Changing Direction in the UK

by Matt Kelley · 2010-01-15 06:59:00 UTC
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A new report from a key committee of the British Parliament finds that incarceration policy in the United Kingdom has swerved far off track and needs sweeping reform. It's a refreshing message from the British government, and one that I hope resonates on this side of the Atlantic.

The House of Commons Justice Committee Report, two years in the making, expresses serious concern that "the Government seems to accept the inevitability of a high and rising prison population and remains committed to building larger prisons" and calls for public investment in reentry, community supervision, alternative sentences and other rational reforms. Thanks for leading the way, UK.

The report's list of 98 conclusions and recommendations reads like a prison reform manifesto, and it would be wonderful to see even a third of these bullet points make their way into law. I also hope that the committee report can offer some lessons and guidance to Senator Jim Webb's proposed criminal justice commission here in the USA. Well, first I hope that Webb's commission actually happens (President Obama apparently supports the idea and Harry Reid, with all of the political capital he has left, says creating Webb's commission is a top-ten priority in 2010).

Columnist Juliet Lyon writes about the Commons committee report today in the Guardian and praises a new direction for the British corrections system, which has nearly doubled its prison population since 1990 (the British incarceration rate is 153 per 100,000 -- the US is five times that, with 750 per 100,000 if we're counting only prisons and not jails).

"It seems that the expensive and counter-productive "arms race" on being tough on crime belongs to a different era," Lyon writes. She goes on to quote Sir Alan Beith, who chaired the committee that released the report:

"The public are entitled to be sure that crimes from which they suffer are being treated seriously," he said. "But seriousness should be measured not by the length of a prison sentence but by whether it is a sentence which stops further crime and enables restitution to be made to the victim and to society."

I couldn't agree more.

Photo: Di the huntress

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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