The false dichotomy of penal reform

We have, this week, been offered a choice by the media and some politicians between the 'Prison Works' attitude of former Home Secretary, Michael Howard and Ken Clarke's so called 'lenient' approach to criminal justice (Mr Clarke this week outlined a radical overhaul of the way we run our prisons). In being offered this choice, we have been made to assume that the two are mutually exclusive, polar opposites and that we have to either lock all criminals up until they rot in jail or let lots of axe murderers out on to the streets. This is a false dichotomy - both Clarke and Howard are right.

Michael Howard is correct that prison works in that it keeps dangerous offenders of our streets and deprives the most serious offenders of their liberty as punishment for crimes they have committed. Nobody is suggesting that murderers should not go to jail or that those who are a genuine threat to others should not remain behind bars. We will, under Ken Clarke's reform proposals, continue to send to jail those who deserve to go there.

But when you consider that 40% of prisoners re-offend when they are released from prison, can one really say that prison works in dealing with the problem of crime in our society? No it doesn't.

That is where Ken Clarke's radical changes to the criminal justice system comes in. At the moment prisons, as Douglas Hurd once said, are simply an expensive way of making bad people worse. There are few programmes operating in our prisons that try to educate prisoners, equip them with skills, treat their drug habits and even do basic things like teach prisoners to read and write and where they do exist, the prisoners that need them are invariably on short-term prison sentences so the programmes are ineffective. Would it not be more worthwhile, and a better use of public funds for that matter, to deal with these minor offenders in the community and then concentrate on long-term habitual offenders in our jails?

Ken Clarke's reforms will do exactly that. Recognising that short-term prison sentences aren't a way of reforming and rehabilitating offenders, he promises to engage the private and voluntary sector in helping minor offenders outside of prison in order to stop them from offending again. If we teach criminals to read and write (literacy rates are shockingly low in prisons) and make sure they've got the right training and skills to get a job then we'll break the cycle of crime that has been plaguing our society for far too long.

Ken Clarke's policy is not some way of 'going soft' on criminals. It is the first real policy a government has come forward with to be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' by addressing the question of why so many people go on to re-offend. This policy not only makes financial sense in these strained economic times, but it makes moral sense as well. We need more radical thinkers like Ken Clarke - society would be much better off as a consequence.