As you say in your editorial (The Guardian view on early prisoner release: don’t lose sight of systemic reform, 12 August), governments of all stripes have bowed to pressure for ever longer sentencing. For instance, the killers of PC Andrew Harper would now face mandatory life sentences, campaigned for across the board. It was the unlikely figure of Douglas Hurd, the Conservative home secretary, who said that prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse. That expense is always one that is tempting for governments demonstratively to minimise.
The result is a prison service that hasn’t got room for all those the courts convict, nor enough staff or scope to reform and rehabilitate them for the benefit of society. The assault that has been made on Parole Board and probation decision-making and capabilities compounds this.
So, Andy Burnham has inherited a decision that has nothing to do with judicially assessed sentencing and remission, merely to do with patching a hole in the balance sheet. If he does indeed want to avoid a repeat of this shambles, as you report, then he has to grow a backbone and stand up against the populist pressures to appear “tough on crime”, and find the money to be “tough on the causes of crime”.
Nik Wood
London
The government’s scramble to keep PC Andrew Harper’s killers behind bars while freeing up space in prisons is the latest example of UK policy shortcomings and a subsequent failure to remedy the scandal. None stand out more than the unaddressed injustice of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences. Abolished over a decade ago and described as “psychological torture” by the UN, over 2,000 people remain trapped in prisons on IPP sentences.
Andy Burnham has pledged to find an early resolution to the IPP crisis, but too often politicians have decried scandals, only to then kick the can down the road.
Resolving IPP would end one of the greatest scandals in our criminal justice system and also ease the burden on our creaking prisons – resentencing IPP prisoners could free up the equivalent of four prisons. The time for acknowledging injustices and promising to conduct a review is over. It’s time to act.
Henry Rossi
Bristol
With reference to your article (More women will die if domestic abusers leave prison early, victim’s parents warn, 17 August), there is an effective way for the government to mitigate this sad fact. This is to legislate to ensure that the court must always consider future protection in all cases of domestic abuse, rather than just focus on immediate incarceration.
How? To make it a presumption that the relevant “add-on” ancillary order is always considered whenever available, or give reasons why the order is not appropriate. For instance, it may be disproportionate given the facts of the case, or the victim may give freely held views that they genuinely do not want an order to be made.
For instance, an add-on restraining order with terms to exclude the perpetrator from the home and work areas of the victim, for life, so that the victim has some security and safety whenever the release date happens to fall. Various protective orders are available, but they are not yet an obligatory consideration in open court. They should be, along with obligatory victim consultation before sentence.
Janet Carter
Retired barrister, Leeds
