National Audit Office report on managing offenders on short custodial sentences
60% of short-sentenced prisoners commit another crime within a year of getting out, costing the country between £7 billion and £10 billion a year, a report by the National Audit Office said today.
60% of short-sentenced prisoners commit another crime within a year of getting out, costing the country between £7 billion and £10 billion a year, a report by the National Audit Office said today.
According to the report, more could be done to rehabilitate prisoners serving short sentences and reduce their risk of reoffending. The National Offender Management Service (NOMS), responsible for managing such prisoners, has little information on the quality, cost or effectiveness of its rehabilitation activities.
Commenting on the report, Prison Reform Trust director Juliet Lyon said:
This report from the National Audit Office takes a cool, hard look at the cost of recycling petty offenders through the prison system. Its findings could lead you to conclude that there must be cheaper and better ways to cutcrime.
The revolving door of prison and crime costs the taxpayer billions and does little or nothing to reduce offending.
After a few weeks or months in jail, people leave homeless, jobless, out of touch with their families, further in debt, and ready to offend again.
The evidence is clear that community penalties, treatment for addicts, mental healthcare and sorting out housing and employment all work better than a short prison sentence.
Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said the report showed the short jail terms served “little purpose over and above taking the offenders in question out of the community for a short time”.
He continued:
Only a tiny proportion of prison budgets is spent on activities to rehabilitate offenders serving short prison sentences.
The uncomfortable truth is that they are not working, studying or doing almost anything constructive with their time. Indeed, half of then them spend all day, every day sitting in their cells.
The main findings of the report are:
– Prisoners on short-term sentences are being left idle in their cells for
much of the day.
– Overcrowding means that despite having an average of 16 convictions
each, little is done to tackle their reoffending, the auditors found.
– Activities for prisoners are “inadequate” and prison bosses know little
about how well the schemes they do run work.
– Around 60,000 prisoners are jailed for less than twelve months each year, costing taxpayers £300 million.
– Mostly convicted of theft and minor violent crimes, they make up nearly
one in ten prisoners in England and Wales.
– Often they are homeless, unemployed and addicted to drugs or alcohol.
– Most spend as few as 45 days inside, and are released automatically
at the halfway point of their sentence. In that time they are not given “appropriate assistance” to help them turn around their lives.
The auditors praised the efforts of the National Offender Management
Service (NOMS) – which runs prisons and probation – in keeping them
safe, despite overcrowding.
Mark Day, Prison Reform Trust’s head of policy and communications, writing about the NAO report in Left Foot Forward.
