Labour considering Texas-style ‘time off for good behaviour’
Prisoners taking education courses could receive points for participation that would lead to reductions in sentences, according to newspaper reports.
Government ministers are said to be considering what are described as Texas-style schemes that would allow inmates in England and Wales to have their release date brought forward.
Labour is said to be drawing up plans to replicate the model used in the US state, where prisoners can cut their jail time by taking part in classes aimed at tackling the root causes of offending such as drug use, according to a report in The Times. The courses would include education and vocational workshops, and drug or behavioural rehabilitation sessions. Texas also knocks time off sentences where people have earned credit for good behaviour.
It is said that both Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Prisons Minister Lord Timpson are very interested in the scheme, which could form a part of a wide-ranging review of sentencing which the new Government has promised to commission soon. Former Conservative justice secretary David Gauke and former Labour home secretary Lord Blunkett have been touted as potential leaders of the review.
Lord Timpson is known to advocate an emphasis on rehabilitation in prisons, instead of a focus on punishment. The Ministry of Justice told Inside Time that it was too early to comment on the report.
In Texas, the reforms have contributed to a 15 per cent reduction in the state’s prison population, down from 152,661 in 2007, when the scheme was first introduced, to 129,653 last year. Reoffending rates in the state have fallen over the same period by about 30 per cent.
Mahmood is reportedly expected to visit the US later this year to look into the prospect of a similar scheme being adopted in England and Wales to reduce the swelling prison population and rate of reoffending.
The population in jails in England and Wales hit a record high of 88,521 earlier this month before the government’s emergency early release measures came into effect, whereby people serving sentences for less serious crimes can leave prison after having served 40 per cent of their term rather than 50 per cent.
I hate to say it but I see this being open to abuse. Who wouldn’t sign up to these courses, knowing what the benefits are, then not actually participating? I know where I was the prisoners were just happy to be out of their cells, despite what was being offered.
Hopefully I’m proven wrong, as most prisoners seem to want to change, and don’t want to return. Recidivism is an ugly word, but far too common, I’m afraid.
Without wanting to be unfair, they are said to be drawing up plans to have a commission, which will then consider and report, and later on in the year the Minister may be visiting Texas.
That will give them plenty of time to arrange that inmates have more than one hour in 24, out of their cells, I humbly expect? It sounds a bit like ‘wonderful jam tomorrow’ to me.