The Sentencing Review has generated high expectations amongst members of the Criminal Justice Alliance (CJA) and the wider criminal justice civil society sector.
From our submission and other recent consultations with our members, it is clear that voluntary and community sector organisations will play a crucial role in shaping and implementing policy. Below, I have set out some personal reflections on our submission and thoughts on the road ahead.
The Probation Service will be under intense scrutiny in any effort to shift the criminal justice system away from the increasing use of custody and towards community sentences. The widely accepted failure of the part-privatisation of the service under the Transforming Rehabilitation programme has undoubtedly contributed to the challenges the service faces today. Transforming Rehabilitation was built on the premise of the private sector's ability to draw investment and to work at scale. This logic, however, placed these requirements as the central drivers, which with the benefit of hindsight we can see were misplaced.
For any implementation of the Sentencing Review’s recommendations to succeed, we must put people at the heart of policy development, focusing on their needs, aspirations and motivations. The voluntary sector is well-placed to support this, not because it brings large-scale investment, but because it fosters trust with the people going through the criminal justice system. While government partnerships can enhance the sector’s capacity, the real value lies in its ability to engage and support people in ways that statutory services often struggle to achieve.
This is not to dismiss the efforts of many dedicated Prison and Probation Officers, who do their best to support people in custody and the community despite working in circumstances that often don’t support their efforts. However, evidence from inspectorate reports, the data on key indicators such as reoffending, deaths in custody, and my own personal experience working in two prisons over two years shows that our system does not prioritise rehabilitation. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. The challenge for the criminal justice system is to foster a rehabilitation culture, one that values and celebrates success in helping people rebuild their lives, recognises and addresses the social factors that contribute to offending, respects and supports those in the system, ensuring they are treated with dignity, and believes in second chances rather than punishment for punishment’s sake.
Many of these traits are found in the approaches of our members and wider civil society organisations working across the system. While victims must be central to any justice process, most of our members working with victims advocate for solutions that address root causes, reduce reoffending, and ultimately prevent future harm.
The need for reform in the treatment of women in the justice system has been well established since Jean Corston’s review. Successive governments have been repeatedly told that the majority of women in custody pose no threat to the public. The establishment of the Women’s Justice Board is a welcome step, but it must lead to tangible reductions in the number of women held in custody, progress that is long overdue.
In our submission, we expressed deep disappointment that the Sentencing Review failed to address race disparities. This was a missed opportunity to acknowledge and tackle one of the most pressing issues in the criminal justice system. The issue of diversity policy in institutions has been highly topical recently. However, the reality is that racial disparities tend to worsen in a context where regressive policymaking is in the ascendancy. I have called this the progressive/regressive axis. For example, in police stop and search, the more stop and search that is undertaken with fewer safeguards, will result in wider racial disparity.
We have seen this pattern consistently in the use of Section 60 stop and search powers, an issue that the CJA led a super-complaint on to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS). If the Sentencing Review is to be truly progressive, it must hold the potential to reduce racial disparities rather than reinforce them.
To conclude, we need this Sentencing Review and its implementation to work. The CJA’s members and wider civil society sector must be strategic partners, not just cheap providers. We need to build a rehabilitation culture across the criminal justice system and acknowledge that the current culture is far from where it needs to be. Addressing inequality should be seen as a strength, not something to shy away from. Finally, government and politicians must champion this process, and this must involve setting out the case for doing it with the public, the sector can be a key ally in doing this.
The CJA’s full submission can be accessed on our website.
This article is part of our ‘Ideas for sentencing reform’ series, discussing sentencing reforms against the background of the Independent Sentencing Review under the former Lord Chancellor, Rt Hon David Gauke.
If you would like to suggest an article for this series, get in touch.
