News

Expanding the net of criminalisation

Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Catherine Heard, the Centre's Research and Policy Associate, has described how community sentences have failed to cut prisoner numbers.

In a guest blog on the CLINKS website, Catherine outlines the findings of our latest research report Community sentences since 2000: How they work and why they have not cut prisoner numbers.

The data from all three UK jursidictions suggests that 

"community sentences have failed to deliver sustained reductions in the numbers in custody. Without a radical policy shift, community sentences and other non-custodial alternatives will simply expand the net of criminalisation and punishment, exacerbating social harms rather than resolving them. It’s time for a more principled framework for the use of both prison and community sentences." 


You can read the report in full here.