ON my first day as Justice Secretary after the General Election on July 4, I was told about the true scale of the crisis in our jails.
The Tories had left our prisons on the edge of disaster. At any moment, they could have run out of space entirely.
The Tories liked to talk tough on crime, but they left this country less safe[/caption]
Jason Hoganson pictured outside HM Prison Durham[/caption]
Had that happened, we would have had to shut the front doors to our prisons.
Courts would have cancelled all trials.
The police would have stopped making arrests.
We would have seen the total breakdown of law and order.
I faced this situation because Rishi Sunak was too weak to act when he had the chance.
The Tories liked to talk tough on crime, but they left this country less safe.
In July, I had no choice. To deal with the crisis, we would have to release some offenders from custody a few weeks or months early.
They will now serve the rest of their sentences on licence, monitored by probation officers in the community.
As your Justice Secretary, I will ensure the scenes we witnessed, first in September and again today, can never happen again.
That’s why I am now setting out a long-term plan to end the crisis in our prisons.
I will make sure no government is ever again put in the position we have been forced in to.
That starts by building more jails.
The last Government talked a big game on prison building. But over their 14 years in power, they added just 500 places to our prison capacity.
This Labour Government will build the 14,000 new places the Tories promised but never delivered.
But we must also face the facts. Every year, our prison population grows by 4,500.
To keep pace with that growth, we would have to build HMP Birmingham, the prison in my constituency, nearly five times over, every single year.
The reality is the prison population is rising faster than our ability to lock people up.
Keep people safe
There are only so many spaces we can build.
That’s why today I am launching a sentencing review to end the crisis in our prisons and to keep the public safe.
This review will make sure our prison system works — that there is always space in our jails for dangerous offenders and that prisons are not so full that they are simply a breeding ground for more crime.
Firstly, to keep people safe, we must lock up the most serious criminals.
Secondly, if we want to really cut crime, we must encourage offenders to turn their backs on crime.
We must look at what more can be done to make sure offenders leave prisons with the skills they need to find a job and not reoffend as soon as they are released.
In Texas, a Republican governor introduced “good behaviour credits”.
They mean prisoners can earn time off their sentence by taking part in rehabilitative activity in prison.
Rehabilitative activity in prison
Reoffending dropped, crime fell to a 50-year low and the Texan prison population dropped by 20,000.
Thirdly, we must look at how we can toughen up punishment outside of prisons.
Everyone who breaks our rules must be punished. But some offenders, if they are not dangerous, can be better punished outside prison.
Sentences like these can help end the revolving door of offenders going in and out of prison, coming out more dangerous than they came in.
With the technology at our disposal, like GPS and sobriety tags, anyone punished outside of prison already faces limits on their freedom.
With all the new technology available in the world today, I think we can go much further.
Play politics
The review starts its work today, led by David Gauke, a former Conservative Justice Secretary.
With a Conservative reviewer and a Labour Government, we will together look at an issue that is all too easy to play politics with.
I will consider its findings six months from now, but let me tell you where I stand.
I believe in prisons and that dangerous offenders must be locked up. But I also believe we can punish some offenders outside of prison too.
I believe in punishment — there must be a price for breaking our rules. But I also believe that rehabilitation is possible and must be pursued.
In Britain today, 80 per cent of offenders are re-offenders.
Rehabilitation is the only true crime-cutting policy.
And my promise to you is this — this Government will ensure the emergency release of offenders never happens again.
