{"id":185276,"date":"2010-01-15T09:59:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T14:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:criminaljustice.change.org:\/\/f48024078f1d61d2d08dcb95d1892b76"},"modified":"2010-01-15T09:59:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T14:59:00","slug":"changing-direction-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/185276","title":{"rendered":"Changing Direction in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1769\" title=\"uk_parliament\" src=\"http:\/\/change-production.s3.amazonaws.com\/photos\/wordpress_copies\/criminaljustice\/2010\/01\/uk_parliament.jpg\" height=\"235\" alt=\"\" width=\"249\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A new report from a key committee of the British Parliament finds that incarceration policy in the United Kingdom has swerved far off track and needs sweeping reform. It&#8217;s a refreshing message from the British government, and one that I hope resonates on this side of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n<p>The House of Commons Justice Committee Report, two years in the making, expresses serious concern that &#8220;the Government seems to accept the inevitability of a high and rising prison population and remains committed to building larger prisons&#8221; and calls for public investment in reentry, community supervision, alternative sentences and other rational reforms. Thanks for leading the way, UK.<\/p>\n<p>The report&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm200910\/cmselect\/cmjust\/94\/9404.htm\" >list of 98 conclusions and recommendations<\/a> reads like a prison reform manifesto, and it would be wonderful to see even a third of these bullet points make their way into law. I also hope that the committee report can offer some lessons and guidance to <a href=\"http:\/\/webb.senate.gov\/issuesandlegislation\/criminaljusticeandlawenforcement\/National-Criminal-Justice-Commission-Act-of-2009.cfm\" >Senator Jim Webb&#8217;s proposed criminal justice commission<\/a> here in the USA. Well, first I hope that Webb&#8217;s commission actually happens (President Obama apparently supports the idea and Harry Reid, with all of the political capital he has left, says creating Webb&#8217;s commission is <a href=\"http:\/\/thecrimereport.org\/2009\/12\/10\/webb-criminal-justice-panel-should-be-2010-congressional-priority\/\" >a top-ten priority in 2010<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Columnist Juliet Lyon <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2010\/jan\/15\/prisons-education-community\" >writes about the Commons committee report today in the Guardian<\/a> and praises a new direction for the British corrections system, which has nearly doubled its prison population since 1990 (the British incarceration rate is 153 per 100,000 &#8212; the US is five times that, with 750 per 100,000 if we&#8217;re counting only prisons and not jails).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It seems that the expensive and counter-productive &#8220;arms race&#8221; on being tough on crime belongs to a different era,&#8221; Lyon writes. She goes on to quote Sir Alan Beith, who chaired the committee that released the report:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The public are entitled to be sure that crimes from which they suffer are being treated seriously,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But seriousness should be measured not by the length of a prison sentence but by whether it is a sentence which stops further crime and enables restitution to be made to the victim and to society.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t agree more.<\/p>\n<p>Photo: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/22863752@N06\/2791457704\/\" >Di the huntress<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new report from a key committee of the British Parliament finds that incarceration policy in the United Kingdom has swerved far off track and needs sweeping reform. It&#8217;s a refreshing message from the British government, and one that I hope resonates on this side of the Atlantic. The House of Commons Justice Committee Report, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}