Philip Davies: Unlocking the truth - prison works and cuts crime

The latest figures, released in November 2016, show that although 60 per cent of those released from a sentence of less than 12 months go on to reoffend, only 37 per cent of those who serve a sentence of between 12 months and four years do so.

This falls to 24.7 per cent of those who serve a sentence of four to 10 years, 15.6 per cent of those who serve a sentence of 10 years or more, and 11.4 per cent of those sent on an indeterminate sentence go on to reoffend after release.

Prison is clearly not the problem because the longer people spend in there, the less likely they are to reoffend. Perhaps the problem is that they are not spending long enough in prison. That seems to be the lesson from those figures.

The problem is that it is very difficult to be sent to prison for a first offence and a short sentence. People who are eventually given short prison sentences have been given community sentence after community sentence, which have not worked.

The Prisons and Courts Bill contains provisions to toughen up the current position on the use of mobile phones. I am sick to death of seeing pictures of smiling criminals from within prison cells, surrounded by all kinds of creature comforts and ill-gotten gains courtesy of the use of mobile phones in prison.

More concerning is the use of phones to intimidate or threaten victims, or to ensure the continuation of crimes, so I welcome the steps the Government are taking to deal with that scourge.

I also to focus on what is missing from the Bill, which is more important than what is in it. I would like the whole sentence given by the courts to be served. People should certainly should not be automatically released halfway through their prison sentence, as is the case at the moment. That was a scandal when it was introduced.

The Conservative Party was apoplectic when the last Labour government introduced it, but we now seem to think that it is wonderful to release people automatically halfway through their sentence, irrespective of how badly they behave in prison.

I will certainly table an amendment at a later stage in the passage of the Bill to ensure that any prisoner who assaults a prison officer cannot be released automatically halfway through their prison sentence.

We must have some proper punishments for assaulting prison officers. The least that prison officers deserve is that kind of support.

I would also like to see an amendment to limit the use of fixed-term recalls. When prisoners are released early, they do not even go back to serve the remainder of their sentence when they are convicted of a further crime. They just go back into prison for 28 days, for what I would consider a mini-break.

They can usually keep an eye on their criminal activities knowing that they will only be back in prison for 28 days. I hope the Government will deal with that.

I would recommend giving consideration to making judges accountable for their decisions, particularly when they do not hand down custodial sentences that are perfectly justifiable and possibly even expected, and particularly when the offender goes on to reoffend.

I do not need to say now what the consequences of collecting such information should be, but it should be clear to many that where a judge consistently allows offenders to avoid prison, and those offenders go on to make others suffer as a result of their continuing crime spree, there should 
be accountability and consequences for that judge.

Finally, on a more positive note, I am delighted to support the Secretary of State (Elizabeth Truss) when she said in a speech last month: “The wrong way to address the problem would be to shorten sentences or to release offenders earlier. That would be reckless and endanger the public. And it would restrict the freedom of the independent judiciary to choose the most appropriate sentence for each offender.”

I could not agree more. She is certainly on the right lines. If she sticks to that kind of principle, she will be doing OK. I hope to be able to support the Bill by strengthening it in its remaining stages.

Philip Davies is the Conservative MP for Shipley who spoke in a Commons debate on the Prisons and Courts Bill. This is an edited version.