It's time for Starmer to get smart on crime

Winston Churchill once said that the way a society treats its criminals “is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of a country”. This nation is failing that test. Prisons are desperate, dangerous places, unable to perform their role of rehabilitating inmates and making them less likely to reoffend. Drugs, violence and self-harm are rife. With too many prisoners locked up for 23 hours a day, education and training are all but impossible. It is shocking that almost 10% of male prisoners develop an addiction in jail. It is appalling that three-quarters of prisoners have literacy levels below those expected of an 11-year-old, but are not being taught to read and write in custody.

When 80% of offending is reoffending, the current approach is not reducing crime: it is in fact making the streets less safe. The government has been forced to free up space – through the early release scheme and changes to the recall system – but the jails are running out of places again. Even the £10bn prison- building programme will not be enough to plug the gap.

The radical changes to the sentencing regime, to be set out this week by David Gauke, the former Conservative justice secretary, are therefore not only welcome; they are essential. Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, are said to be supportive of the reforms and they must have the courage to implement them. Aspects of the plans will be controversial but the alternative is even more unpalatable, because the criminal justice system is on the verge of collapse.

The current crisis in the jails has been created by politics as much as policy. Over the past 30 years, the prison population has doubled, driven by a rise in sentence length. In an attempt to look “tough on crime”, home secretaries have legislated to introduce higher tariffs for certain offences. As Gauke points out, a form of “penal populism” has left the UK with the highest incarceration rate in western Europe.

Of course the most dangerous criminals must be locked up. The courts and the prisons are, however, stuck in a doom loop of retribution and reoffending. There is a mismatch between the “tough on crime” rhetoric and a system that is creating more victims. Official figures show 35% of adults who leave prison in England and Wales go on to commit another offence, rising to 59% of those who have served short custodial sentences. In Norway, which puts a greater focus on rehabilitation, the figure is only 20% .