However, rather than tackling the causes of the escalating costs, the Coalition’s
attempts to cut spending on prison places by reducing staff numbers has had a
damaging impact on the prison estate and has left our communities no safer.
A striking example of the Coalition’s cuts to prison budgets resulting in false savings
is in the reduction of funding for rehabilitative and educational courses. The purpose
of such courses is to change the behaviour of those in custody, reduce their risk of
re-offending and provide them with skills for when they leave prison. Legal aid
reforms removing funding for prison law have meant that where prisoners are not
provided with the courses which are necessary to reduce their risk, they can no longer
mount a legal challenge to that omission. Cutting funding for such courses means
that prisoners must remain behind bars for longer than is necessary, as they fail to
progress through their sentence. When prisoners are kept in custody for longer than
required, it is an injustice both to the prisoner and to the taxpayer who must foot the
bill.
Labour’s focus should be on reducing the number of 50,000 prisoners who serve
sentences of less than 12 months for non-violent crimes at a cost to the taxpayer of
nearly £300 million a year. Short-term custodial sentences are not just expensive, they
are ineffective too. This is the view shared by academics and prison officers. The reoffending rate for short-term prison sentences is 58.5%, which represents a
staggering failure of public policy. Short-term prison sentences do not rehabilitate.
Locking someone away, even for a few weeks, can expose them to physical violence,
drug-taking and damage their mental health and well-being. It can cost people their
job and breaks up families.
“Labour’s focus should be on reducing the number of 50,000
prisoners who serve sentences of less than 12 months”
If we want to think seriously about turning people’s lives around, we need to look
outside the prison walls. The re-offending rate for those placed on community
sentences is 35.9%, significantly lower than the rate for those who are given shortterm prison sentences. At approximately one-tenth of the price of sending someone
to prison, community sentences are also more cost effective. Community sentences
are not a ‘soft’ option. Research has found that many prisoners say they prefer a
short-term prison sentence over a community sentence because it is easier to
complete while others considered community sentences to be more of a punishment.
Community sentences, as they should be, are demanding, often requiring the
perpetrator to engage in drug and alcohol treatment, unpaid work and restorative
justice. The sentences can involve visible and restorative work in local areas, delivered
through local organisations, where the crimes have been committed. Their visibility
can increase public confidence that perpetrators are being made to face up to their
crime. Restorative justice provides victims of crime with the opportunity to tell
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