The rehabilitation revolution

Reoffending rate

The realisation that a custodial sentence isn’t necessarily the best sentencing option is long overdue. The Howard League for Penal Reform claims that 61% of those sentenced to less than one year in prison will be reconvicted within two years of release, whereas the re-offending rate for community orders stands at 37%. Such statistics prove that, in many cases, imprisonment is pointless. This does not mean that anyone is advocating putting the public at risk but that prison should be reserved (at least initially) for the most serious cases.

The failure to reduce crime, the failure to rehabilitate offenders, the failure to reduce prison numbers, the failure to reduce the cost of the criminal justice system, and a failure to reduce recidivism leaves a bitter taste and a massive bill.

Why not prison

Many view a prison sentence as being (a) tough and (b) the ultimate punishment. However, it is worth considering that a six-month sentence, of which three months or less will be served in custody, may be “easier” on certain offenders than a community alternative. For example, a two-year community penalty, with a tough curfew and 200 hours of unpaid work may actually be more punitive than three meals a day and access to a gym in prison for 12 weeks. Further, by instilling some regularity to the offender’s life (by requiring that they comply with the unpaid work requirement), preventing them from socialising with friends, or criminal associates (by effective use of a curfew), and an appropriate substance misuse requirement (breaking a substance dependency), an offender who is dependent on alcohol, is unemployed and commits burglaries at night with associates, can be (a) helped to address their addiction (b) prevented from continuing to commit offences, and (c) punished.

The advantage of a radical overhaul of sentencing with the idea of rehabilitation combined with electronic tagging is that resources are finite and community disposals cost a fraction of a custodial alternative. Reducing prison numbers allows for a redistribution of resources. When considering the effectiveness of community sentences verses the custodial alternative, that “option” becomes the logical solution.

The rehabilitation revolution

On 27 March 2012, Kenneth Clarke launched the Punishment and Reform: Effective Community Sentences consultation. The Minister had recently announced that there was to be a “sea change” in the way offenders are dealt with by the criminal justice system and stated that “criminals must be reformed”.

Mr Clarke’s rehabilitation revolution is designed to reduce the numbers of offenders in prison combined with what he calls “tougher community penalties”. The language used demonstrates an effort to placate the “Red Top” generation that bay for custodial penalties no matter what the crime. Unlike his suggestion that sentences should be reduced by 50% on a guilty plea, these proposals have some merit. It is often forgotten that real people commit crime and with a little support many will never reoffend again. The truth is, that for many, the shock of a court appearance achieves the “short, sharp shock” that prison has been said to have delivered in the past.

To make sure that future sentencing retains an element of punishment, the proposed tougher community penalties are to include “at least one form of punishment in every sentence”, this is presumably in response to the recently published figure that 11% of all community orders were imposed with a supervision requirement alone. In real terms this means that 13,056 of the 118,696 offenders who began a community order in 2010 were supervised but had no other form of punishment. This might have been a sensible decision in each of those cases but one can quickly see that to impose punishment in the community in these circumstances can be used to sweeten the pill when creating legislation that means fewer offenders will go to prison.

It was also announced that the tougher community penalties would feature a more creative use of electronic monitoring, part of the aim of making community sentences tough, credible and robust. This has the effect of raising the custody threshold (the line at which prison will be imposed will be higher) thus reducing prison numbers. The unpalatable part for some will be that increased numbers of offenders would be spared custodial sentences, in favour of the new intermediate sentence falling between a community order and an immediate custodial sentence. The consultation states that “In… cases [which are on or around the custody threshold], we want to ensure that courts have a sufficient range of robust options which will both punish the offender and help prevent further offending. But to be clear, we do not want to see community sentences replace custodial sentences.” Though the rehabilitation revolution is to be commended, there clearly remains a degree of political spin.