Criminals should spend longer in jail, says Chris Grayling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/05/criminals-longer-in-jail-grayling

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Criminals should spend longer in jail and not be automatically released after serving half their sentence, the justice secretary has said.

Chris Grayling said he would prefer unreformed criminals to stay behind bars but admitted he was subject to "financial constraints" which would make it difficult for him to change current policy.

Currently, almost all prisoners are released after serving half their sentence. Previously, release would depend on good behaviour but prison overcrowding led to a change in policy.

"What people don't particularly understand is why sentencing works in the way it does," Grayling said.

"If you get 10 years, you're out after five automatically," he told the Daily Telegraph. "It's not something that can be changed overnight, there are constraints on the system, there are constraints on prison places. Ultimately, I'm attracted by an option that doesn't simply automatically release you at a certain point, regardless of whether you've behaved well or not."

The Conservative minister also said he would not cut prison places, claiming falling crime rates were partly down to more offenders being locked up. Grayling said: "Every police force will tell you when a serial burglar is behind bars their local burglary rate goes down."

He has also said he would review prison conditions, questioning why some prisoners have access to luxuries such as Sky television.

Grayling said it was a "challenge" to make the idea of prison uninviting to criminals from "dysfunctional backgrounds", saying: "For some young people, prison is the first stable environment and so it is a challenge for us to make it an environment that they don't want to come back to."

Grayling wants released prisoners to be met at the prison gate by a mentor to help them get their lives back on track. Companies and organisations that successfully directed a former prisoner into a lawful life would get paid by results, like a similar system for the unemployed.

He said: "These are not areas where you can deliver radical reforms overnight. You have to work in a direction. My message would be that I get and understand concerns the public have over aspects of the system at the moment, and I will take whatever steps I can to develop and reform the system in a way that makes that possible."

Grayling also said he was interested in an expanded use for electronic tagging, including tagging that incorporates satellite technology. "One of the areas where possibly we've got increased scope in the future in monitoring offenders is GPS tagging, where new technologies mean actually it's possible to watch an offender wherever they go," he said.