Letters | 26 June 2010

Time to rehabilitate

Sir: The issue of whether or not ‘Prison works’ is confused in your leading article (19 June) with the broader arguments about reducing the National Offender Management Service’s £5 billion budget.

Even if the £2 billion of annual public expenditure on prisons was left largely intact, there is scope for savings and other benefits in localising the punishment and aftercare of offenders with much more input from voluntary and community groups. Such a localisation policy could result in better and less costly services in this part of the criminal justice system, provided sentencing reform was part of the package. To give one example: NOMS could hardly be doing worse at managing the many thousands of young offenders who are jailed with sentences of less than 12 months who in practice average three months inside. Their post-release reoffending rates are now 74 per cent — and rising.

Reducing such a scale of failure does indeed require the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ promised by the coalition government.