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Prison reform “about turning people’s lives around” says Justice Secretary (14 February 2017)

Date: 14/02/2017
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Prison reform “about turning people’s lives around” says Justice Secretary

Justice Secretary Elizabeth Truss has set out her views on sentencing and the size of the prison population.

Speaking to The Centre for Social Justice, the Justice Secretary said that problems within Britain’s prisons would not be fixed “in weeks or months”. She outlined four key areas where improvements were needed and said that sentences were too long, prisons were too overcrowded to work, the wrong people were in prison and prison population management was not good enough.

Ms Truss said that, since 2010, the size of UK’s prison population has been stable with around 85,000 people in prisons in Britain. However, the prison population consistently rose for the three successive decades preceding 2010, with a sharp increase of 20,000 prisoners (31%) between 2000 and 2010. England and Wales have 148 people per 100,000 in prison, compared with 151 in Australia, 78 in Germany, 95 in France and 698 in the US.

She added that it was not true that rates of imprisonment had risen across the board, or that the UK had seen sentence inflation across the board with fewer shorter sentences being handed out for offences like shoplifting and proportionally fewer people in prison for those type of offences.

The Justice Secretary argued that:

“What we have seen is significant increases in sentences in particular areas in fact, the biggest driver for prison growth in the last twenty years has been the exposure, pursuit and punishment of sexual offences and crimes of violence, and a toughening up of sentences for these crimes. This is down to a wholly welcome improvement in attitude to victims of sex crimes across society – it has meant more victims are coming forward, they are being taken more seriously by the criminal justice system, and they are dealt with with a greater understanding.”

Ms Truss added that The Prison and Courts Bill – due to be published in February – would for the first time enshrine in law that reforming offenders was a key purpose of prison, placing the responsibility of the success of this with the Secretary of State.

“At the moment, the duty of the Justice Secretary is to house offenders – I don’t think that is good enough. We have to be about turning people’s lives around.”

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