January 14, 2010: Justice Committee Report Welcomed

The Howard League for Penal Reform has welcomed the findings of the “excellent” Justice Committee report: Cutting crime: the case for justice reinvestment.

The ‘Cutting Crime’ report recognises that ‘prison is a relatively ineffective way of reducing crime for other than serious offenders’ and that the Committee was convinced that more prison building will prove a ‘costly mistake’. The Justice Committee champions the need to reinvest the public’s money directly into communities.

Howard League Director Frances Crook said:

“I have long said that you cannot build your way out of a prisons crisis and that the answer lies instead in the communities where much crime occurs. Instead of building more and more warehouses for people, it makes far better social and financial sense to prevent crime happening in the first place."

“The Howard League for Penal Reform believes that justice reinvestment and a less centralised, more localised approach to criminal justice would be more successful at reducing reoffending and the numbers in custody whilst, crucially, creating safer and more confident communities where people actually perceive the benefits of safer streets and healthy neighbourhoods."

“The need for a change of direction has been recognised by a number of recent reports and inquiries, from our own Commission on English Prisons Today to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Local Government and now in this excellent report from the Justice Committee. We now have a sizeable head of steam for real reform in criminal justice and the financial realities of the coming years make that reform all the more urgent.”

Frances Crook also addressed the need for any justice reinvestment initiative to benefit “whole communities”:

“If you are to reorganise and restructure, release money and get public support for quite a radical idea then local people have to see that they will get something out of it too."

“Whilst it is absolutely right that you should point services at particular people who are likely to be or are being troublesome, you must also benefit the whole community because at the moment there is no public confidence in the criminal justice system. Nobody sees it; the system is distant and hidden away from local communities and this problem goes far beyond questions of sentencing policy."

“We have to find a responsible and appropriate way to give justice and resources back to local communities.”