The Gauke report tells us how to reform British prisons – now, it’s up to politicians to make it happen – UK Times

Seldom has an independent policy review commissioned by the government produced such a thorough, insightful, creative, rational and evidence-led report as that on sentencing now completed by David Gauke.

Mr Gauke, the justice secretary during the last period of Conservative government, and a solicitor by profession, is also to be commended for working on such a complex and vexed issue with such remarkable speed. His successor at the Ministry of Justice, Shabana Mahmood, has rightly accepted the vast majority of his recommendations, and, in a passionate performance in the House of Commons, rendered her party the additional benefit of putting her hyper-ambitious populist shadow, Robert Jenrick, firmly in his place. Easier said than done.

The Independent Sentencing Review bluntly states the central truth that politicians of all parties should face up to and accept: “The approach of the last few decades of sending more people to prison and for longer is unsustainable.” During the last 14 years of Conservative and coalition governments, a mere 500 extra prison places were created despite constant increases in sentencing guidelines and political pressure on the courts to send offenders down.

The criminal justice system more broadly – police, probation services and legal aid – has been subjected to a prolonged regime of austerity, and, by the time the general election was called a year ago, the prisons were so overcrowded that the police had nowhere to hold arrested offenders, and law and order was in danger of collapse. Hence, the hurried and highly undesirable decision to release some less serious criminals early. That should never happen.

“Prison works” was the famous mantra of Michael Howard in an earlier era of Tory rule, but the Gauke report proves otherwise. When retribution is placed before rehabilitation, and politicians pose as “tough on crime” rather than reducing reoffending, any possibility that prison would indeed make society safer is lost, as if taken by a thief in the night.

Ms Mahmood declares herself in favour of prison because it is obviously essential to deal with the most serious of offenders. For those who commit shameful crimes, inflicting violence and misery on their fellow citizens, acts of terror, abuse of children, persistent criminality and so on, the courts have to have the freedom to impose a long, if not indefinite, stretch inside. The public should have confidence that they’ll be kept locked up for everyone’s safety.

However, not every offender can be locked up because the costs of doing so are prohibitive. As the Gauke review points out, it costs £53,000 a year to keep someone in jail, and the government’s prison building programme, aimed at adding 14,000 places by 2031, will cost around £10bn. But even that is insufficient to keep up with the expected increase in the prison population. If recurrent crises in the system and rushed, emergency early release programmes are to be avoided, then reforms are required.

The government should, therefore, implement as soon as possible the recommended new system of “earned release” for good behaviour and evidence of rehabilitation. Short sentences seem ineffective at reducing reoffending and should therefore be avoided except in exceptional circumstances. Community sentences should be tougher, and the freedoms of domestic abusers in the community curtailed. Driving bans, financial penalties and deprivation of access to travel are also useful alternatives to incarceration. And if offenders are to be dealt with “on the outside”, then the funding for the probation service will need to be adequate for the task.

Without a much stronger effort to monitor miscreants and prevent reoffending, the Gauke/Mahmood reforms will, tragically, fail – with all the gruesome societal and political consequences that implies. Media coverage of particularly nasty, violent crimes would discredit things irretrievably. We would then be back to square one; so Ms Mahmood must set out a clear plan to rebuild the probation service through recruitment, training and resources.

Ms Mahmood would also be well advised to speed up the deportation of foreign national offenders. The public simply cannot understand, still less accept, why some 10,800 prison places are occupied by people who shouldn’t even be in the country, and certainly not detained at His Majesty’s pleasure. Their removal would greatly ease the pressures in the prison estate.

The Independent Sentencing Review explains why this is the case, some being on remand and others pursuing appeals on human rights grounds. So it is not quite as simple as it appears, but any possible abuse of human rights legislation should not be tolerated, and immediate deportation substituted for pointless short sentences – a considerable deterrent.

The only omission in Mr Gauke’s work is the absence of a single word about those prisoners incarcerated under the old indefinite imprisonment for public protection. Not only is their situation inherently unjust and distressing, with some attempting to take their own lives, but they are occupying more than 2,000 prison places that should be put to more appropriate use. Given the tightness of capacity, it is doubly incomprehensible that such a long-running injustice remains so disgracefully neglected.

To retain public confidence and put the prison system on a sustainable basis, the principle of the new policy should be simply stated: longer sentences for serious and incorrigible serial offenders; but tough tagged and supervised alternatives to jail for those who are more likely to return to the straight and narrow if they are kept out of our universities of crime.