More people are being jailed than the justice system can manage. There are only 557 places left across 120 prisons in England and Wales, while prisoner numbers are increasing by 100 to 200 every week. Justice Secretary Alex Chalk had some tough-sounding rhetoric on Monday to deal with the problem: lock up dangerous offenders and send foreign criminals back home. Yet it distracted – perhaps deliberately – from the most liberal penal policy reform announced by a government minister in decades: a legal ‘presumption’ against short sentences.
Does the government want the message to go out that shoplifters won’t hear the clang of the prison gates?
Incarceration is expensive: it costs £47,000 per inmate per year. In many cases, the costs are hardly important compared with the need for public protection, punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. Yet for offenders given short jail terms, a growing body of research suggests prison simply makes things worse and is not cost-effective.
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