Justice Secretary Ken Clarke publicises prison proposals

Tim Pearce

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke has announced a massive overhaul of the prison system to reduce the prison population and cut re-offending.  His proposals focus on the principles that prisons must be places of punishment, but also of education, hard work and change, and that simply locking people up for the sake of it is a waste of public funds.

Funding is a topic that will surely be at the forefront of Ken Clarke’s agenda as he formulates plans that he will hope will be part of his legacy to the UK Justice System.  The Ministry of Justice is facing cuts of £325 million this financial year alone – not the largest dent made to a government department, but vast nonetheless.  The new plans, such as paying independent organisations by results in reducing reoffending, will clearly have to be bankrolled somehow, and the big brains behind the headlines have their work cut out.  However, when faced with the stark reality that, for example, keeping a prisoner locked up costs taxpayers £38,000 per year, the argument that radical reform will ease the public purse becomes quite convincing.

The issue of prison population is one that has graced our headlines increasingly over the past couple of years as tabloids have attempted to terrify the innocent masses with images of raging convicts bulging out of suffocating prisons.  Whilst Ken Clarke is not promising to reduce the population, by focusing on cost-effective ways of preventing reoffending it seems that there is finally a more long-term eye being cast over the probation and prison services.  Contrary to the view that a higher prison population indicates a more effective judicial system, the Justice Secretary has stated that “banging up more and more people for longer” is actually making some criminals worse, without protecting the public.  Reoffending rates have reached 60%, a figure that will hardly instil comfort into the hearts of a general public whose nerves are daily shattered with stories of suspicion, crime and an increasingly broken society.  With these proposals, Mr Clarke is speaking to an audience who want to know that the forces there to reduce crime in our nation are actually working.

Prison reform is always a controversial topic; the system is clearly broken, and it needs fixing.  But are these proposals really feasible?  One proposition is the better use of the voluntary and private sector’s expertise to help get offenders away from crime.  In one sense this seems very logical, as it uses the people who are best trained as opposed to drafting in civil servants who may not have the requisite experience.  However, money once again becomes the issue of the day – voluntary services in particular are feeling the pinch, and unless they can be sufficiently resourced it will simply not be possible to run the suggested rehabilitation programs effectively.  Voluntary sector workers are no doubt used to such conditions, but if efficiency is one of the areas that Ken Clarke is hoping to address then serious consideration needs to be given to the support given by the government to the third sector.

The bigger the prisons become – and there is a point at which places simply run out – the more pressure is being put on underfunded and understaffed facilities.  This has well-publicised impacts on both communities within prisons – the inmates and staff – and those outside – the families of offenders, the victims, the general public.  It is the Justice Secretary’s role to do something about this, and it is no mean feat in our financial climate. Talking is the first step – now something needs to be done.