This week marked the launch of Make Justice Work, a campaign which aims to radically change the way the media and subsequently the public, understand short-term prison sentences in England and Wales. In the last 10 years prison numbers have risen at an unprecedented rate. We have the highest prison population in Western Europe and are locking up more and more people who 12 years ago would have served non-custodial sentences. In fact 65% of people sentenced to prison each year are given sentences of less than 12 months. In essence what this means is that more and more low-level non-violent offenders are being sent to prison when in the past they would have been given community based sentences. There is no correlation between serious crime, which has not risen significantly, and the rise in the numbers getting locked up.
It is within this context that the Make Justice Work campaign has come into formation – the system is failing everyone: the public, victims and offenders.
As part of the launch of the campaign we commissioned an independent report, outlining for the first time the cost-benefits of sentencing low-level, non-violent offenders to community based alternatives to prison. The research also analyses the level of re-offending related to short-term prison sentences in comparison to community based alternatives. The report findings are at times staggering.
The research reveals that the majority of community sentences provide similar or better value for money and effectiveness than short-term prison sentences. Furthermore, when looking at prisoners with drug problems the comparative savings and effectiveness provided by community based sentences rise massively.
Our analyses suggest that the majority of community sentences provide similar or better value for money and effectiveness than short-term prison sentences. Residential drug treatment and intensive supervision with drug treatment produce significant cost savings to society when compared with custody. That is, diversion from custody to these interventions would result in net savings to society. For example, we have calculated that had the 7,873 drug-using prisoners who were sentenced to under 12 months in 2007 were instead diverted into community based alternatives society would have saved almost a billion pounds over the lifetime of these offenders.
The bottom line is that our research confirms the hard facts which are already out there proving that prison simply doesn’t work for low-level offenders. This campaign is not about calling for the abolition of prison. It is about informing people about the inefficiency and cost of locking people up on short-term sentences who would be better served and be less likely to re-offend if they were given intensive community sentences. Currently, people given a short-term sentence get virtually no support on release and are subsequently hit with the stigma of having a custodial record when trying to get a job which makes it incredibly difficult for them to reintegrate into the community. Too often this leads to re-offending as the core personal problems with the offender are not addressed and they instead are moved around the prison system where their criminality becomes too-often entrenched. We have to break the cycle before our prison system becomes even more overloaded and broken.
Prison is the answer for serious offenders but we have to begin to debate the efficacy of locking so many people up. It is costing society billions both in capital costs – housing prisoners through ever more prison building programmes – and in societal costs through money spent on rehabilitating victims of repeat offenders. In Scotland, where the National Assembly has the legislative power to change the guidelines over short-term sentencing, the SNP has already muted the idea of abolishing sentences of less than six months. This is surely the right way to go in Westminster. Our aim is to change media attitudes to short-term prison sentences to allow politicians to feel as if such policies can be communicated to the public without fear of a devastating backlash from the red tops and midmarket press. It is a hard ask and it will be a long fight but we have to take on the challenge. The alternative is a country with more people being locked up and more victims of crime.