ARTICLE AD BOX
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is plainly preparing public opinion for an announcement next week that more prisoners will be released early. She announced at a news conference today that male prisons are at 99 per cent capacity and will run out of space by November.
If this sounds familiar, that is because she said something similar in the days after the general election, when she announced an emergency early release scheme. At the time, any reasonable observer accepted her argument that she had inherited an intolerable situation from the Conservatives.
That remains the case. Labour has been in government for 10 months now, but it takes longer than that to build more prisons, especially as the courts continue to send criminals to the prison estate for longer and longer sentences.
Kemi Badenoch issued a warning before Ms Mahmood’s announcement: “Labour is about to unleash a wave of criminals onto our streets.” The Conservative leader is guilty of transparent opportunism. The responsibility for the present situation lies overwhelmingly with the Conservative government. Indeed, one of the reasons Rishi Sunak chose to go to the country early was almost certainly that he would have had to authorise an early release scheme if he had delayed.
No one is fooled by the Conservatives attempting to blame Labour for failing to turn the prison estate around in less than a year. Ms Badenoch said that further early releases “will deny victims justice, undermine faith in the justice system, and put public safety at risk”. All true, and all the Conservatives’ fault.
If a period of silence from Ms Badenoch would be welcome, however, Ms Mahmood does have some questions to answer and will find over time that she cannot blame everything on her inheritance. It is baffling that ministers have not used this crisis to end the scandal of prisoners languishing on what are called imprisonment for public protection (IPP) prison terms, which set no date for their release.
These prisoners are explicitly excluded from the early release scheme, but the government has given no explanation for its decision. The result is that 2,600 people remain imprisoned under a law that was judged unjust and inhumane and which has been repealed. Some of those prisoners may still represent a serious risk to society, but some at least appear to be being judged by a different standard from those who are currently being released early. At a time when every single prison place is a precious commodity, this seems perverse.
That apart, The Independent agrees with what is known so far about the broad thrust of the review of sentencing policy being carried out by David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, which will be published next week. He is expected to recommend minimum and maximum sentences, with early release tied more explicitly to good behaviour, work and taking part in education, rehabilitation and anger management courses.
This is the right approach when 80 per cent of crimes are committed by reoffenders: anything that can help to break that cycle is in the public interest.
Ms Mahmood is also expected to accept a recommendation of a three-part sentence, in which criminals will serve the first part of their sentence, a minimum of one-third, in prison, followed by a period under house arrest, monitored by electronic tags, and a final part of unpaid community service.
This is sensible and pragmatic, combined with an acceleration of the prison-building programme that was allowed to dawdle under the Conservative government. But we cannot understand why one group of prisoners who so obviously deserve to have their – indefinite – sentences reviewed should be excluded. Ms Mahmood should think again.
English (US) ·