Locking up fewer criminals would not save money, claims ex-Home Office criminologist
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
A former Home Office criminologist has challenged government plans to lock up fewer criminals, claiming it would not save money or reduce reoffending.
A report for Civitas by Professor Ken Pease, titled Prison, Community Sentencing and Crime, argues that hope of cutting expenditure on prisons can only be achieved by ignoring the impact on victims of crime.
The findings challenge previous statements by Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, who has called for fewer and shorter sentences on cost grounds.
Pease uses Home Office estimates to show that 13,892 offences resulting in convictions could be prevented by keeping offenders on short sentences in prison for one extra month.
He estimates that if every successful conviction represented a conservative 5.9 offences committed by the offender, the cost of imprisonment would be the same as the costs of crime prevented.
"The debate about imprisonment costs and effects has been distorted by the perceived wisdom that prison is expensive, community sanctions are as effective as custody in protecting the public, and that dissent from these convenient fictions marks someone out as a penal sadist," Pease states in the report.
Youth Justice Board proposals to save 25 per cent of its budget each year for the next three years have already been outlined, the majority of savings coming as a result of reduced levels of custody.
