The Gawke Review on sentencing has been welcomed by the Labour Government that set it up last year.
In a foreword to the document, Gawke, a former Conservative justice minister, said: “Our principal task was to put the prison population on a sustainable footing,
ensuring that in the future further emergency releases would not be necessary. Inevitably, this means ensuring that the prison population is lower than it was previously projected to be. This requires us to set out proposals in which some people who currently receive custodial sentences are, instead, punished in the community and that some of those who still receive custodial sentences spend less time in prison.”
More needs to be done to reduce reoffending, Gawke stressed; ‘central to the case we make is that an effective probation system is key’; although that system is ‘under great pressure’. He acknowledged ‘that many victims feel let down by the current system’. Punishment in the community can offer a robust alternative to custody, the review found; but it needs to be ‘well resourced’. The review also recommended that the state ‘harness the benefits of technology’; and to address some of the causes of criminality, ‘such as drink and drug addiction or mental illness’.
Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood welcoming the publication said: “Our prisons are, once again, running out of space and it is vital that the implications are understood. If our prisons collapse, courts are forced to suspend trials, the police must halt their arrests. Crime goes unpunished, criminals run amok and chaos reigns. We face the breakdown of law and order in this country.
“The prison population is now rising by 3,000 each year and we are heading back towards zero capacity. It now falls to this Government to end this cycle of crisis. That starts by building prisons….This investment is necessary but not sufficient. We cannot build our way out of this crisis. Despite building as quickly as we can, demand for places will outstrip supply by 9,500 in early 2028.”
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Steve Gillan, General Secretary of the prison officers’ union the POA said: “It is clear for all to see that the whole criminal justice system is in crisis. You cannot build your way out of a crisis. This report needs to be properly funded if the Justice System wants to divert people away from prisons. The public need to have confidence that not jailing people for criminal activity but dealing with them in the community is justified. Victims of crime must always come first. Only time will tell if these reforms will work to ease overcrowding in our prisons.” National Chair of the POA Mark Fairhurst said that the reforms if adopted will temporarily ease the pressure within prisons, ‘but will heap additional work on already depleted Probation Service’.
For the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners’ response, visit the APCC website.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Inverness Prison wall.
