Lord Chief Justice attacks politicisation of sentencing
In his annual review of the courts, The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, said a “stream” of legislation had contributed to courts being “seriously overstretched”, and that some legislation reflects the “politicisation” of sentencing.
In response to Lord Chief Justice’s remarks Geoff Dobson, Deputy Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:
Today’s crisis of overcrowding and sky-high reoffending rates in our prisons is a legacy of the failure of successive governments to put good policy ahead of good politics. Tough-talking, populist measures have not only failed to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system, they have also made the situation much worse as the courts and prison and probation staff are asked to do more with fewer resources.
Building more prisons at the expense of cutting reoffending is poor value for money, a missed opportunity to cut crime and utterly fails to tackle the underlying causes of the prisons crisis.
As well as a return to judges handing down sentences based on the merits of cases, not one-size-fits-all laws, ministers must also end the needless imprisonment of the mentally ill and ensure the courts are able and willing to use community punishments where they are proven to be more effective, such as for short sentences or for people whose offending is driven by drug or drink problems.
