Posts Tagged sentencing
Crime, Poverty and Imprisonment
Posted by Nick Cowen in Crime on 28/09/2011
By David Fraser
The Secretary of State for Justice, Ken Clarke, has claimed that recent falls in crime have occurred at a time of increased prosperity. He concluded that therefore the way to reduce offending rates further was to improve prosperity levels generally, and added that there was no link between imprisonment and crime. However, such arguments are not only contradicted by recent empirical research, but by decades of experience from the UK and other countries.
- Read the full comment here.
The Prison Reform that Wasn’t There
Posted by Nick Cowen in Crime on 28/09/2010
Yesterday, Jack Straw defended his record on prisons at a Fabian event at the Labour Party conference (via Next Left). Juliet Lyons of the Prison Reform Trust felt let down that New Labour had not put a stop to rising prison numbers when they were in office. The problem with her complaint is the lack of a viable alternative to prison in a great many cases. Despite years of campaigning, reformers have yet to come up with a solid evidence-based reform to our current prison system.