The furore over halving sentences for early guilty pleas shows how hard it is to discuss prison reform
In what has become a febrile political climate, a 50% discount on sentences for people making early guilty pleas was never going to be an easy sell. Ken Clarke did not help his cause by getting into an argument over rape on BBC Radio 5 Live last month. As is sometimes the case with the justice secretary, an engaging, if blokeish, self-confidence comes across as arrogance or complacency.
But the demise of a relatively modest bureaucratic fix offers some insight into the scope, or rather the lack of scope, for anything approaching a serious and meaningful agenda for reform of our prisons. The prime minister's intervention today, in which he disinterred the hoary old chestnut of householders using "reasonable force" to defend their property, signals the beginning of a return of a more traditional Tory law and order agenda.
A discount on early guilty pleas was a weak policy on which to make an apparently reformist stand. How to distinguish between early pleas as a result of overwhelming evidence of guilt and those where the defendant might have some hope of acquittal was never really clarified. And what of the perverse incentive ? not to speak of the rank injustice ? of innocent defendants pleading guilty for fear of a far more significant sentence if a court finds them guilty at a later point?
An upfront and generous sentencing discount also challenges important principles of the justice process itself. Behind the argument about discounts for rapists and muggers lies a more fundamental question about how criminal justice operates and how those suspected of perpetrating serious harms are dealt with. It was not just the tabloid press and the lock 'em up fraternity that felt queasy at the prospect of men who had sexually molested women being given a much more lenient sentence for admitting culpability early on. Cost considerations also figured strongly in the argument, which made it easier for opponents to dismiss the proposals as mere pragmatism. There was no obvious principle at stake apart from a self-imposed need to save money.
Where this leaves Clarke is anybody's guess. Of more import is the agenda for prison reform in the coming period. At the time of Clarke's speech last year to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies hopes were high among reformers. The "Clarke spring" beckoned. The pressure of spending cuts to be made would force ministers to embrace unpalatable and radical options, so the argument went. In practice ministers have tended to focus on the cost-cutting agenda before anything else. Small steps down the reformist road have not resulted in any meaningful change.
This stuttering progress comes at the same time as big changes are unfolding in the reform lobby. Some of the more recognisable household names have spent much of the past year positioning themselves to bid for contracts in the brave new world of payment by results in partnership with the private sector. Others are facing unprecedented financial pressures as these emergent financing structures challenge traditional ways of operating.
What is missing as all this manoeuvring continues is a coherent vision for what might be involved in genuine prison reform, and how this might be achieved. A vibrant reform sector, free from financial dependence on government, focused on the evidence base, confident about articulating a vision for change, unafraid of challenging ministers and their advisers, is what is needed to break the logjam.
That so many reformists invested so much in defending and championing a minor and uninspiring bureaucratic tweak to sentencing policy says much about the state of the current debate, and signals how much needs to change.
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