Politicians are guilty of turning our prisons into pressure cookers

As an interim report by former justice secretary David Gauke lays bare how a move to long sentencing has contributed to a prison system in crisis, what has become of the political class that got hooked on being ‘tough on crime’, asks Andrea Coomber KC

The former deputy prime minister, Willie Whitelaw, used to talk about punishing criminals with “short, sharp shocks”. Finally, one has been delivered to our prison system, by a former Tory minister.

The independent sentencing review is an extraordinary volte-face for the justice system, upending decades of consensus by both main political parties that long sentences make not just for severe punishment but also lead to less crime.

David Gauke, the former justice secretary, was commissioned by Keir Starmer to look at what is going wrong in our prisons. His clear denunciation of past decades is compounded by the shocking numbers who are held in prisons. Compare 1993, when the average prison population was less than 45,000, to today, when it is commonplace for two or three men to share one cell, and when suicides on the prison estate are rocketing.

It may not seem as such to the world at large, but this is a remarkable document that could alter our approach to how we deal with criminality.

Politicians who want longer prison sentences often tell us how important it is that wrongdoers are punished harshly, and forced to reflect on what they have done. So what comes next for the long line of former ministers whose chaotic management brought the criminal justice system to the brink of collapse, now that we know that their “tough on crime” policies were to blame?

Gauke’s first report points to inconsistent, ill-considered and knee-jerk sentencing reform since the mid-1990s as being the root cause of a crisis that now leaves prisons and the probation service overwhelmed.

If this sounds familiar, you may have read a report that was published by the Howard League last September, in which the most senior former judges in England and Wales called on the government to reverse the trend of imposing ever longer sentences. Our report explained how and why prison sentences have increased in recent decades and spelt out the impact that this has had. We did not single out any ministers as being personally responsible for this mess, but had we decided to, there would have been no shortage of candidates.

We could have talked about Michael Howard, the former home secretary, who told the Tory party conference in 1993 that “prison works” and embarked on a raft of criminal justice policies that set the prison population soaring and held the country back.

We could have talked about Tony Blair, whose mantra of “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” took us from bad to worse, introducing counterproductive arrest targets for police and draconian measures such as sentences of imprisonment for public protection (IPP).

His government also introduced Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act, which haphazardly increased sentences for certain kinds of murder and then distorted all future sentences. If any one piece of legislation is at fault for the current mess, it’s Schedule 21.

In the 14 years between Howard’s “prison works” speech and Blair’s resignation as prime minister in 2007, the prison population almost doubled, from 44,000 to 80,000, but that only begins to tell the story of the damage caused. Together, Howard and Blair set expectations against which future governments would be judged, and too few politicians have since found the courage to swim against the tide.

So we could have talked about David Cameron, who gave an encouraging speech about prison reform in February 2016 but was out of Downing Street only four months later. In the end, his legacy in criminal justice amounted to even longer sentences, a dangerously overcrowded and understaffed prison system, and a catastrophic part-privatisation of probation – all under the watchful eye of Chris Grayling.

Jumping a few more years ahead, we could have talked about Rishi Sunak, who was warned repeatedly that the prison system was in meltdown but responded only by doubling down on the punitive rhetoric that led us here. Urged to take sensible measures to ease pressure on jails, he called a general election instead. And that was that.

Naming and shaming have become a central feature of this country’s approach to criminal justice, but it does not get us very far. Whoever is to blame, we now have a huge problem in front of us and no time to lose. We have to grasp the nettle, change course and make decisions that are difficult – a reality that even Howard recognised, in an interview marking 30 years since his famous speech.

For too long, criminal justice policies have been judged on whether they appear “tough” or “soft” – when what really matters is whether they work. Making sentences longer and longer puts intolerable pressure on prisons and adds to the burden on a probation service that has been asked to do too much, with too little, for too long. Dealing with the consequences takes valuable resources away from preventing crime and supporting victims.

We can start to put things right if we shift our focus away from the length of sentences and towards what people are doing while serving them. If someone needs support to move away from crime, locking them in a prison cell for hours on end with nothing to do is not going to help.

The government has recognised that it can’t build its way out of the current prison crisis. It is time that they levelled with the public about what prisons can and can’t achieve, and led a sensible, evidence-based conversation about how to keep our communities safe. The answer isn’t prison.

Andrea Coomber KC (Hon.) is chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform