The Guardian view on sentencing reform: a landmark possibility for modification | Editorial
David Gauke’s evaluation gives penal policy in England and Wales a once-in-a-generation chance to move in a more useful direction. The independent sentencing review for England and Wales under David Gauke is a site response to both an instant situation in the jails and to a native criminal justice policy failure going back decades. It creates the system for chastening plan to take a much-needed new direction. As Mr. Gauke states, this will take bravery from the government. Encouragingly, the lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, has accepted most referrals in concept, though with some exemptions. The demand currently, however, is for continual action, investment, and results.
When the review was developed in 2024, jails for men had been at 99% of capacity for 18 months, and a surge of more prison sentences was developing after the summer riots. Managed early-release procedures eased some stress, but demand for areas is still projected to surpass supply by 9,500 in 2028. The inevitable fact is that the dilemma has its origins in lengthy customs of extreme jail sentencing, occasionally politically and media driven, and of blatantly inadequate investment in new jails and non-custodial options. Both of these things now need to change in extreme and quantifiable ways.
The Gauke review takes a comprehensive approach. Extra jails have to definitely become part of the answer, however, Ms. Mahmood and Mr. Gauke are right that Britain cannot build its way out of this crisis. That can only be completed by different sentencing plans, on which the evaluation makes proposals on everything from the sentencing of serial violent culprits to the requirement for more deferred sentences for low-risk offenders with high needs, including expectant women.
Key Recommendations
- Main proposition is to reduce prison numbers by “earned progression” sentences with 3 stages.
- Short prison sentences to be abolished to help female detainees.
- Increased use of suspended sentences.
- Proposals estimated to save nearly 10,000 male jail spaces.
These proposals should be actively supported. However, they certainly create the need to invest in substantial high-quality non-custodial support. Released offenders will need to be properly monitored and managed back into productive non-criminal, non-drug-dependent lives. This means tagging, but it also means better-paid and appropriately valued and resourced probation officers.
Probation services in Britain are under pressures at least as serious as those facing the jails, with cuts in staff numbers, excessive caseloads, and inadequate technology. They cannot play their part in this new approach without serious investment. The review rightly says that connections between probation staff and offenders need to get priority.
For this new beginning to have meaning and credibility, these needs must be fully reflected in the government’s spending review next month. The Gauke review has a larger lesson for the UK state too. The review was commissioned amid the crisis last October. It has reported, at almost 200 pages, and been adopted as policy in a mere 7 months. It offers Ms. Mahmood with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to introduce transformation. Compare that model of delivery and momentum with successive, often judge-led, inquiries that have taken not months but years to do their work, yet without a guarantee of any enduring change to follow.
