University News Last updated 06 July 2009
Birmingham City University's Professor of Criminology, David Wilson, says that the prison population should be reduced and that there should be fewer prisons.
Professor Wilson is the Chairman of the Commission on English Prisons Today, which has produced a report into the prison system for the Howard League for Penal Reform. The paper produced by the Commission, whose President is Cherie Booth QC, takes a radical look at the purposes and limits of a penal system and how it should sit alongside other social policies.
Do Better Do Less: The report of the Commission on English Prisons Today advocates a new approach of penal moderation and fundamental reform, including:
- A significant reduction in the prison population and the closure of establishments
- Investment in the localities that currently produce prisoners to reduce crime
- The replacement of short prison sentences with community-based responses
- The dismantling of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), including the break up of the centrally managed prison service
- With local authorities as lead partners, the Commission suggests local strategic partnerships should be formed that bring together representatives from the criminal justice, health and education sectors, with local prison and probation budgets fully devolved and made available for justice reinvestment initiatives
Professor David Wilson, said: "Since early in the 1990s, England and Wales has been set on a course towards becoming a jurisdiction which punishes excessively, harshly and with little attention paid to the relationship between legislation and the impact on prison numbers.
"The result is a crisis of overcrowding which threatens to bring the penal system to its knees. We now jail more of our population than almost any other country in western Europe, despite the fact that there is no evidence to say we are any more crime-prone than our neighbouring countries.
"To counter this crisis of penal excess, the Commission advocates radical and transformational change, starting with a clear acknowledgement that criminal justice is a blunt tool which cannot in itself provide lasting solutions to the problem of crime.
"The current criminal justice system not only wastes money but it is overly centralised and driven by misleading and often meaningless targets. We advocate the breaking up of the National Offender Management Service and its replacement with an agenda rooted in localism and in engaging with communities to seek meaningful outcomes.
"Less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison should be an achievable future. Our report sets out a vision for how we get there."
President of the Commission, Cherie Booth QC, said: "This final report should be a road-map for long term and fundamental reform. The Commission proposes that justice is more local. Crucially, more widespread use of effective community sentences would both allow us to reduce the use of prison and allow for reinvestment of resources into local communities to cut offending."