Yes. The trend in the past 20 years has been that prevention is better than cure. The NHS is getting success in encouraging people suffering from obesity to go on to fitness and diet programmes. There is some success from that approach, and it could be transferred to the Prison Service. If people with energy have time on their hands, sport can fill it.
In research published last year by the Ministry of Justice it was found that reductions in reoffending were associated with the use of court orders such as community sentences rather than short custodial sentences. The effect was greater for people with a larger number of prior offences, younger offenders, and people with severe mental health problems. For those with prior offences who have already served a number of short stints in prison, imprisonment is clearly not a deterrent but more of an occupational hazard. It is interesting, therefore, that those offenders are less likely to reoffend when given community sentences.
Community sentences can be a win-win for all. Taxpayers’ money is saved, local communities and projects benefit and offenders learn skills and the value of giving back to society instead of taking from it. Not only do short sentences do nothing to rehabilitate an offender or reduce their risk of reoffending; sending people to prison for a few months unnecessarily adds to the overcrowding in prisons throughout the country. As I mentioned, England and Wales are reaching peak prison capacity and many prisons are heavily overcrowded. The overcrowding means even more strain on already pressured prison staff and resources; there are not enough of them as it is. That in turn has an impact on the success of inmate rehabilitation, levels of violence in prisons and access to illegal drugs, not to mention the wellbeing of prison staff.
That overcrowding could be prevented if courts did not instantly resort to sentencing offenders to short prison terms for non-violent petty crimes. In the year ending June 2018 almost 29,000 people entered prison to serve sentences of six months or less. That was 47% of all sentenced offenders entering prison during that time. According to Ministry of Justice prison performance statistics for 2017-18, in England and Wales the cost of keeping one person in prison for a year stood at £37,543. That works out at about £3,125 per month for one prisoner. The annual figure is more than Brits earn on average each year, and is almost as much as the cost of a place at an elite public school. Think of the amount of money we could save and invest elsewhere, if we did not imprison people on short sentences. It would also save money in the long run, as those who serve a community sentence or enter a rehabilitation programme are less likely to reoffend and to be imprisoned again in the future.