Create a version of NICE to sort out the justice system

My submission to the Sentencing Review calls for radical changes

I was CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform for over 30 years. I have also been a non-exec director of an NHS Trust and a university governor. I am currently the Co-Convenor of the Commission on Political Power. I am making this submission in a personal capacity.

1. Political rhetoric is reductionist and mistakenly focussed on punishment and prison whereas all research and evidence shows that in order to prevent crime and reoffending and to protect victims and communities, a better system is needed.

2. The focus should be on community and individual safety.

3. The constant references to prison by politicians and the media puts it at the centre of a justice system that is failing and is itself dishonest as it pretends that imprisonment is effective. Politicians and sentencers who utilise this rhetoric are not being honest with the public or victims. 

4. There is a robust research and evidence base that shows how to achieve desistance. It is ignored in favour of cheap and nasty political responses by politicians and the media.

5. This is what has caused sentence inflation and feeds the crime problem and failing prisons.

6. British prisons are the last unreformed public service and have failed individuals, staff, victims and the taxpayer for two centuries. A nineteenth century prison warden would recognise our prisons today and the daily work of the prison officer.

7. The Sentencing Council has colluded with this failure and has only contributed to inflated prison sentences.

8. The destruction of probation, which had been a nationally successful service, by Chris Grayling is a national scandal. It has not been reconstituted or funded properly. It needs more autonomy, clarity and better basis in effectiveness.

9. Technological interventions can be an aid but are not a solution.

10. The way forward is to learn from the health service which has an independent body overseeing effectiveness and value for money. The Sentencing Council should be abolished and instead a body similar  to the National Institute of Care and Health Excellence should be established with real powers. This should look at ideas like justice reinvestment and restorative solutions. 

11. It is generally acknowledged that the justice system is not only failing but it is inflating crime, costing the taxpayer and creating victims. It is time to do something radically different, not just tinker with a system that is rotten to the core. 

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