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PAUL WILENIUS: Even tough guys get caught.
And now Labour wants to catch even more of them and lock them up for longer.
The government's worried it's not delivering on law and order and is starting
to look soft. So Ministers want to give the courts new powers, to deal
with hardened young criminals.
Tony Blair built his reputation
on a promise to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. And
in the coming weeks his government will unveil a new sentencing package
to try and stem the rise in violent crime. But his critics fear that
this will simply put more people behind bars and will fail to tackle the
real causes of crime in Britain today.
HARRY FLETCHER: Being the kind of bang up capital
of Europe is something to be ashamed of, Britain did have a reputation
for being fairly liberal and I think the liberalism worked but that's no
longer in fashion. And in fact ministers boast and think it's something
to be proud of, having such a high rate of incarceration.
GEORGE HOWARTH MP: I think if in five years' time
we see a rapidly increasing prison population still, it will mean that
we have failed.
WILENIUS: But for a government
anxious for faster delivery, it seems that filling up the jails is a measure
of success. The nation's courts and judges will be able to dish out longer
prison terms to one hundred thousand persistent offenders. They are responsible
for about half of Britain's five million crimes.
CHRIS MULLIN MP: There's a certain small section
that are simply lost I'm afraid and as far as that section's concerned
you're only talking about containment, until one day, perhaps around the
age of thirty, a little light switches on as it does occasionally and people
realise that their lives are going nowhere and want to be helped, but in
the meantime you've got to be fairly tough with those guys.
WILENIUS: This uncompromising stance
has worked in political terms for Labour. It's neutralised attacks from
the Tories, so they'll get even tougher. But this is worrying some experts.
PAUL CAVADINO: At present the projections
are for a continuing increase in the prison population. I think that if
the tough political rhetoric continues, for example around the government's
proposals for tougher sentences for persistent offenders, the rise could
be even sharper than that. Yet what we need to be doing is reducing rather
than increasing our prison population - it's high by West European levels.
Having such a high prison population doesn't make sense in terms of crime
control, it means that we're shovelling into prison a very large number
of people for short periods
WILENIUS: But this hardman strategy
has been embraced wholeheartedly by the new Home Secretary David Blunkett
. His Crime Bill was at the centre of the Queen's Speech and this will
be followed in the next few weeks by the long awaited report on sentencing
from the former Home Office civil servant John Halliday. It will result
in repeat offenders going down for longer.
Tony Blair and David Blunkett
believe that prison works and that their hardline sentencing policy really
will deliver safer streets for Britain. But their critics feel that merely
banging up even more offenders for even longer is counter productive.
They think that the only answer is spending millions of pounds extra on
the rehabilitation of offenders.
But efforts to prepare
offenders to lead a crime-free life once outside jail have suffered as
a near record sixty-six thousand inmates are now inside Britain's prisons.
It's the second highest in Europe. Labour is already expecting to see a
further rise in numbers, which could soar above eighty thousand over the
next seven years. And critics believe the policy of targeting these hardened
criminals will only make matters worse, as many go back to crime as soon
as they're released.
CAVADINO: That's not likely to
do a great deal to reduce the crime rate. What would reduce the crime
rate quite significantly is if we could stop those persistent offender
from re-offending. But harsher penalties aren't always more effective
penalties. If you release somebody from prison, unemployed, they're twice
as likely to re-offend as if they get and keep a job. If they're released
from prison homeless, they're two and a half times more likely to be re-convicted
within the first year than if they've got accommodation. Prison doesn't
work if it's overcrowded and over-stretched because if it's overcrowded
and over-stretched it can't rehabilitate prisoners as well and that means
there's a greater chance of re-offending when they're released.
SIMON HUGHES MP: You don't deal with them necessarily
by just locking them up in colleges of crime where they have actually people
who are more used to being inside than they are, who'll teach them more
than they even knew when they were outside.
WILENIUS: Ministers hope the arrival
of their new Custody Plus sentence will help. Inmates will get a short,
sharp fixed term sentence with a similar length community sentence outside.
But some experts fear it will mean that even more people will end up behind
bars.
CAVADINO: There's a real concern
that Custody Plus instead of being used constructively to reduce the use
of custody by shortening periods in prison and then having a period of
supervision afterwards, could instead be used in a way that increases the
prison population. If Courts now are considering a case on the borderline,
wondering whether to jail the offender for a short period or give them
probation or community service, it could be that with the use of Custody
Plus, they could decide they'll opt for that in those borderline cases
because it seems to combine both prison and community supervision.
WILENIUS: But the government feels
that Custody Plus will give more help to prison inmates once they're on
the outside and it could even get more of them to stay on the straight
and narrow.
MULLIN: I certainly think that
a combination, not just releasing people back into the - probably the same
lifestyle as they came out of in the first place, obviously that changes
nothing and so we do need to combine prison or detention with something
that's going to give them some hope for the future once they emerge from
the doors of the prison or the detention centre, we've been trying that
for a long time now and I'm sure there's a great deal of scope for improvement.
HARRY FLETCHER: At the moment there are tens of
thousands of predominantly men, going into prison for six to nine months,
getting no assistance with anything, numeracy, literacy, work, education
and they come out and they're in trouble again within weeks, if not days
and they're back inside again. Clearly that is bad economics. So the
government intend replacing that with a system where they spend roughly
half the time in custody. So that would be what, four months and then
another four months, intensive supervision and help in the community.
That will work, providing that the probation service and all the voluntary
agencies that assist, are properly resourced. If we're expected to do
it from within existing budget, it'll just fall over.
WILENIUS: So the key to the success
of the new sentencing system could well be money. It's not a cheap option
to go for ever rising prison numbers . It's estimated that the Halliday
package will cost an extra six hundred and fifty million pounds a year.
That includes more money for rehabilitation, which some senior figures
in the Labour Party feel is the best way forward.
HOWARTH: Unless we believe that
people can be rehabilitated, then the whole criminal justice system is
potentially in a state of collapse because you can keep taking them out
of circulation for periods of time, as soon as they're back out again they're
going to move exactly back into the area that got them into trouble in
the first place. I have to say that governments find it very difficult
to give priority to spending on prisons, for example over and above health
and education where obviously there are high priorities. But the longer
argument I think should prevail that if you actually want to change people's
behaviour, if you want to stop people becoming repeat offenders, then you
have to do something useful with them that gives them the prospect of a
life without crime.
HUGHES: It is not something that
comes for free and we need the money in the budget, the people recruited,
the counsellors, the probation officers, the support workers to make sure
that the prisoner of yesterday doesn't become the prisoner again tomorrow.
You need to put the money in the rehabilitation and the reintegration
into society as well as just the Court system and the prison system because
otherwise you're throwing in many cases, good money after bad.
WILENIUS: There's now growing pressure
on the new Home Secretary David Blunkett to change tack. He's locked
into the tough "prison works" policy adopted from the Tories. But opposition
to this hardline strategy is growing both outside and inside the Labour
Party.
HOWARTH: I think it lacks coherence
because first of all I don't think the public has a great deal of confidence
in it and secondly we're not seeing a massive change in behaviour on the
part of those who find themselves in the criminal justice system. So tough
and tender is I think an approach that is coherent and it does address
the world as it is rather than some make believe world that perhaps some
people would like to create.
FLETCHER: I think there's been
a continuous line since 1993 with the emergence of Howard's prisons works
philosophy, right through the Labour administration and a belief, I think
it's a sincere belief, it's sort of social authoritarianism if you like
within Labour that being punitive towards people is ultimately good for
them. I think that's what they seriously believe, it will make them better
people. But punishment has never and will never work in its own right.
WILENIUS: Still the government
appears determined to push ahead with its new hardline laws. But it may
not have the smooth passage it would like despite its massive Commons
majority because on top of the growing opposition outside, the more liberal
House of Lords is ready for a fight.
HUGHES: If the government come
forward with legislation which they have not thought through and which
is really there to be a shop window sounding good proposal rather than
backed up by the evidence, the probability is it will not get through the
House of Lords. And we will play our part in making sure it doesn't get
though the House of Lords. The government have no majority in the Lords
and they don't of course have a majority in the country. They have a majority
in the House of Commons, but twenty five per cent only of the electorate
voted for them. So we will remind them that they have no mandate across
Parliament for getting through ill thought out and poorly conceived proposals.
WILENIUS: So as more and more prisoners
are led down to Britain's jail cells, Ministers must make a choice. Do
they go in the direction of many European countries and try to steer offenders
away from a life of crime, or do they take the American route and just
keep on locking them up for as long as it takes?
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