'Prison could work - with fewer people inside'
Updated on 30 June 2010
Former Prison Service director general Martin Narey applauds Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke's plans to shake up prison policy, telling Channel 4 News they could actually "make prison work".
I welcome Kenneth Clarke's speech very much. I think it's courageous.
Those of us involved in penal reform for many decades won't be surprised. The last home secretary to expose the futility of locking up more and more people in prison was Douglas Hurd in 1991.
Ken's right when he says the virility of penal policy has for too long been measured by the number of people we lock up.
I ran the Prison Service for seven years, and I believe imprisonment can work – but it can't when prisons are desperately overcrowded and so many prisoners are there for only a few weeks – or sometimes a few days.
I'm entirely relaxed about the prospect of greater private sector involvement. Whether it's the public, private or voluntary sector, if we can have successful rehabilitation in the community, it will be cheaper, more effective and will cut crime.
Let me give you a contrasting example. Someone commits an offence of theft. He might get a short prison sentence. With home detention curfew, even if he's sentenced for six months he will probably service six weeks in prison.
That isn't long enough to improve literacy, get him through a drug detox and treatment programme, and he'll come out a little more unemployable, he'll probably be homeless, and have no money. We should not be surprised if he goes back to crime.
The same individual could be given a punishment in the community. He might be required to go every day to an old people's home or do some unpaid work. He's going to be supervised on a daily basis, he'll give something back to the community, he won't lose his accommodation, and he won't lose the chance of getting a job. It's altogether a more constructive process in terms of cutting crime.
The bonus for me, as someone who believes desperately that prisons can work, is that when Jack Straw (who I have the privilege of working for as his director of prisons) was home secretary, he gave me almost a fortune to pour into education and drug treatment for prisoners.
But the effect of that money was vastly diluted by the fact that we just locked up more and more people in prison so we had to spread rehabilitation more and more thinly.
If we had fewer people in prison, we could make prison work.
