Prison Population (Hansard, 13 February 2002)

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Rooker)

We need to ensure that we can perform the basic duty to protect the public by punishing people for the crimes they have committed while ensuring we engage in rehabilitation to reduce reoffending and prevent crime. To this end we are committed to a radical rethink of the sentencing framework so as to give clarity and direction to the courts and avoid the damaging effects of prison overcrowding. Prison must be used as effectively as possible and targeted where it is most necessary. It should be used for incapacitating dangerous, violent and other serious offenders, but prison sentences should be as long as necessary for punishment and public protection and no longer.

The reform of the probation service, with its central focus on reducing reoffending, means that rigorously enforced community sentences are a real and tough alternative to imprisonment. We want to build on this work to provide sentencers with more than two stark options, imprisonment or a community sentence. We are looking at intermediate disposals such as intermittent custody and a strengthened suspended sentence. On community sentences the courts need to be able to mix and match within a generic sentence so that we can get it right for the individual. As part of the work taking forward the recommendations of the Halliday report on the sentencing framework we are looking at new forms of community penalties that allow the sentencer this flexibility. We aim to encourage greater use of community penalties for some non-violent offenders such as those convicted of theft and handling or fraud.

Home detention curfew and a rigorous assessment process play an important role by enabling some prisoners to be released from prison while still subject to restrictions placed on their liberty. This facilitates a smoother and more effective integration back into the community and helps offenders to secure employment as soon as possible.

We are addressing the recent increase in the female prison population by taking forward the Government's strategy for female prisoners. A cross-government women's offenders reduction plan is currently being developed by a multi-agency team drawn from across the criminal justice system, which is based in the Home Office. The aim of the programme is to strengthen policy, programme, research and spending partnerships across government to reduce women's offending. This 148WA includes linking criminal justice work with broader government efforts to tackle social exclusion, particularly as it affects women at risk of offending.