Howard attacks ‘fatally flawed’ Clarke prison plans
By politics.co.uk staff
Ken Clarke’s attempted liberalisation of the justice system has come under assault from Michael Howard.
The former Conservative leader and home secretary made the comments in an article for the Times newspaper – calling plans unveiled in the justice green paper announced last week “fatally flawed”.
Mr Howard praised the current justice secretary’s moves towards a ‘payment by results’ scheme for prisoners involving private companies and acknowledged the need to “tackle criminal behaviour at its roots”.
But other elements in the green paper proposing a shift to more community sentences came under harsh criticism.
In particular, Mr Clarke’s contention that it is “loopy” to think all crime could be solved by incarceration, was dismissed by the former leader who famously stated when home secretary that “prison works”.
Mr Howard denied there was a direct link between crime and economic circumstances, insisting that increasing the number of inmates is the key factor in reducing criminal activity.
He added: “Home Office research has shown that, on average, those in prison have committed 140 crimes in the year before they were sentenced at a cost to society of about £400,000.”
Under Mr Clarke’s plans, the prison population is to be reduced by 3,000 over the next four years.
The justice secretary’s suggestion that a Conservative pledge on prison sentences for knife crime may be dropped had to be embarrassingly “clarified” by No 10, in an indication of the ructions Mr Clarke’s liberal tendencies are causing on the Tory benches.
