Clarke’s hypocritical policy agenda

By Carolina Bracken

Ken Clarke was right to praise the police, court staff and judiciary, who worked with indomitable dedication in the aftermath of the recent riots. However, his assertion that our criminal justice system “has the capacity…to deal with those who come before it” is somewhat hypocritical. It is in spite of, rather than due to, Clarke’s agenda that the courts and prisons were able to adapt as capably as they did.

Clarke wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to cut costs and reducing spending, but simultaneously rely on courts he is closing, prison places he is removing and rehabilitation he is failing to achieve.

To take one example, the Justice Secretary supports the courts’ decision to send an anomalous proportion of offenders to custody. Ironic, in an article calling for offenders to “pay back to the communities they have damaged”, set against a backdrop of tireless campaigning extolling the virtues of community sentences – all the more so given the context of street-cleaning and rebuilding that cries out for community efforts.

This does not address whether the sentences passed are proportionate; as Clarke himself says, “only those in court know the full facts of each case”. Rather, it is to note that, although prison numbers reached record highs, the spaces were there. The system would be less able to cope with a similar surge in the future if planned cuts and closures take place.

Predictably, Clarke attributed the outburst of riots to our “broken penal system”, citing evidence that three quarters of adults sentenced for riot-related offences came to court with a previous criminal history. There is scant dispute that current reoffending rates are unacceptable. Yet, more than a year after the purported ‘rehabilitation revolution’ was first announced, his comments are in large part a tired rehash of an ailing and disingenuous policy.

While the government plans to transform our prisons into places of real work are laudable in theory, in practice the Ministry of Justice will deliberately exclude those most in need of help purely on the basis of costs. Although the government has pledged to place “hard work” at the heart of the prison culture, training will only be available for those offenders who display “a willingness to reform”. This eligibility criteria will inevitably lead to rehabilitative selection, and it is the very offenders requiring the most intensive and individually targeted intervention who are most likely to slip through the net.

Clarke seems to advocate a robust justice system, driven by results and free from overcrowding and staff shortages. Yet he glosses over the detail of how to get there. More concerning still, he fails to acknowledge how acutely this grates against his own avowed penal policy. A workable capacity, strong staff body and effective rehabilitative interventions are incompatible with a relentless programme of cuts and closures. Of course he is right that “reform can’t stop at our penal system alone”, but promises of penal reform have been made, and subsequently broken, many times before. By prioritising immediate cost savings over long term results, Clarke’s assertions of a failing penal system will continue to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.