The punishment doesn’t fit the crime in Britain. That’s why our jails are overflowing | Samira Shackle
WI heard a lot about prisons in recent months; Specifically, the truth They were full When the new government took office last summer. Enter the employment measures for The release of thousands of prisoners Early, which relieves immediate pressure. The government committed b Building four new prisons In addition to adding blocks to the current prisons, create 14,000 new prison spaces over the next seven years. But when the prison system increases, the problems are inside it. None of this does not answer the most complicated question about what happens after that.
Until now, we have seen solutions to colliding with a systematic crisis, in part, through the success of successive governments to appear strongly on the crime. Any serious attempt to transform things requires looking at how we get here. UK prisoners residents In standard levels; She has Almost In the past thirty years. England and Wales have The highest percentage of prisons in the individual In Western Europe, and on the wider continent, only Russia and Turkey prison More people. In the midst of overcrowding and the lack of employees, conditions are often bad, as prisoners are routinely limited to their cells – usually – – usually – 23 hours a day. The suicide rate in our prisons twice European average. Qualification lists – behavior courses, education and training – very long so that some guests can Never arrive Absolutely. Most people may agree that none of this is desirable; Certainly does not do much to reduce the crime rate.
How did this situation happen? Decisive The issue is the sentence enlargement. In short, over the past twenty years, more people have been delivered in prison, and they have got longer and longer over time, although there is no similar increase in the crime. In 2023, the average judgment on the crown court was 25 % longer From 2012, this is not just a state of more serious crimes that are tried – it is also true that the longest sentences are distributed to the same crime. For example, it was a camel for theft 13 months longer On average in 2023 for 2012, 36 % increase.
These longest provisions have kept the number of prisoners on the 2010 surfaces, despite the decrease in the number of people who are tried and convicted of crimes in general. In September 2024, Huard (which calls for sanctions reform) She published a paper By five of the former senior judges, they called for “a sincere conversation about what the custody can get and what it cannot achieve” and return to “more humble sentences in all fields.” Judges wrote that in the fifty years of participating in the law, the prosecution of the ruling doubled, and so the number of prisoners was, and they called for the opposite of this trend.
There was no one moment when the camel became longer; It was slow crawling, as a result of decades of small changes in the law. But a decisive turning point was the 2003 criminal justice law of Blair, which was submitted Legal starting points To obtain the minimum conditions for killing. The change was implemented only in England and Wales, where there are penalties for serious crimes Rise Many faster than it was in Scotland, which indicates how a small legislative change can be a series of consequences. When longer sentences are made, or minimum conditions are provided for one crime, it can lead to invitations to similar conditions in other crimes. Recently, and Police Law, Crime, Judgment and Courts 2022 The maximum sentence of death has increased through dangerous driving from 14 years in life imprisonmentWhile other legislation increased the minimum judgments for crimes such as Fire weapons crimes and Local robbery. Emotional campaigns by victims or pressure groups to create new crimes or prolong the sentences to address specific problems or problems that can have a similar effect.
The larger camel imposition can be felt for specific crimes such as a satisfactory and just solution to specific cases of injustice. But the prison system has already swollen for years of successive referee increases that were not in a position to accommodate successive new crises. Over the past half and a half, austerity means radical discounts for the service of monitoring and court systems. Since 2017, the number of people Remember To prison after their release under observation 85 % rose. The accumulation of the huge crown court led to the presence of more people It was held on pretrial detention Waiting for trial – a 84 % increase Since 2019 (with two -thirds of these people who have not yet been convicted of a crime).
For a long time, the focus, by successive governments, was to send people to prison without thinking much about what was happening while they were there. In the same way, a little is given what is already effective. In 2022, and The ruling council concluded There was no strong evidence that severe judgments prevent people from committing the crime.
Can this approach change? There is some glimmer of hope. In addition to paying to expand the places of prison, the government procedure Independent review of the ruling’s ruling policy, due to the report in the spring. More people are expected to recommend the orders of the community or suspended sentences – which means that they are submitted outside the prison. This is a way to relieve pressure on prison spaces, but it may also be effective; Nowadays, perpetrators who suffer from non -guardian sentences have lower levels of apartments, perhaps because it is easier to reach support and rehabilitation outside the prison from the inside.
If we already want to reduce the crime, we may turn from looking at the length of the rulings to what people do while serving them – and instead of judging they work.
