Rapists will probably be made to serve their full sentences and fewer “low-level offenders” will probably be despatched to jail below new reforms, the justice secretary has pledged.
Alex Chalk has promised “Texan-style justice” within the UK via sentencing reforms that are set to be outlined tomorrow.
Offenders who might have been given a brief stint in jail may as an alternative be given group companies like cleansing up native neighbourhoods as the federal government appears to be like to include the increasing jail inhabitants.
But the “most dangerous and serious” offenders akin to rapists, Mr Chalk says, can be locked away for longer.
“No longer will the perpetrators of this heinous crime walk out of prison after even two-thirds of their sentence,” he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph.
“A 15-year sentence will mean 15 years in prison.
“This is the justice that the British folks count on, and we are going to ship it.”
Mr Chalk additionally mentioned that stories claiming judges are being instructed to not ship rapists to jail as a result of cells are full are “untrue” and that “the most serious and dangerous offenders are being locked away for longer” already.
But the reforms, he mentioned, would “ensure rapists spend the entirety of their sentence in prison – so victims get the justice they deserve and the British people are protected”.
He added: “We need to look again at low-level offenders. Because while the overall reoffending rate is 25%, the rate for people who spend fewer than 12 months in prison is over 50%.
“A brief stretch of some months inside is not sufficient time to rehabilitate criminals, however is greater than sufficient to dislocate them from the household, work and residential connections that preserve them from crime.
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“Too often, offenders routinely turn back to crime as soon as they walk out of the prison gates.
“No jail system ought to additional criminalise offenders or lure criminals who would possibly in any other case take the best path in a cycle of criminality via a merry-go-round of brief sentences.
“This is the wrong use of our prison system and taxpayers’ money. It doesn’t deliver for victims and it doesn’t cut crime.
“We want to repair this.”
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The way to fix it, he says, is to give low-level offenders chores in the community, such as cleaning up neighbourhoods, scrubbing graffiti off walls or planting forests.
After admitting that the prison system is under “intense strain”, he wrote: “To govern is to decide on. We select to lock up essentially the most harmful criminals for longer and to chop reoffending by stopping the pricey spiral of crime.
“To do that, we need to reform our approach to sentencing.”
Source: information.sky.com”