Blunkett to stamp out prolific offending
Home secretary David Blunkett turned the current prison policy on its head yesterday after he announced plans to extend fines, “tougher” community service and electronic tagging in a bid to reduce the bulging prison population.
The Government said the plans would cut the jail population by some 13,000 inmates by 2009, from 93,000 to 80,000.
The Home Office said it wanted to curtail the “drift” towards imprisoning minor risk convicts. Instead the courts will hand out stiffer community schemes.
Ministers also called for a “step-change in sentencing practice” in courts.
The home secretary also said he would merge the Prison and Probation Services to ensure greater focus was placed on rehabilitating first time, low level offenders.
He told the BBC: “Unless we turn around the first time offender quickly and rehabilitate them, they become persistent – what is know as prolific offenders.”
Martin Narey, the former director general of the Prisons Service, will head the new body which is expected to be up and running by June this year.
Mr Blunkett said in a Commons statement: “This is a once in a generation opportunity to transform the way we manage offenders to make sure they pay back the community they have harmed, to reduce re-offending and to cut crime.
“Those who commit the most serious crimes need to be locked up – in some cases for very much longer than they used to be in the past. But we are also committed to implementing radical changes that can help rehabilitate offenders and reintegrate them into the community.”
David Davis, Tory home affairs spokesman, said the plans were an admission of failure. “It is the inevitable result of having a Home Secretary who talks tough on sentencing, who creates more crimes and more imprisonable offences but doesn’t build enough prisons to house the increasing number of criminals and is then surprised when his prisons overflow.”
