The Guardian view on the new justice secretary: hope at last for penal reform?
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Version 0 of 1. Michael Gove, the new justice secretary, might well be wondering what part of the criminal justice system actually works. His department’s budget is a third smaller in real terms than when Ken Clarke moved in in 2010 and, at least partly as a result, outcomes are miserable. In most countries where governments are trying to cut the criminal justice bill, the prison population is the first place they start. In England and Wales, it is forbidden territory. Between 1993 and 2012 the prison population more than doubled, from 40,000 to over 80,000. Prisons have been overcrowded every year since 1994. There are more than 12,000 inmates serving indeterminate sentences. In any one year, twice as many children will have a parent in prison as experience divorce. Instead of locking up fewer people, the costs of keeping them inside were hacked away by 25% over the last parliament (and the rate of suicide and violence among inmates has soared). Almost 60% of people who serve short sentences go on to reoffend. Meanwhile for victims and defendants, the court process is slow, inefficient and daunting. Court budgets are squeezed and squeezed again. Staff wrestle with case management software from the last century. Legal aid has been cut, the fees paid to high-street solicitors pared to the bone, leaving clients with a substandard service and lawyers ready to walk off the job. In April, convicted defendants became liable for a flat rate, means-blind court fee that is the same for shoplifting as dangerous driving. That is no way to support justice. In response to this litany of misery, politicians of all parties point to the only metric that matters to them and cry: but crime is falling. What a welcome new tone Mr Gove has sounded. In his first speech in his new job he acknowledged the importance of legal aid in securing access to justice, recognised the role of high-quality advocacy and promised to protect and enhance both. In startling contrast to his battles with teachers and the Department for Education, he is clearly ready to work with judges and lawyers, at least while the money lasts. He gave his backing to the judges’ own blueprint for modernisation of the courts and the court system, making much greater use of technology, simplifying and streamlining procedure and speeding up trials. It was an encouraging start. But he has only just begun. The biggest challenge will be embedding such change in an era of austerity. The justice department could lose as much as another 15% in the next two years, on top of the deep cuts made already. Mr Gove wants to rationalise court buildings, use some more intensively and sell off others. Fine. But the judiciary are optimistic if they suppose the Treasury will allow them to hold on to any of the gains. More controversially, he raised the idea of a kind of bankers’ levy for the City lawyers who have done so well from the British courts system’s global reputation. Pointing to the two nations that have opened up in legal provision, represented in the vast disparity between the income of a solicitor in Salford and one in the City of London, Mr Gove suggested some kind of voluntary wealth transfer from the prosperous to the struggling, with a hint that he would step in with a compulsory levy if there was no action. But that is no more likely to generate income for justice – rather than the Treasury – than selling off surplus courts, and its ethical basis is much harder to grasp. Why not, if ministers are interested in baroque additions to the tax system, a levy on Eton to support state education? Mr Gove promises more speeches on prisons and reoffending. This is where he could be really creative. The biggest single class of offender abuses drugs or alcohol. These are the prison system’s frequent flyers, in and out of jail. Literally hundreds of studies highlight the savings in human and fiscal terms to be made by treating them effectively. But a lone experiment in Liverpool with a community court – mirroring the one in New Jersey described here – was abandoned as too expensive. If the politician on show, radical but recognising that professionals do not only act from self-interest, is the real Michael Gove, a minister brave enough to challenge two decades of penal policy, what a legacy he could have. |