An odd thing about British politicians insisting we have a “special relationship” with the United States is that most of them seem to admire very little in the way America chooses to do things.
Any MP endorsing importing US agricultural products, let alone their healthcare system, effectively marks themselves out as a weird libertarian on the very fringes of public debate.
But one area where Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers really would benefit from taking a lesson from our cousins across the pond is the prison system. The Government is after all staring down the barrel of a cell shortage and the prospect of yet more rounds of early release for dangerous inmates.
I don’t for one moment suggest that American prisons, per se, are a template for Britain to follow as individual institutions. What I’m talking about here is the American distinction between “prisons” and “jails”.
The difference is simple enough: in the United States, a jail is a local institution which serves an individual county or counties (the average population of a county is just over 100,000 people) and typically holds people serving sentences of less than a year.
A prison, on the other hand, is a federally administered institution for those serving longer sentences for more serious crimes. So, why might this split be useful in Britain? Because it would allow us to maintain the criminal justice system voters expect, whilst mitigating some serious downsides of prison highlighted by prison reform campaigners.
Much of the anti-prison case is, in Britain, complete junk. The claim by James Timpson, now prisons minister, that our system is “addicted to punishment” does not fit the facts.
As David Green of Civitas has noted: “in 2023 offenders with more than 75 previous convictions were given non-custodial sentences in 59 per cent of cases”, whilst “if we narrow our focus down to the main violent crimes (violence against the person, sexual offences, and robbery) then 30 per cent of offenders with over 75 convictions received non-custodial sentences”.
But it can be true that sending somebody to a large, remote prison can do more harm than good, at least in terms of that individual’s long-term prospects. This is because such institutions can find it harder to operate day-release and work programmes (being so far from civilisation) and because it exposes inmates to organised crime networks.
Large prisons certainly have their place, especially for inveterate offenders who show no signs of rehabilitation. But if we want a more effective way to penalise and reform people convicted of less serious offences and serving shorter sentences, then a network of county jails would seem to be a good way of doing it.
These would allow inmates to stay in their local area (if that were appropriate), making both participation in work programmes and family visitation easier. It would also shrink the pool of criminals to which they were exposed during their time inside.
As evidence that this might work, consider the case of HMP Lancaster, a former Category C training prison situated in Lancaster Castle. Before it was unconscionably closed by Ken Clarke during his spell as Justice Secretary in 2011 – on no better basis than that he’d wanted to do it in the 1990s but missed his chance – it had the second-best record on recidivism in the entire country.
Sadly, prisons are yet another institution which have been hugely damaged by Britain’s insane planning system. Our strong national consensus towards putting criminals in jail is matched by an equally strong local consensus against having a prison on our patch. Just this week, James Cleverly was found campaigning against a proposed one in Braintree which Kemi Badenoch had endorsed.
The result is that we don’t build enough prisons, and such proposals as do get through tend to be mega-prisons which pack the most cells into an area that aggravates the fewest local champions, regardless of the long-term consequences for either those sent to those institutions or their subsequent victims.
Making it the responsibility of a given layer of local government to maintain a local jail would bypass this problem – so long as the Treasury remembered that it, rather than bankrupt town halls, still needed to pay for them.
An odd thing about British politicians insisting we have a “special relationship” with the United States is that most of them seem to admire very little in the way America chooses to do things.
Any MP endorsing importing US agricultural products, let alone their healthcare system, effectively marks themselves out as a weird libertarian on the very fringes of public debate.
But one area where Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers really would benefit from taking a lesson from our cousins across the pond is the prison system. The Government is after all staring down the barrel of a cell shortage and the prospect of yet more rounds of early release for dangerous inmates.
I don’t for one moment suggest that American prisons, per se, are a template for Britain to follow as individual institutions. What I’m talking about here is the American distinction between “prisons” and “jails”.
The difference is simple enough: in the United States, a jail is a local institution which serves an individual county or counties (the average population of a county is just over 100,000 people) and typically holds people serving sentences of less than a year.
A prison, on the other hand, is a federally administered institution for those serving longer sentences for more serious crimes. So, why might this split be useful in Britain? Because it would allow us to maintain the criminal justice system voters expect, whilst mitigating some serious downsides of prison highlighted by prison reform campaigners.
Much of the anti-prison case is, in Britain, complete junk. The claim by James Timpson, now prisons minister, that our system is “addicted to punishment” does not fit the facts.
As David Green of Civitas has noted: “in 2023 offenders with more than 75 previous convictions were given non-custodial sentences in 59 per cent of cases”, whilst “if we narrow our focus down to the main violent crimes (violence against the person, sexual offences, and robbery) then 30 per cent of offenders with over 75 convictions received non-custodial sentences”.
But it can be true that sending somebody to a large, remote prison can do more harm than good, at least in terms of that individual’s long-term prospects. This is because such institutions can find it harder to operate day-release and work programmes (being so far from civilisation) and because it exposes inmates to organised crime networks.
Large prisons certainly have their place, especially for inveterate offenders who show no signs of rehabilitation. But if we want a more effective way to penalise and reform people convicted of less serious offences and serving shorter sentences, then a network of county jails would seem to be a good way of doing it.
These would allow inmates to stay in their local area (if that were appropriate), making both participation in work programmes and family visitation easier. It would also shrink the pool of criminals to which they were exposed during their time inside.
As evidence that this might work, consider the case of HMP Lancaster, a former Category C training prison situated in Lancaster Castle. Before it was unconscionably closed by Ken Clarke during his spell as Justice Secretary in 2011 – on no better basis than that he’d wanted to do it in the 1990s but missed his chance – it had the second-best record on recidivism in the entire country.
Sadly, prisons are yet another institution which have been hugely damaged by Britain’s insane planning system. Our strong national consensus towards putting criminals in jail is matched by an equally strong local consensus against having a prison on our patch. Just this week, James Cleverly was found campaigning against a proposed one in Braintree which Kemi Badenoch had endorsed.
The result is that we don’t build enough prisons, and such proposals as do get through tend to be mega-prisons which pack the most cells into an area that aggravates the fewest local champions, regardless of the long-term consequences for either those sent to those institutions or their subsequent victims.
Making it the responsibility of a given layer of local government to maintain a local jail would bypass this problem – so long as the Treasury remembered that it, rather than bankrupt town halls, still needed to pay for them.