Ken Clarke, a "Progressive."

“I think it is too simple to argue about tougher sentencing or softer sentencing, although it makes for good headlines,” said Justice Minister Ken Clarke yesterday in his speech to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. How true. How honest.  (I describe him as a “Progressive” in my Guardian piece on his speech to the CCJS yesterday.) A more appropriate term would be “effective.” Effective sentencing not only means reserving prison for those who have caused serious harm to others, but ensuring that while they are there, if they want to change and work towards living crime free lives they should be offered every opportunity to do so. Not, you understand, for reasons of compassion and understanding and kindness – but to maximise the likelihood that they will not re-offend and hurt someone else once they have been released. Everyone in prison, bar the thirty or so highest profile murderers in the system, will be released one day and they will end up being somebody’s neighbour. My view is that we, as a society, should be doing all we can to ensure that once they are out they become good neighbours. I’m also with Clarke as far as short sentences are concerned. For every sentence under twelve months that scares a perpetrator into “going straight” – nine others will only serve to condition the offender into the prisoner/convict/criminal identity. The majority of long term prisoners have at least a couple of short sentences somewhere in their history. Effective community sentencing is the way forward for less serious offenders – failure to comply should result in a custodial sentence of at least two years – not to be spent in a traditional, invariably overcrowded  and underresourced long term prison, but in a facility designed specifically to get them to address why they are failing.  These are challenging ideas, but necesarry if we really want fewer people to become victims of re-offenders.