Of all the landmines planted by the last government, bursting prisons were the most dangerous. This left Keir Starmer with no choice but to release some offenders to stop the dam from breaking. Within hours of “The great escape!”, as the Daily Mail called it, some of those 1,700 early-released prisoners reoffended – as 42% of released prisoners do. Expect this story to carry on peppering rightwing front pages, as more released prisoners reoffend. But even angry victims may agree that a few more weeks inside is unlikely to have prevented them doing so.
This country’s “addiction to prison” – out of all proportion to rates of crime – sees England and Wales lock up more people than any other western European country, as unscrupulous politicians hue and cry for ever harsher sentences. Anecdotes of particularly horrific cases trump the actual statistics on crime (which is declining), and a thirst for revenge often outweighs the evidence on how to reduce reoffending.
Here’s the question: can a new government led by a highly rational ex-chief prosecutor open up a great honest public debate about punishment and rehabilitation? Crime has declined sharply over the past 30 years, with a near 90% fall in violent crime, burglary and car theft, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Why it is falling across the western world has sociologists suggesting everything from more education and better opportunities, to less drinking and legalised abortion preventing the birth of unwanted, potentially neglected children. Yet the right claims locking villains in jail and keeping them off the streets is the cause – which is hard to stand up when crime has fallen equally in countries and US states with tougher and gentler penal systems.
Crime is the currency of populists posturing tough for political gain, and ignoring the evidence of what really reduces it. Michael Howard in the 1990s with his “prison works!” battle cry in the wake of James Bulger’s murder sent prison numbers soaring. It went on up, whether under “tough justice” Chris Grayling, infamous banner of books in prisons and privatiser of the probation service, or screw-tightening, sentence-lengthener Dominic Raab.
But there have been some brave rationalists on the Tory benches too. David Cameron appointed Ken Clarke as his first justice secretary, who called for ending useless short sentences and releasing more non-violent offenders. Uproar from the right saw him removed and replaced by Grayling the Terrible. David Gauke, appointed justice secretary in 2018, dared say, “prison simply isn’t working”, as he repaired and renationalised probation, and lasting just over a year in post. He was replaced by Robert Buckland, before Raab the bully followed with more punishment. Zigzagging between (mainly failed) reformers and lock-’em-up hard nuts ended with Alex Chalk, who published a bill replacing short prison sentences with electronic tagging, a move that was opposed by some Tories, and omitted from their manifesto. Prisons brimmed over on his watch, as he warned Rishi Sunak that his government would have “to get down on their knees and pray” prisons wouldn’t explode.
As the prison crisis turned red-hot, judges and prison governors issued panic warnings. Sunak’s behaviour was astounding. When senior police chiefs warned him in June this year to take immediate action and prison governors told him they were on the “precipice of failure”, he refused to implement emergency early releases. He said he would leave it till after the 4 July general election, which police chiefs called “an unacceptable delay”. This ambush for Labour lets Tories and their press vent bogus anger, ignoring 10,000 prisoners released early during the previous year, a fact that was only revealed after the election.
What will Labour do? No one knows yet. The last Labour government set a grim precedent, with Tony Blair’s “tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime” a clever but malign pact with the devil. He did both, easing poverty and improving education. But the high price was Jack Straw’s “three strikes and you’re out” and a succession of sentence-lengthening, prison-filling measures. David Blunkett, who called civil liberties “airy fairy” libertarianism, was as tough, his 2003 Criminal Justice Act creating “imprisonment for public protection”, indeterminate sentences where thousands still fester in jail for decades, often for very minor offences. It is a scandal he now regrets. The Blair/Brown years saw prison numbers in England and Wales rise by nearly two-thirds.
Starmer needs no telling on what should be done to reverse the trend. Appointing an advocate for reform, James Timpson, as prisons ministers has been widely welcomed. Don’t spend the £4bn set aside to build 14,000 new prison places, says Nick Hardwick, a former HM prisons inspector. Use it for education, treatment and support. A sentencing review will be announced soon: the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told the Commons it’s “to make sure that all our sentencing is consistent and coherent, and that our sentences do actually work”. The review needs to confront the public with facts, as 78% think that crime has gone up. Labour could step up to help persuade people against more custody.
Crime lives deep in the emotional imagination. Statistics showing falling violence over the past three decades are no comfort to those living in areas more prone to crime: the owners of small shops plagued by organised shoplifting, let alone mothers of boys murdered by knife gangs. The public’s misperception of ever-rising crime stokes mistrust in politics. Can Starmer convince the punishment-hungry public that his mission to halve violent crime may mean more criminals on probation out on those streets? Defying the foghorns of the right and its media means being braver than Blair.
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Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist