Jail sentences of six months or less should be scrapped, according to the prisons minister. Rory Stewart has said the move would ease pressure on prisons and be better for offenders. In comments reported by The Daily Telegraph, he said that "very short" jail terms were "long enough to damage you and not long enough to heal you". He added: "You bring somebody in for three or four weeks, they lose their house, their job, their family, their reputation. "They come [into prison], they meet a lot of interesting characters (to put it politely) and then you whap them on to the streets again. "The public are safer if we have a good community sentence... and it will relieve a lot of pressure on prisons." please log in to view this image Imagerisons minister Rory Stewart says the move would assist prisoner rehabilitation Around 30,000 offenders a year including some burglars and most shoplifters could be spared jail under the proposals. Mr Stewart said that the exception to his plans would be violent offenders or those convicted of sex offences. He told the newspaper that such a move would free up 4,000 prison places and create more space for education and workshops, adding: "We can change lives more". The number of prisoners has doubled since the 1990s to around 80,000 and around 60% of short-term prisoners re-offend within a year of their release, the Telegraph says. The Prison Reform Trust says that almost half of prisoners in England and Wales have been sentenced to six months or less.
Rory Stewart is one of the few Tories I have any time for; and he's right on this. The purpose of prison should be to protect the public from dangerous individuals; not to punish petty criminals, who could be dealt with more effectively through the use of community service etc.
Agreed... When i worked at Dorchester Prison due to it being the only cat B in the area, the sentences were generally about 6 months (sometimes more or less) but you'd see a fish come in for his first time, get to know people over their 6 months and end up inevitably returning... when they walk back on the ring their name gets chanted round the prisonn with people rattling the doors shouting welcome home etc.
How about making sentences 6 months minimum, instead of short four week sentences and give them hard labour as well, then we will see how many re-offend.
Yes, twice. I'd have killed the ****s if I'd ever got hold of them. But revenge is not the basis of a legal system.
Yes, let's go down the American route, that seems to work. Not much reoffending in the nation that imprisons more of it's citizens than any other civilised country in the world...
So if prison works so well as a deterrent, why do people keep striking out? The USA has also seen a massive increase over the last 50 years, in the use of the death penalty. And still the murder rate goes up.
