Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, has described prison as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Kenneth Clarke said the current number of people being sent to prison was 'financially unsustainable' Photo: PABy Laura Roberts 7:48AM BST 16 Apr 2011
He insisted that he had the Prime Minister’s support ahead of plans to reform the prison system and reduce the rate at which criminals are sentenced.
In an interview with the Times, he said the current number of people being sent to prison was “financially unsustainable”.
He said: “It is just very, very bad value for taxpayers’ money to keep banging them up and warehousing them in overcrowded prisons where most of them get toughened up.”
Insisting that he was not “soft on crime” he said that offenders would be given tougher community service punishments involving doing unpaid work for up eight hours a day.
“I want them to be more punitive, effective and organised,” he told The Times. “Unpaid work should require offenders to work at a proper pace in a disciplined manner rather than youths just hanging around doing odd bits tidying up derelict sites.”
He said proposals to tackle reoffending and reducing sentencing was the “collective policy of the entire Government from top to bottom”.
The Justice Secretary’s new Bill, which will be published next month, is designed to curb reoffending as well as reduce the prison population by 3,500 by 2015 from the current level of 85,361.
His proposals include bigger sentence discounts for early guilty pleas, limit remands to prison and diverting the mentally ill to healthcare facilities rather than jail.
Some older jails may close, though there is unlikely to be a big saving on the £3.7 billion annual prisons budget.
Mr Clarke said his reforms were not principally motivated by saving money but said the current system is “pointless and very bad value for taxpayer’s money”.
He said the long jail terms were not appropriate for people who had drug and alcohol problems unless these issues were tackled.
He said the public’s views that prisons were comfortable was misguided and added: “Prisons are not hotels.”
He dismissed earlier opinion polls carried out this week which said the public demanded harsher conditions in prisons.
“You would not have had a Thatcher government if you listened to opinion polls,” he said.
He said prisoners would benefit more from being in a working environment than sitting in their cells all day.
Mr Clarke would do very well to take on board that if Mr Osborne removes welfare benefits from the poorest people in the land, these people will steal to eat - repeatedly. What will the clogged courts do with these people?
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