Member News
The coalition government's proposals for new sentencing policy has been criticised by backbench Tory MPs in the Commons.
Conservative MPs Philip Davies (Shipley) and Ian Nuttall (Bury North) attacked the plans announced yesterday by justice secretary Ken Clarke to reform the prison system.
The pair hit out at the plans to send fewer criminals to prisons and to use more community sentences in order to keep prison numbers down.
Nuttall argued that if short sentencing polices did not provide enough time for prisoner rehabilitation, longer sentences should be used rather than not sending criminals to prison at all.
During questions on future Commons business, he said: "Most of my constituents feel that if there isn't enough time during a short prison sentence to properly rehabilitate persistent offenders, rather than not send them to prison at all the solution is to have a longer sentence."
Deputy Commons leader David Heath said the penal policy to pursue was to reduce reoffending.
Davies called for a debate on the government's new sentencing policy, allowing a debate to rebuff claims that people were imprisoned too readily.
He added: "What happens in the real world is that the police tear their hair out arresting the same people time after time after time to find that the magistrates' courts do nothing but give them a slap on the wrist.
"People who eventually end up in prison only end up in prison after all of these community sentences and drug treatment orders have been tried and tried and tried again and failed."
Heath responded that Clarke has said he wanted a justice system "that worked, that disposals for people convicted ought to be the most effective disposals which will reduce the likelihood of them offending again".
He said that many of the repeat offenders mentioned are those who served short-term sentences in prison and then go on to re-offend.
"It surely can't be right to continue with policies that failed," he said
He added: "What we need is a penal policy that actually stops people reoffending and reduces crime."
Article Comments
Davies and Nutall are looking at this the wrong way round. Sure there are some prolific offenders committing terrible crimes who ought to receive long term sentences. However, those criminals were not born criminals. At some point in their lives they have been to school, probably been in contact with Youth Offending Teams, and had involvement with the police and probation. I believe that in many cases crimes are committed due to issues that person has, such as mental health problems, lack of education and employment, substance misuse issues and many more. If a prisoner goes on to reoffend again and again, surely we should be looking at WHY they are offending. Simply giving more long sentences is NOT the solution, we need to improve the impact of all of the interventions that take place before to make sure that the person does not end up in prison. Preventative, timely measures are far more effective and far cheaper than simply exponentially increasing the prison population. Many prison officers say now that they have too many prisoners to allow for effective rehabilitation. What will happen if as Davies and Nutall are suggesting if our prison population continues to increase? We will spend more money on simply housing prioners instead of rehabilitating them. The vast cost will not be justified by a decrease in offending.
Sarah
2nd Jul 2010 at 9:34 am
Have your say...
Please enter your comments below.