On 30 June Secretary of State for Justice Kenneth Clarke gave a speech setting out the new government’s priorities for criminal justice reform. Nicki Jameson reports.
Clarke was last in charge at the Home Office in 1992-3, during the period of a relatively liberal approach towards imprisonment which the Conservative government was forced to adopt by the massive uprising which began in April 1990 at Strangeways prison in Manchester and spread through the whole system. He was replaced by Michael Howard, who presided over a vicious U-turn, loudly championing the message that ‘prison works’. Since Howard every Home Secretary, Tory or Labour, has continued in this vein, each competing to be more punitive than the last. Clarke is now singing a different tune, heavily reminiscent of his last period in the Home Office. On 13 July he told a group of judges that ‘no-one can prove cause and effect’ for why crime fell in the 1990s, making it clear he considered that the reason was far more linked to economic growth and declining unemployment than to increased use of imprisonment. So is the period of deliberate and systematic oppression over or just entering a new phase?
The main concrete proposals in Clarke’s speech are:
- A one-off saving by closing underused court premises and rationalising the use of the remaining courts.
- Further massive attacks on legal aid, which is still in the midst of the implementation of the Labour government’s cuts.
- A review of sentencing policy, which seems likely to recommend an end to the use of short prison sentences and the introduction of sentences for which judges pronounce both the minimum and maximum periods that can be served.
- A new programme of ‘payment by results’ for private sector-run rehabilitation schemes.
Clarke’s main task, like that of all ministers in the current period, will be to make cuts and save money. Cutting the punishment budget is a risky strategy as it inevitably sets off a media outcry of ‘soft on crime’. The backlash has already begun, with former Home Secretaries queuing up to attack Clarke and accuse him of being the plaything of the LibDem wing of the coalition.
The moment Clarke’s speech was published, former Labour Justice Secretary Jack Straw responded in the Daily Mail. His comment piece, entitled ‘Mr Clarke and the LibDems are wrong. Prison DOES work – and I helped prove it’, once again demonstrates that Labour is never afraid to attack the Tories from the right. Straw mocks the idea of social causes for crime, pays tribute to Howard and to Tony Blair for ‘turning the tide’ against the ‘liberal approach’ and introducing a ‘different and significantly tougher policy’, and quotes a pre-election speech by David Cameron, in which he defends the use of short sentences.
The use or non-use of short sentences is actually something of a red herring. Although repeatedly imprisoning, releasing and re-imprisoning people convicted of minor crimes clearly is expensive, has no apparent effect on the prevention of crime and is detrimental to those being punished, short sentences are only responsible for a very small proportion of the massive increase in the British prison population over the past 13 years. If the new government really wants to make a dramatic change it will repeal Labour’s 2003 Criminal Justice Act, which introduced a new sentencing regime, whereby virtually anyone convicted of a violent or sexual offence receives an indeterminate prison sentence, from which they can only be released after ‘proving’ they have reduced the risk of reoffending, and in which even fixed-term prisoners are subject to lengthy licence periods following release, with the sanction of recall for even the tiniest violation.
FRFI 216 August/September 2010
