association, wants radical action to reduce numbers, including stripping magistrates of the power to jail offenders. "Magistrates have a wide range of community penalties available to them, but they insist on imposing inappropriate sentences. These powers should now be taken away from them to stop such inappropriate sentencing."
Prison numbers since December 2002 have risen by an extra 300-600 prisoners per week. Much of the recent increase appears to be due to a sharp rise in remand prisoners (up 13% in the last year) and in the number of women being sent to jail (up 21% over the same period.) Martin Narey has told prison governors to make much greater use of the early release home detention curfew scheme because prison numbers were "reaching crisis point." The Home Office has opened 26 new prisons since 1992. Current capacity is now 71,834. The most overcrowded prisons are currently Shrewsbury (which has 338 prisoners in accommodation intended for 185) and Preston (with 556 prisoners in accommodation intended for 306).
As Miscarriages of Justice UK observe, though, a sense of crisis appears not to have affected the Home Office, which has been keen to focus press attention instead on mobile phone thefts and a brief spate of carjackings. Heightened public fears about such crimes and the "tough talking" of the Home Office around the issues have clearly affected the willingness of magistrates to grant bail in relation to street crimes. On April 16 2002, Home Secretary David Blunkett called on courts to make use of powers under section 130 of the Criminal Justice Act 2001 to remand in custody teenage offenders aged 12-15 who have a recent history of committing offences on bail. It is thought that 600 local authority secure unit places will be necessary to accommodate this addition to the prison population. To make room for them, teenage offenders who have been sentenced will be moved to young offenders' institutions at Lancaster Farms, near Lancaster and at Onley, Warwickshire. In turn, some YOI inmates will be dispersed across the prison system. Speaking at a conference on youth crime the same day, Blunkett went further, calling for an "intensive fostering scheme - as a form of "protective custody" for child offenders aged 10 and 11. Paul Cavadino, of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, responded: "It is wrong in fact and questionable in principle to think that the imprisonment of 10 or 11 year olds is a burning issue needing urgent government action".
Guardian 2.3.02, 16.4.02; Miscarriages of Justice UK statement 16 April 2002.