Curia’s Levelling Up Commission hosted an online panel session focusing on Crime, Justice and Rehabilitation. The session covered topics such as the appropriate rehabilitation of offenders, criminal records and the need for earlier intervention in light of the news that the prison population is projected to rise by more than 106,000 by 2027.
Paul Sheriff, former Shadow Minister for Social Care and Mental Health, took charge of the session and she was joined by two people with expertise in the area of prisons and offender rehabilitation. They were:
- Dr Joe Easton, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Unlock – an organisation which supports people with criminal records to move on positively with their lives.
- Riana Taylor, CEO of Circles of Support – an organisation which looks to rehabilitate people who have previously caused sexual harm.
Making criminal records part of the conversation
Dr Jo Easton kicked off the session by talking about criminal records and why they should be at the centre of any conversation around offender rehabilitation. Explaining why, Dr Easton said:
“Having a criminal record puts barriers up for people in respect to things like getting a job, getting a house, or getting accepted on to an educational course. Often, having a criminal record can counter some of the rehabilitative support services that are out there and people might not even realise it because some of these barriers are unseen.
“Criminal records can last way beyond someone’s completed sentence and can have lifelong impacts. It certainly isn’t referenced as part of the punishment that someone might receive but it is a punishment in many ways because having a criminal record and having to disclose it does lead to all sorts of barriers, especially when it comes to employment and housing.
“It’s all well and good providing people with rehabilitation support to get them job interviews but if employers have really strong policies around criminal records then these people can be rejected straight away without even being seen.”
In terms of solutions to the criminal record problem, Dr Easton suggests the government look at the “big picture” and to “reform the system which governs what you have to disclose and when you have to disclose it”.
Early intervention
Rianna Taylor from Circles believes that the best form of rehabilitation is early intervention. From her point of view, the current system to too reactive and a more proactive approach would be far more effective. She said:
“I think it’s really important to do early intervention as early as possible if you truly want to affect rehabilitation and change people’s behaviour. Too often, we wait until there’s a major problem and then throw a load of money at it and the kitchen sink at it.
“Whereas if we intervene earlier, it is much simpler to solve problems at that stage with younger people who are not yet entrenched or engaging in negative behaviour patterns.
“At the moment, we work a lot with online sexual abuse offenders as the police arrest around 1000 people a month for that. Only about 20% of those receive a guilty verdict but I ask the question, what happens to the 80%?
“At this stage, they have usually viewed illegal images but not made any physical contact with a victim so if we could intervene here it would be so much easier to turn that person’s life around because it is very often a symptom of something else going on in their lives.”
Watch the full video here:
Perpetrator rehabilitation programmes
Riana Taylor also spoke about the lack of perpetrator rehabilitation programmes in the UK. She says that it’s made her “ashamed” of the country’s justice system, something she believes used to be world-renowned. Expanding on that, Taylor said:
“There are only a few accredited rehabilitation programmes in our prisons but because of the state of our prisons in terms of overcrowding, most people don’t get a chance to even get into these programmes.
“Additionally, we don’t even know how good these programmes are because they haven’t been well-evaluated so we don’t know what works and what doesn’t. If you’re in prison and you’re locked in your cell for 23 hours a day and you can’t get into a rehabilitation programme for that extra hour, what is the point?
“Yes, it’s important that survivors of crime get more resources and support but we also need to have rehabilitation programmes for perpetrators to ensure these crimes aren’t re-commited and to help people overcome their abusive behaviours. It’s really important and I want to make a strong please – we need more perpetrator programmes available.”
How to stop re-offending
After both panellists had given their general thoughts on rehabilitation in the United Kingdom, they faced several questions from audience members. One of the most thought-provoking questions came from someone who brought up the fact that young prisoners are more likely to end up back in prison than not. They wanted to know how this trend could be bucked.
Dr Easton believes that the justice system should stop looking at prison as the first port of call any time someone breaks the law. She said:
“I think short-term prison sentences are a problem as you have very little time while you’re there for any engagement, rehabilitation or education but you still suffer the most damaging impacts such as losing your home, family and job. Any sentence under 18 months has the biggest damages and the least positive impact.
“We need to reduce our use of prisons and I think there needs to be proper language used around that instead of it becoming political football where one party says they’ll put tougher prison sentences in place. Prison should only really be used for short sentences in the minority of cases where nothing else has worked.”
Curia’s Levelling Up Commission
The Levelling Up Commission intends to consider ways to implement Levelling Up from the perspective of local and regional government. Too often the Levelling Up agenda is something being done ‘to and for’ local and regional government, the Commission intends to make sure it is done ‘with and by’ them.
Through roundtable meetings with MPs and senior leaders of local and regional government from across the UK, quantitative data analysis and regional sprints, the Commission intends to set out a series of recommendations to consider how regional inequalities can be reduced from the perspective of public services in four key areas:
- Health and Social Care
- Housing and Homelessness
- Education, Skills and Training
- Crime, Justice and Rehabilitation
