Murderers and violent sex offenders should not be free to do what they wish within just a few years of being rightly sent to jail. So no one, including the prime minister, should be surprised when the public rages against such a prospect. Yet Andy Burnham made the grave mistake of indicating that he empathised with that reaction and then announcing that the early release scheme would go ahead largely unchanged.
He does face a major problem, in that the country’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded and, on current trends, would soon be unable to take any more criminals, let alone do anything useful with those in their “care”. But instead of coming up with the fresh thinking he had promised, the new PM has shown no ingenuity. It was exactly the bear trap his opponents had hoped would catch him out, but had not imagined it might strike quite so early in his premiership.
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He could have produced a different, much more productive solution to the prisons crisis, a problem that has accumulated over decades and starts with a misplaced enthusiasm for locking up people, is exacerbated by a failure to invest in the buildings or what happens inside them, and culminates in releasing offenders back into the community without equipping them to live there.
Around half of prisoners have a drugs issue. Ironically, some become addicted or increase their habit while incarcerated. (The House of Commons Justice Committee recently pronounced that drugs were now “endemic” in the prison system; the Institute for Government declared drug use there “rampant”.) So the PM could quickly free up places in existing jails by commissioning a few facilities similar to the pop-up Nightingale hospitals of the Covid era, where addicts could be held and treated.
The need for a level of security would remain, particularly to fend off attempted drone deliveries, but many prisoners do wish to give up the drugs that have turned them into criminals and would be willing residents, particularly if their time there could be used in acquiring the literacy and numeracy skills that are lacking in a high proportion of prisoners. There might be more volunteers to teach in a hospital than a high-security jail.
Those with mental health needs, who constitute another significant chunk of the prison population, should similarly be sifted out and given appropriate treatment rather than mere punishment.
Then most of the 3,500 prison places taken up by women could be vacated. This is not about being kind to women, simply an acknowledgment that most female prisoners are victims rather than perpetrators of violence. Their offences tend to be driven by poverty, abuse, mental health or drug problems and most would respond best to help in the community rather than being jailed.
The majority of sentences served by women are little more than 12 months, but the disruption that they cause can blight several lives and bring huge financial as well as social cost, with children having to be cared for by the state when there is no relative to pick up the pieces of a shattered family.
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A more enlightened, holistic approach to dealing with offenders does not come without a cost and there is currently a desperate shortage of probation officers to provide the community support that is required. But they will be necessary whether it is vicious hitmen or hungry petty thieves who are being released early, and the latter group would pose rather less of a threat to society.
Then Burnham should take a deep breath, ignore the strident newspapers and really do things differently, insisting that fewer offenders go to jail and those who do receive meaningful help towards rehabilitation so that, once released, there is less chance of them reoffending.
