In November 2024, the government commissioned an Independent Sentencing Review looking at how to make the prison system “better and more effective”.
In reference to the findings of the Independent Sentencing Review’s interim report, The Guardian stated “successive governments’ over-reliance on prison sentences and desire to seem ‘tough on crime’ have driven the justice system in England and Wales to the brink of collapse”.
This approach, this populist punitiveness, is one in which particular policy positions are normally adopted under the belief that they will be popular with the public.
Put simply, by feeding into the public’s desire for punishment, electoral benefits will accrue.
If this kind of populist approach to penal policy is responsible for the prison crisis, which depends upon a certain understanding of public opinion, then public opinion should be a central concern for anyone attempting prison reform. Despite this, surprisingly – and rather unfortunately – public attitudes towards sentencing were given very little direct attention in the government’s initial call for evidence (an omission highlighted by our colleague Dr Ben Jarman’s response to the review).
This is important, for whilst public opinion is currently regarded as a barrier to reform, we should not foreclose the possibility that public views can become a catalyst for more meaningful and radical change.
Mollie’s doctoral research is examining these issues, specifically the sociocultural drivers of punitive public attitudes. The project aims to demonstrate that punitive attitudes are driven more by morality, intergroup relations, and resource scarcity than by concerns directly related to crime and victimisation. This matters because it strengthens our ability to position reform as a compelling alternative to incarceration.
To ‘sell’ prison reform to the public, we must first understand what the public are ‘buying’ into when supporting punitive measures.
Equally, to ‘sell’ reform, Harry observed in his response to the Sentencing Review that any reductionist reforms must be accompanied by “a story of sentencing to reshape public discourse”, one that is “responsive to legitimate individual and community concerns, while speaking to the kind of society we seek to be”.
This intersects with a growing body of literature that similarly argues that technical, or economics-based, arguments are unlikely to resonate with the public. Crime and punishment are inherently moral and emotional, and expectations about the extent to which the public should have a voice in such matters have grown dramatically.
Efforts to identify not just what policies are effective, but how to implement and maintain such policies, are more important now than ever. Whilst the current Labour government’s appetite for prison reform is to be welcomed, any shift away from the over-use of imprisonment must be done strategically.
Steamrolling a liberalisation of criminal justice policy over a public already concerned that prison conditions are ‘too easy’ risks undermining the legitimacy of the entire system.
The Sentencing Review’s interim report has identified the need for change, the challenge now is to develop a robust strategy to achieve it.
