November 16, 2007: Lord Chief Justice on Prisons and Sentencing

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, has stated that the overcrowding of prisons in England and Wales has reached its current crisis level as a result of current sentencing policy.

Speaking under the auspices of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Lord Phillips acknowledged that prisons were "full to capacity". The theme of his speech, delivered yesterday, was 'How Important Is Punishment?' He  spoke frankly about the current crisis:

“Today, we are in a critical situation. The prisons are full to capacity. Prisoners who go to court do not know whether they will return to the same cell or even the same prison. In the prisons, cells designed for one person that include a lavatory are being used by two, but prisons are still being forced literally to close their doors to any further admissions. After court, prisoners are being driven around for hours on end in a desperate search for a prison that can squeeze them in. As often as not 200 or 300 are spending the night in police or court cells. We simply cannot go on like this.”

He was equally frank about the fiscal realities of imprisonment:

“Prison provides a repository for many whose mental condition is the cause of their offending. It is not the right repository for them. 28% of those male prisoners who show symptoms of psychosis spend 23 hours or more in their cells every day. That is not the right treatment for them. All are agreed that we need, by way of alternative to prison, more accommodation where mentally disordered offenders are treated as patients rather than confined as dangerous criminals.”

He also spoke in favour of community sentencing, and noted that the most common requirement imposed under a Community Order, apart from supervision, is unpaid work, know as ‘community payback’. In the year 2003-4, he stated, about 5 million hours of unpaid work were completed by offenders. In 2004 to 2005 this had risen by about 30% to 6.6 million hours, and 51,206 unpaid work completions. The government plans to increase this to 10,000,000 hours by 2011. Lord Phillips stated his belief that

“... community payback is a desirable alternative punishment to short terms of imprisonment for the following reasons:

• Imprisonment is expensive; the costs of community payback are much lower;
• Community payback is, or should be, a visible form of restorative justice. It does, what its name suggests; it makes reparation to the community for criminal behaviour;
• Community payback is more likely to achieve rehabilitation than a short sentence of imprisonment.”

Resources had to be directed to preventing reoffending at an early stage:

“Money that is spent on punishing offenders is money that could be spent on trying to prevent them from offending in the first place. The question ‘how important is punishment’ is a relative, not an absolute question. Punishment is, of course, important."

" It is hard to envisage any society in which those who offended were not punished. But the 2003 (Criminal Justice) Act rightly stipulates that, where a sentence of imprisonment is imposed, it must be for the minimum period commensurate with the seriousness of the offence. The scale of sentences is now largely determined by Parliament. Where within that scale the facts of a particular offence fall is the judge’s task. Parliament should, when altering that scale, have regard to the resource implications of the changes that are proposed.”

He also raised concerns about mentally disordered offenders in prison:

“Prison provides a repository for many whose mental condition is the cause of their offending. It is not the right repository for them. 28% of those male prisoners who show symptoms of psychosis spend 23 hours or more in their cells every day. That is not the right treatment for them. All are agreed that we need, by way of alternative to prison, more accommodation where mentally disordered offenders are treated as patients rather than confined as dangerous criminals.”