Mike Amesbury, the former Labour MP who has been sent to prison for ten weeks for punching a constituent in the street, is rather unlucky: the truth is that very few first-time offenders get locked up. It’s probable that those convicted of similar offences in the future may still be imprisoned. But the use of short prison sentences for non-violent offences, however numerous and persistent, are under threat.
Very few first-time offenders get sent to prison
David Gauke’s Sentencing Review, which is due to be published in full over the coming months, is likely to make it harder for magistrates to hand out short jail sentences. Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, appears to share Gauke’s view: Mahmood reportedly wants to restrict the use of sentences of less than 12 months to those convicted of violent, sexual or terrorism offences. But this aversion to sending people to prison is a mistake.
When I ran the Prison Service, as I did for seven years between 1998 and 2007, I was often told that many of those we were locking up did not need to be imprisoned.
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