Lord Carlile of Berriew writes for ePolitix.com ahead of his question on the government response to the Howard League's Commission on English Prison's Today.
As president of the Howard League for Penal Reform, I have watched with dismay the number of people we send to prison more than double over the past 15 years. Our reliance on prisons to administer all punishment, to make society safer, has led to a bloated system collapsing under its own weight.
Detailed in its final report last July, the Commission on English Prisons Today identified that the need to reduce public spending over the coming years brought with it an opportunity to inject some sanity into our penal system.
Instead of more legislative hyperactivity in the field of criminal justice, instead of ramping up ever-higher our costly use of imprisonment, the Commission argued forcefully for a principle of moderation, and not excess, to hold sway.
It is fair to say that a momentum is now building for urgent reform.
Some of the key ideas of the report have been echoed in subsequent publications by the all-party parliamentary group on local government and the recent publication from the justice select committee, Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment.
The Commission made some key recommendations that urgently need to be implemented:
· A significant reduction in the prison population and the closure of establishments.
· Investment in the localities that currently produce prisoners to reduce crime.
· The replacement of short prison sentences with community-based responses.
· The dismantling of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), including the break-up of the centrally managed prison service.
With local authorities as lead partners, the Commission suggests local strategic partnerships should be formed that bring together representatives from the criminal justice, health and education sectors, with local prison and probation budgets fully devolved and made available for justice reinvestment initiatives.
The Commission advocates a more localised criminal justice system that focuses on communities, particularly those where crime is of most concern. We know that people have lost faith in the system and that despite doubling our prison population in two decades, people do not feel safer and routinely express concern as to anti-social behaviour and crime. Given the stubbornly high rate of reoffending for those leaving prison, this should come as no surprise.
The Commission's report advocates devolving criminal justice spending and giving local authorities a lead role in the fight against crime. We are currently bedevilled by managerialism and bureaucratic targets, dictated down to communities from Whitehall. By contrast, localism should lead to less money spent on process and more money spent on actions which produce beneficial outcomes for the whole community.
