By Fiona Roughley
Radical penal reform. It's the title of the new official law and order policy of Britain's coalition government. Details of the policy appeared last week in a five-year strategic business plan released by the Ministry of Justice. In the ministry's own words, the reforms herald a ''revolution'' in penal policy.
Six years ago a restructure saw the headquarters of Her Majesty's Prison Service and the Probation Service united in a new executive agency, the National Offender Management Service. On paper, the move promised co-ordination of policies. The perception within and outside the system was that, in reality, it effected a stealth-by-night policy takeover by the Prison Service.
In recent years penal policy in England and Wales has continued to focus on incarceration over rehabilitation. In the past 15 years, the prison population has increased by 34,000 inmates to a total of 85,000.
In response, the previous Labour government introduced a multibillion-dollar ''massive prison expansion program''. The then Labour justice secretary, Jack Straw, spoke of ''supersize prisons'' and invoked ''tough on crime'' rhetoric of the kind familiar to NSW constituents.
Earlier this year, in the heat of the parliamentary election campaign, both the Labour and Conservative parties made election commitments to increase prison real estate. Labour promised expansion to cater for 96,000 inmates. The Conservatives promised accommodation for 100,000 by 2016.
However, last month's government spending review has forced a drastic change in both rhetoric and policy. The new focus of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government is on reducing the prison population, with an ambitious target of 3000 fewer inmates (3.5 per cent) by 2014.
Although the growth rate for the country's prison population appears to have tapered recently, to reach its goal, the government will need to reverse what the Ministry of Justice has predicted would otherwise be a 3500 person increase in prisoner numbers.
The government has ruled out any reintroduction of the End of Custody Licence scheme (an early-release program) that ceased in March. To achieve its goals, the government has two options: facilitating a reduction in the number and length of custodial sentences that courts will impose, and/or reducing the number of prisoners on remand (at present about 22 per cent of the prison population).
Both options feature in the new penal policy. The government intends to change courts' sentencing patterns and increase the effectiveness of rehabilitation processes to reduce recidivism. Amendments to bail and remand processes are envisaged, as are policies designed to increase private and voluntary sector involvement in the penal system.
An interesting development is a proposal to introduce results-based incentives for private operators. An example would be reward payments for prison operators who reduce, through more effective rehabilitation, the recidivism rates of its inmates once released.
Reducing recidivism through effective, targeted rehabilitation measures is good policy. As are measures designed to reduce the number of persons incarcerated on remand because of failures in the policy areas of mental health, homelessness, and drug and alcohol addiction.
But effective policy and radical penal reform are not the only ends to which this ''revolution'' is addressed. For that reason, the policy may not deliver the mighty outcomes it has been set.
First and foremost, this new radical penal reform program is aimed at generating a revolutionary reduction in penal system costs.
The spending review into public sector expenditure cut the budget of the Ministry of Justice by almost a quarter over the next four years. At the same time as it is rolling out radical penal reform, the Ministry of Justice will lose one-third of its administration budget and about 15,000 staff (ranging from prison and parole officers to head office personnel), and be forced to grapple with the closure of 157 courts.
In other words, ''radical penal reform'' is to be attempted on a shoestring.
The deficit may turn out to be not only the motivating rationale for this bold new attempt at penal policy, but also what undermines its prospects of success. This is revolution at, and perhaps for, a price.
Fiona Roughley is a NSW lawyer and Gates Scholar undertaking a master of law at Cambridge University.