The sentencing reforms announced by Labour last week were primarily an attempt to address a capacity crisis. This is something we need to be clear on, however much David Gauke’s report is embellished by talking points borrowed from the progressive criminal justice commentariat. Eliminating short sentences of twelve months or less is not about community safety, it’s about logistics. This morning’s warning shot by the country’s top police chiefs that a lack of investment will jeopardise their ability to carry out these reforms underscores the risk posed when our bursting jails are emptied of still dangerous offenders without regard for the impact.
Writing in the Times today, Met Police boss Sir Mark Rowley joined five other police leaders to set out the consequences these reforms would have on two ambitious flagship government targets – to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls within a decade. Without an injection of cash for enforcement, they argued, the risk of reoffending by those who would otherwise have been banged up but are now free in the community will increase.
Pushing Gauke’s recommendations through without even an impact assessment is reckless in the extreme
It’s hard not to fault this logic. Police resources per capita have fallen sharply everywhere with population growth. Demand for service increases remorselessly year by year. The effective abolition of sentences under twelve months will inevitably make the streets less safe.
How does this work in practice? Let’s take conviction for simple possession of a knife, the typical offence relating to bladed weapons that goes through the courts. The average immediate custody length for all knife crime offences to the year ending March 2024 was 7.7 months. Carrying a knife is the sort of prevalent behaviour by young people in poor urban areas that might previously have attracted a short custodial sentence. And there is evidence that for first-time young offenders, a prison sentence is a deterrent against future crime. Indeed, under the current sentencing regime, first-time knife offenders of all ages are also at the lowest for years served behind bars.
We could, therefore, say that leaving the availability of immediate custody to a judge’s discretion rather than by ministerial fiat is working. Under the reforms, our teenage knife carrier is unlikely to spend any time in custody. They will be straight out of court and into the hands of a probation service so hollowed out by ideological vandalism, overwork and cuts that it can’t cope now, let alone when thousands more criminals are put under its supervision.
The fact this custody is brutal and useless should, of course, be a consideration for reform, but it should not entirely subvert community safety or the need for retribution. The proposed changes, together with no additional money for law enforcement, will mean carrying a knife has even less of a risk of arrest or imprisonment than it currently does.
What about the prolific offender with multiple convictions for theft – the sort of crime that destroys the neighbourhoods the administrative class don’t live in? This chaotic behaviour is often impossible to deal with in the community, particularly if it is related to drug addiction.
Far from being ‘exceptional’, this criminality is also already close to unchecked. The last official data cited 21,000 offenders who had committed 16 offences or more. More recent awful statistics on shoplifting underline the problem. No amount of additional resources to the probation service will equate to the relief of a community besieged by the low-level incivility and antisocial behaviour that accompanies these crimes. Now it will be even less likely to be checked.
The specialist problem-solving courts mooted by the sentencing review are a useful suggestion but hardly new. Similar ideas inspired by the legal system in Texas were proposed several years ago but foundered on objections from the judiciary. I wonder if judges were consulted this time around?
And what about the predatory behaviour of male offenders who harm women? Many such criminals receive short custodial sentences to show that escalating patterns of abusive behaviour have serious consequences. This is deterrence in action and our truly appalling rates of femicide would be even greater were it not for the presence of this stick.
For abused women, custody is also intrinsic to safety. Their abuser is locked away and can’t physically access them or their children. In fairness, this was a benefit raised by the review. But in effect, we are now going to have to rely much more on electronic monitoring, including curfews for such offenders supervised by companies previously fined millions for fraudulent overcharging and service failure. Is this making women safer? I don’t think so.
The government is in a bind not of its making. It inherited a system wrecked by years of underinvestment, corporate incompetence and ideological vandalism. But pretending that these reforms are anything more than a thinly disguised attempt to head off system gridlock is disingenuous. Pushing Gauke’s recommendations through without even an impact assessment on consequences for law enforcement, as Rowley revealed this morning on the Today programme, is reckless in the extreme.
‘Taking back the streets’ is hardly consistent with filling them up again with people who should still be locked up. It’s time for a rethink. The only benefit of these reforms cannot be to criminal impunity.
Comments