Posts Tagged prisons
Report exposes hidden costs of community sentences over custody
Posted by Nick Cowen in Crime on 28/08/2010
The internationally respected former Home Office criminologist, Professor Ken Pease, has shown that it will not be feasible to save money by releasing convicted prisoners from jail. According to Prison, Community Sentencing and Crime, not only does the available evidence suggest that offending will not be reduced, the Government’s hope of cutting expenditure on prisons can only be achieved by ignoring the impact on victims of crime – costs that the Home Office itself has acknowledged and quantified.
How bad are short custodial sentences?
Posted by Nick Cowen in Crime on 24/08/2010
It is an article of faith amongst some prison reformers that the use of short prison sentences increases the chance of re-offending, sometimes turning a one-time offender towards a life of crime. They are counter-productive in terms of fighting crime, they argue. According to the most recent systematic evidence, this is probably not the case.
Is one violent assault a tragedy, but forty just a statistic?
Posted by Nick Cowen in Crime on 15/07/2010
Andrew Bridges, Chief Inspector of Probation, made quite a splash on Monday when he suggested that the public should bite the bullet (almost literally in some cases) and let criminals convicted of violent offences out of prison early.
Too many short memories
Posted by Nick Cowen in Crime on 20/03/2008
With due credit to ‘Mr Eugenides’ whose frequent use of colourful metaphors renders him unsuitable to be linked to here, we can see the level of conviction with which the government is leading on criminal justice.
May 2000 – Straw plans `short, sharp jail shock’ for young
March 2008 – Too many short sentences – Straw