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Report calls for jail number cut Report calls for jail number cut
(about 5 hours later)
Changes to the justice system should include reducing the numbers in jail and closing some prisons to deal with a "mounting crisis", says a report. Changes to the justice system should include reducing prison numbers and closing some jails, while also boosting crime prevention efforts, says a study.
Money must be spent locally to prevent crime, said a commission set up by the Howard League for Penal Reform. Prison and probation funding could be diverted to tackling the causes of crime, said a report commissioned by the Howard League for Penal Reform.
The report, on England and Wales, said years of "hyperactivity" by politicians had created more laws and prisoners but had not made people feel safer. The report, on England and Wales, said overcrowding threatened to "bring the penal system to its knees".
Meanwhile, MPs have said longer jail sentence policies are "misguided". MPs have warned that longer jail terms divert money from crime prevention.
The MPs, on the Commons Justice Committee, said politics often descended into a "competition as to who can appear toughest on crime," according to sentence length. The MPs, on the Commons justice committee, said politics often descended into a "competition as to who can appear toughest on crime", according to sentence length.
They said policies pushing for longer sentences risked being driven by a "misguided conception" of what the public wanted. But longer sentencing failed long-term by diverting money from crime prevention work, said the committee, which is holding an inquiry into how sentencing policy can be more effective.
But it would not work long-term because it diverted money from crime prevention work, said the committee, which is holding an inquiry into how sentencing policy can be more effective. By diverting some of the billions of pounds that are spent on our criminal justice system into the community we could stop problems happening in the first place Professor David WilsonCommission on English Prisons chairman
Agreeing with the committee's conclusions, the Howard League's assistant director Andrew Neilson said that when people heard individual stories they usually supported less harsh sentencing than policy-makers were led to believe. The prison population had doubled over the last two decades to an all-time high of about 84,000, said Professor David Wilson, chairman of the commission set up by the Howard League.
'Avalanche of problems' "We have got more women, more young people, more people with mental health problems. We have more life-sentence prisoners than the whole of western Europe combined," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
In the two-year study commissioned by the Howard League, the report's authors urged policy-makers to consider the lack of money caused by the global financial crisis. "The costs of locking up those numbers of people are horrendous, and even so when they are released from jail they go on to commit even more crime so we are not getting a good return from our money."
The justice system had become "bloated", partly because Britain previously had the money to spend on it, said the authors. 'Penal excess'
"We are at a crossroads as a society," they added, insisting that people should also consider whether they wanted to live in a "tolerant, pragmatic, forgiving society." The two-year independent study by the Commission on English Prisons suggested people should consider whether they wanted to live in a "tolerant, pragmatic, forgiving society".
Prisons must be closed in order to reinvest capital and revenue funding in the communities which suffer most from deprivation and victimisation Do Better Do Less report "The alternative is more of the unrestrained and irresponsible penal excess that is storing up an avalanche of future problems for society while spending ever-increasing sums of public money for the privilege of doing so," it said.
"The alternative is more of the unrestrained and irresponsible penal excess that is storing up an avalanche of future problems for society while spending ever-increasing sums of public money for the privilege of doing so."
The charity set up the Commission on English Prisons Today - chaired by Cherie Booth QC - to write the report, which borrowed its name, Do Better Do Less, from an influential study on crime and punishment published in 1922.
It called for the replacement of short-term prison sentences with "community-based responses".It called for the replacement of short-term prison sentences with "community-based responses".
And the government's "unwieldy.. and ineffective" National Offender Management Service should be broken up, so local partnerships including councils, health and education authorities could be formed, it said.
Local prison and probation budgets would be devolved so money could be reinvested in community projects that tackled the causes of crime, it said.Local prison and probation budgets would be devolved so money could be reinvested in community projects that tackled the causes of crime, it said.
"Prisons must be closed in order to reinvest capital and revenue funding in the communities which suffer most from deprivation and victimisation," said the report. PRISONS REPORT class="" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_07_09_dobetterdoless.pdf">Do Better Do Less: The report of the Commission on English Prisons Today [1.53 MB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html">Download the reader here
'Meaningless targets' Professor Wilson said: "We could do something far better by diverting some of the billions of pounds that are spent on our criminal justice system, and put that money into the community where we could stop problems happening in the first place."
It said lessons could be learned from the "promising" approach in Scotland, which has set itself a goal of reducing the prison population by nearly 40% and has created local Community Justice Authorities. "The vast majority of the public have lost faith in the criminal justice system, so we have got to reconnect the public, the local community, to having faith in what it is that we can do to create safer communities and less crime."
While the Commission said the Ministry of Justice should continue to set policies and minimum standards, it proposed setting up a body similar to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), which provides national guidance on good health and illness-prevention. The report said lessons could be learned from the "promising" approach in Scotland, which has set itself a goal of reducing the prison population by nearly 40% and has created local Community Justice Authorities.
While the commission said the Ministry of Justice should continue to set policies and minimum standards, it proposed setting up a body similar to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), which provides national guidance on good health and illness-prevention.
The body for prisons would assess the social consequences of sentencing policies, said the report.The body for prisons would assess the social consequences of sentencing policies, said the report.
Less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison should be an achievable future Professor David Wilson, Commission chairman 'Safer communities'
The report also said more work should be done to make restorative justice work in more cases. Since the 1990s, England and Wales had been "on a course towards becoming a jurisdiction which punishes excessively harshly and with little attention paid to the relationship between legislation and the impact on prison numbers", Professor Wilson said.
The idea, which brings victims and offenders together, is usually used to deal with lower-level conflicts in schools and neighbourhoods but the Commission said if done well it could be applied to more serious offences.
Commission chairman Professor David Wilson said the current penal system wasted money, was too centralised, and was driven by "meaningless targets".
"Since early in the 1990s, England and Wales has been set on a course towards becoming a jurisdiction which punishes excessively, harshly and with little attention paid to the relationship between legislation and the impact on prison numbers.
"The result is a crisis of overcrowding which threatens to bring the penal system to its knees."The result is a crisis of overcrowding which threatens to bring the penal system to its knees.
"Less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison should be an achievable future. Our report sets out a vision for how we get there." "Less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison should be an achievable future."
The report also said more work should be done to make restorative justice work in more cases.
The idea, which brings victims and offenders together, is usually used to deal with lower-level conflicts in schools and neighbourhoods but the commission said if done well it could be applied to more serious offences.
Meanwhile a third report, from the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, has said there is a "postcode lottery" when it comes to youth sentencing.Meanwhile a third report, from the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, has said there is a "postcode lottery" when it comes to youth sentencing.
There was a "massive disparity" between local areas in the numbers of young people being jailed, which it said could not be explained by socio-economic factors or population levels. The report said that the youth jail population could be cut by a quarter, saving £250m, if areas with abnormally high custody rates brought them down.
The report said that if each local area with a high custody rate were to reduce it to the level of the area which most resembled it, the youth jail population would fall by a quarter, saving £250m.