Clarke to set out community prison plan
The home secretary Charles Clarke is to set out plans that could see offenders serving shorter sentences being held in special “community prisons” closer to their families.
Mr Clarke will include the idea in his first major speech on penal policy to the Prison Reform Trust this evening.
In the aftermath of the London terrorist attacks, there was little time for Mr Clarke to define his home secretaryship. Today will be a key moment in gauging how ‘liberal’ or ‘hardline’ he intends to be.
The community prisons plan would see existing prisons being used differently, and will be designed for those serving short terms, including those with mental health or drug problems.
The emphasis will be on maintaining prisoners’ family and work ties to keep them in touch with society and thus cut reoffending rates.
“We need to get to a state of affairs where prisoners are able to reintegrate into society through developing their relations with their friends and family,” Mr Clarke told the Guardian.
He continued: “The break in that – and it happens often – is the damaging thing in people’s ability to stop reoffending”
Echoing Tony Blair’s old mantra of ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, Mr Clarke also told the paper it was important for the government to tackle health and education problems to prevent criminals from offending in the first place.
But the home secretary will also emphasise the importance of prison to protect the public from dangerous offenders, and will indicate he no longer intends to peg the prison population to 80,000.
This will mean abandoning plans to put a legal obligation on the judges’ guidelines to tackle the size of the prison population, currently 77,000.
Mr Clarke also dismissed as “complete horlicks” speculation that the prime minister is unhappy with his performance and wants to remove him from his post.
