There's a story in today's Telegraph signalling that fewer criminals will go to jail in future. It's believed that a larger majority of offenders will be given community sentences because prisons are overcrowded and ineffective.
The article focuses on Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary for the UK Government, making his first address since the new shared??? Parliament.
Our initial reaction to this on the iForgiven cloud was "Great, prisoners out on the street to cut costs", however, we've given this further thought. What purpose does prison serve? Is it there to keep the most dangerous of people off the streets or to rehabilitate offenders? Well, both, actually. Those incapable of rehabilitation need to be secured to protect the public interest, but those who would benefit from rehabilitation, should receive it.
Describing the size of the prison population as "astonishing", Mr Clarke is today expected to say that the current system is simply "warehousing" criminals at great expense and doing nothing to prevent them from re-offending when they are released.
So are we "going soft" on offenders? Wasn't this government expected to deliver a tough stance on crime? Perhaps this IS the tough stance? Perhaps this is a more effective way of managing and educating offenders? As Mr Clarke is expected to state, we need to "move away from the numbers game" and focus on whether the current policy is actually working.
Prison is costly and fails to "turn criminals into law-abiding citizens", in fact, quite the opposite in tougher prisons, where criminals are actually said to be toughened and go on to harder crime upon their release. Almost half of prisoners re-offend within a year of their release and for those serving sentences of less than a year, this figre rises to 60%.
Those serving shorter sentences are not being rehabilitated, and upon being incarcerated, often lose their jobs and leave families behind to rely on an already cripled benefits system.
If we were to provide strong, effective rehabilitation programmes for this group of non-dangerous criminals, surely we would benefit as a Country?
We iForgive this initiative. Who knows whether it will work or not, but it's got to be an improvement on paying thousands of pounds to keep someone locked in a box for a year, only to be released and re-offend all over again...isn't it?
The article focuses on Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary for the UK Government, making his first address since the new shared??? Parliament.
Our initial reaction to this on the iForgiven cloud was "Great, prisoners out on the street to cut costs", however, we've given this further thought. What purpose does prison serve? Is it there to keep the most dangerous of people off the streets or to rehabilitate offenders? Well, both, actually. Those incapable of rehabilitation need to be secured to protect the public interest, but those who would benefit from rehabilitation, should receive it.
Describing the size of the prison population as "astonishing", Mr Clarke is today expected to say that the current system is simply "warehousing" criminals at great expense and doing nothing to prevent them from re-offending when they are released.
So are we "going soft" on offenders? Wasn't this government expected to deliver a tough stance on crime? Perhaps this IS the tough stance? Perhaps this is a more effective way of managing and educating offenders? As Mr Clarke is expected to state, we need to "move away from the numbers game" and focus on whether the current policy is actually working.
Prison is costly and fails to "turn criminals into law-abiding citizens", in fact, quite the opposite in tougher prisons, where criminals are actually said to be toughened and go on to harder crime upon their release. Almost half of prisoners re-offend within a year of their release and for those serving sentences of less than a year, this figre rises to 60%.
Those serving shorter sentences are not being rehabilitated, and upon being incarcerated, often lose their jobs and leave families behind to rely on an already cripled benefits system.
If we were to provide strong, effective rehabilitation programmes for this group of non-dangerous criminals, surely we would benefit as a Country?
We iForgive this initiative. Who knows whether it will work or not, but it's got to be an improvement on paying thousands of pounds to keep someone locked in a box for a year, only to be released and re-offend all over again...isn't it?
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