Early Release
A solution
The previous administration under Starmer and Lammy proposed to release huge numbers of criminals including those who were serving sentences for violent and sexual crimes. This is not only thoughtless and unfeeling, it is lazy.
This short article was prompted by a harrowing interview by Vic Derbyshire with a victim of a paedophile, one who is currently due to be released early. My heart breaks for her and my anger and disgust with the Tories and with Starmer’s and Lammy’s stance on this issue that Burnham has inherited is visceral.
The Past
It is axiomatic that the prison places crisis has come about as a result of the incompetence and complete abdication of responsibility of the various Tory governments we had to endure. Despite Gillian Keegan’s attempt to airily dismiss this on NewsNight, the public knows the truth. Keegan spent her time arguing that her party did nothing wrong over fourteen years in power and came up with statistics that were nothing short of fantasy. She was systematically taken apart by Lewis Goodall who landed the killer punch when he said that “over those fourteen years just 482 net places were added to the prison estate”. Lewis also said that this is not a party political issue, it is an issue of the State carrying out (or not) its fundamental duty to ensure that justice is done, and seen to be done; in that, he’s spot on.
The Numbers
About 87,300 people are in prison. About 27k1 people ( or 31%) are jailed or on remand for non-violent and non-sexual offences. These offences cover drugs, theft, driving offences, peaceful protesting and fraud. These 27k break down as follows:
Theft offences: 6328
Drug offences: 9008
Robbery: 5094
Public order offences: 2782
Fraud & Summary non-motoring: 1372
Total: 27036
So assuming two to a cell, 13518 places can be freed up by releasing early only criminals who are serving time for non-violent and non-sexual crimes.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) does not publish (or I suspect know) how many non-violent offenders were involved in crime networks that did involve violent or sexual crimes.
Action
Burnham must do four things:
Research the numbers of prison places needed over the next three decades and build enough new prisons to cover current and these future needs. In the meantime:
Keep all criminals who are jailed or on remand for violent or sexual crimes locked up and serving their full sentence.
Invest significantly in public post-prison services, in both new parole officers and new monitoring kit
Release only these 27k non violent/non sexual criminals to free up prison places
Before anyone argues that white collar fraud or serious driving offences are not victimless crimes, of course they aren’t. However I’d argue that a sentence of say 10 years spent being permanently monitored via ankle bracelets, under curfew, doing manual community service, having to meet with a parole officer every week and being permanently banned from doing anything other than manual labour would be a significantly worse than serving time in Jail and then resuming normal life.
Prevention and Rehabilitation
Preventing a prisoner from reoffending and rehabilitating them costs between £5,000 and £15,000 per year. Programs can last a long time and include education, training and help finding work and accommodation - in other words rehabilitation programs take effort, but they are worth while. Look at the financials2 alone: The overall financial investment depends heavily on whether that individual remains incarcerated or is managed within the community of course but the financial data shows that prevention provides a huge return on investment and is unarguable. Take burglary as an example:
The national cost of reoffending is £22.7 billion per year
The costs new burglaries is £9.8 billion per year
The net savings per individual rehabilitated offender is around £69K
When a chronic burglar reoffends, they they often commit many new offences before being apprehended. Economic models from the Prison Reform Trust and justice calculators indicate that every £ spent on community based rehabilitation yields an 866% return on investment by transforming the offender into a tax paying citizen. Who amongst us wouldn’t jump at that investment?
So ….
I pray that Burnham does the right thing and by the way, this is not the Gordian knot that some politicians pretend it to be. We found the money to bail out the bankers, we found the money for corrupt Covid VIP lanes and loans, we can find the money for this and fucking well do the right thing. As always, politics is about choices.
All data is sourced from the government and the MoJ:
All data is sourced from the MoJ, the Prison Reform Trust, Parliament.uk, InsideOut Justice