Government's Green Paper on Sentencing
7 December 2010
Today the Government published its green paper on Sentencing: Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders.
Chair's comments
Commenting on the green paper Sir Alan Beith MP, Chair of the Justice Committee, said:
"I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s determination to focus policy to cut crime on measures that work.
Ken Clarke is right to seek a rehabilitation revolution: the all-party Justice Committee unanimously recommended that funding should be shifted from extra prison places to rehabilitation, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health provision and early intervention to prevent youngsters getting involved in crime in the first place.
The Government’s big challenge is finding the resources across government to expand these vital provisions during a financial crisis. The basic problems which create persistent offenders have to be tackled if we are to achieve a big further reduction in crime – endlessly increasing prison numbers will not deliver greater public safety."
Local reforms
On 12 May the Government announced that it would conduct a full assessment of the rehabilitation and sentencing policy to pave the way for radical reforms to the Criminal Justice System.
Today, Tuesday 7 December 2010, the Government published its Green Paper, Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders which sets out the initial conclusions from this work on which they will be consulting over the next 12 weeks.