Less crime, safer communities, fewer people in prison

By Stephen Gummer

The Howard League for Penal Reform‘s latest campaign, Take Action 2010, is launching with the 2010 general election in mind. Prison numbers have more than doubled since the mid-1990s and yet crime remains a major public concern. We believe now is the time to campaign for a change in direction and encourage people to embrace our vision of “less crime, safer communities, fewer people in prison”.

The principle aim of our campaign is to get the public and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates during the general election to accept that there is something seriously wrong with the English and Welsh penal system.

When two thirds of our prison population get out of jail and reoffend, we question whether prison is making Britain’s families safer. When 70% of the people locked up in England and Wales have two or more mental health disorders, we question whether doing nothing is the right option. And when our country treats children as young as ten as if they were criminally responsible adults, we question the very nature of our modern society.

As part of Take Action 2010 we have published an alternative manifesto. The campaign targets four of our core policy areas: investing in the community rather than prisons; ending ineffective short prison terms; improving the treatment of children in the penal system; and implementing a regime of real work for long term prisoners.

Frances Crook, director of the Howard League, writes in her foreword to the Take Action 2010 manifesto:

“Billions of pounds are spent on maintaining our prisons and building thousands of new prison places each year. Instead of tackling the underlying causes of crime by investing in communities and prevention, we spend ever-increasing sums on simply trying to manage the problem. In our flooding house, we spend our money on endless mops when we could look to fix the hole in the roof.”

At the coming election, voters will be asking serious questions about how government money is spent. They should also be asking serious questions about the way we deal with continually high reoffending rates in this country and how their local candidate plans to keep their local community safe. The Howard League for Penal Reform is not an abolitionist society, but has come up with realistic proposals rooted in pragmatic experience from the frontline.

We believe the Howard League’s election manifesto should be on the compulsory reading list of all PPCS as it takes an original approach to a policy area which matters to everyone: the safety of their local community.

We would like as many people as possible to sign up to the Howard League campaign slogan of “less crime safer communities and fewer people in prison” this election. You can join Lady Sovereign, Prunella Scales and Lindsay Lohan and sign up to the Take Action 2010 campaign pledge. We are asking people to spread the message of our campaign as widely as possible. This means that we want you to tell your friends and your local parliamentary candidates about the campaign, and why it’s important.