After weeks of pressure, the Prime Minister has announced that the men who killed on-duty policeman Andrew Harper will not be released early. The Sentencing Act’s early release scheme will now be amended to exclude a series of offences.
In fairness to the government, their plans go much further than I expected. Those who have committed, or attempted murder, manslaughter, cruelty to children, a wide range of sexual offences (even including ‘possession of an indecent photograph of a child’ which is often, appallingly, treated as less serious by our system), causing or allowing the death of a child and causing death by driving will no longer be eligible for early release. This is a good decision. Releasing such criminals a mere third of the way through their sentence would have made the public substantially less safe and gravely damaged confidence in the justice system.
Not every dangerous man will be blocked from early release
These changes have been forced upon the government in response to concerted campaigns by victims, their families, and particularly with the case of Andrew Harper, by the police themselves. The last is interesting evidence of a fracture between the main body of the state and the entity it relies upon to prevent unrest.
Not every dangerous man will be blocked from early release. Those who have committed domestic violence and stalking will still be eligible. There, the government hopes we will be reassured by its promises that ‘victims of domestic violence will be better protected from perpetrators’ because ‘record numbers of offenders’ will be tagged after release, with many limited to very small geographical areas during their time on licence. In theory this might work, if we had a functioning tagging system, or a well-resourced probation service.
But instead, according to a recent National Audit Office report, the prison and probation service ‘does not have an accurate understanding of the number of individuals that should be monitored and are not’, in which nearly half of tagging breaches ‘result in no further action’, while ‘both serious and minor breaches’ are ‘treated in the same way regardless of severity’. The tagging system has neither accurate information nor is it able to effect meaningful consequences when offenders violate the terms of their licences.
Similarly, the probation service is in desperate straits. The probation union, Napo, has recently warned that ‘plans to release thousands of domestic abuse perpetrators and stalkers early’ mean that ‘more people, largely women, will be killed or harmed’. They have also recently conducted an indicative ballot for strike action in which over 90 per cent voted in favour, with much discontent driven by what members see as consistent under-resourcing. In fairness to the government, they have made substantial extra funding available, and the latest staffing figures show a 13.6 per cent increase in band 3 probation officers over the last 12 months.
The problem, of course, is that probation needed to be ready for the early release scheme, as did the tagging system, and they are not. Recalls are outpacing releases and almost 30 per cent of those released in the latest data were proven to commit further offences within a year, with the average committing over five such offences.
These changes to early release also mean that more capacity must be found via other means. The government intends to do this by deporting more foreign offenders early (with changes planned so that some will be deported at the moment they are sentenced), trying to reduce the number of ‘young offenders and women in custody’, and ending the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence.
Each of these approaches faces problems. We already have a record number of foreign criminals, subject to deportation orders, on British streets. If the government can’t deport them, why should we expect them to have any more success with other criminals?
Young offender and women’s prisons are a small part of the system – we jail very few women or under-18s, which means that those who are in prison have often committed very serious crimes. Indeed, a higher percentage of women prisoners than men are in jail for violent offences.
Probation needed to be ready for the early release scheme, as did the tagging system, and they are not
As for the IPP system, I understand that the government intends to legislate such that all people on these sentences are switched to either a ‘standard determinate sentence’ or an ‘extended determinate sentence’ (for those considered higher risk). This will likely have the effect of immediately releasing very many of them. While the IPP is often described as a historic injustice, it is important to recognise that the people jailed under it had shown a pattern of dangerous behaviour which meant they posed a significant risk to the public. While some will no doubt have ‘aged-out’ of criminality, others will have been brutalised and institutionalised in the prison system, and all will likely need significant specialist support to rejoin society, putting yet more pressure on the probation service.
None of this is anywhere near good enough. We are in a situation where we are no longer jailing people or not on the basis of public protection, rehabilitation or punishment, but rather on the basis of whether we have enough space in our jails. This is a managed collapse in the justice system.
What is lacking in the government’s response is imagination and serious ambition. Where is the emergency prison expansion programme, such as Reform proposed a few weeks ago? If Andy Burnham doesn’t want his entire time in office dominated by the justice crisis, then he needs to demand far more from civil servants at the Ministry of Justice.
Comments