The Labour conference this week in Brighton is the mid-point of the party conference season. Last week the Liberal Democrats held their conference in Bournemouth and next week is the Conservative conference in Manchester.
The Prison Reform Trust is attending all three conferences and has convened meetings with ministers and shadow ministers to lobby for reform.
PRT Director Juliet Lyon spoke as an independent expert at the main Crime Q&A held by the Liberal Democrats and at the Labour conference contributed to roundtables on unlocking mental health services for offenders and focussing on 18-24 year olds in the justice system. At the Conservative conference, Juliet Lyon will speak at a fringe meeting on drugs in prison organised by the think tank Policy Exchange.
Read the Prison Reform Trust’s special briefing for party conferences here. All Liberal Democrat delegates received this PRT briefing in their conference packs.
Liberal Democrats
On prison numbers and overcrowding:
- Will divert drug addicts and the mentally ill into more appropriate accommodation instead of building more prisons. Read more
On alternatives to custody:
- Will establish Community Justice Panels in every town to deal with minor offences and anti-social behaviour.
- Will strengthen probation work to enforce community sentences.
- Will back restorative justice programmes where offenders recognise the effects of their actions and make amends to their victims.
On women in prison:
- Will implement the recommendations of the Corston Review (which looked at vulnerable women in the criminal justice system).
- Will use tough community sentences, rather than custody, for female offenders who pose no threat to the public. Read more
On youth justice:
- Will tackle young people at risk before they enter the criminal justice system.
- Community Justice Panels will be established to draw up Positive Behaviour Orders (PBOs), which require minor offenders to agree on a course of action to pay back the community they have wronged. Read more
Conservative Party
On prison numbers and overcrowding:
- Will increase prison capacity by 5,000 places above Labour’s plans to a total of 101,000. Read more
On alternatives to custody:
- Will make community sentences tough and effective by improving compliance, making them more visible, and introducing new sanctions for breaches, including benefit withdrawal for those who don’t attend. Read more
On women in prison:
- Broadly accepts the recommendations of the Corston Review and says it will support any moves by the Government to introduce the reforms.
- Women could be held in more local units, and alternative forms of secure, treatment-based accommodation could be found for mentally ill and drugs offenders – ‘although such measures would not reduce the population of offenders in some form of custody’. Read more
On youth justice:
- Will increase the number of places available in Young Offender Institutions by redeveloping the existing estate.
- Will reform Young Offender Institutions by making governors accountable for reoffending rates, paying them by results if ex-offenders do not commit further crimes.
- Will engage the voluntary and private sector in drugs and education programmes to help young offenders go straight. Read more
Labour Party
On prison numbers and overcrowding:
- Will increase prison capacity to 96,000 by 2014. Read more
On alternatives to custody:
- Will fund at least 6 intensive alternatives to custody projects with new investment of £13.9 million over the 2008-2011. Read more
- Will provide local people the right to vote on how offenders pay back to the community. Read more
On women in prison:
- Commissioned the Corston review and will commit to most of its recommendations.
- Announced investment of £15.6 million over two years to divert vulnerable women, who are not serious or dangerous offenders, from custody. Read more
- Will make better use of the conditional cautioning scheme for women as an alternative to court proceedings.
- Will ensure that prisons provide better regimes, programmes and support that is sensitive and appropriate for women to help them with the problems which led them into offending. Read more
On youth justice:
- Will expand Family Intervention Projects to 20,000 families. Children at risk of future high-rate offending will be reached through additional support which will ensure that problems are tackled early before difficulties spiral out of control.
- Will make permanent exclusion from school an automatic trigger to a comprehensive assessment of needs.
- Will pilot court reviews of high-risk young offenders on community sentences.
- Will develop a more comprehensive package of support for young people leaving custody. Read more
For more information, visit Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats |
