Pubdate: Mon, 09 Oct 2006
Source: Yorkshire Post (UK)
Copyright: 2006 Yorkshire Post Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://yorkshirepost.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2239

PRISONS POLICY IN MELTDOWN

Crisis Caused By Years Of Inaction

IT IS hard to understand why John Reid is concerning  himself with 
his promised criminal-justice reforms,  such as ending life 
prisoners' automatic consideration  for parole and putting a stop to 
the offer of sentence  reductions in return for guilty pleas.

For it is increasingly clear that prisons policy is  dictated not by 
the finer points of criminal justice  but by the desperate need to 
thin out Britain's  overcrowded jails.

The suggestion that the Home Secretary is prepared to  take the risk 
of more escapes and increased drug abuse,  as a result of 
transferring more convicts to open  prisons - revealed in a leaked 
memo - is merely the  latest indication of the appalling costs of 
the  Government's complacency on prisons.

This latest crisis, the result of the prison population  reaching a 
new high, was predicted as long ago as  April. However, Dr Reid's 
options for dealing with it  are limited because the Government has 
created so  little new prison capacity during its nine years in  power.

For most of that time, the various Ministerial  occupants of the Home 
Office have believed that their  hyperactivity in announcing almost 
daily initiatives  and new crackdowns would be enough to fulfil Tony 
Blair's pledge to be tough on crime.

Meanwhile, sentencing has been subject to a needlessly  complex set 
of rules which seem influenced not by any  philosophy of criminal 
justice, but by the need to keep  offenders out of prison in order to 
save money and ease  overcrowding.

Yet this also undermines the second half of the Prime  Minister's 
infamous promise, about being tough on the  causes of crime. For if 
reoffending is to be addressed,  prisons must not be mere places of 
punishment, but also  cradles of rehabilitation, in which criminals 
can be  weaned off drugs and taught skills that would give them  the 
chance of a new life. There is no earthly hope of  this happening, 
however, if jails are crammed so full  that there is scarcely room to move.

There should, therefore, be common agreement on all  sides of the 
criminal-justice debate that more prisons  must be built. However, 
although Conservative leader  David Cameron has acknowledged this, 
the tragedy is  that no one in the Labour Party has persuaded 
his  likely election rival, Gordon Brown, of the need to  plough 
money into prisons and quickly.
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