In the run-up to next year’s general election, the debate on criminal justice often seems to amount to repeated promises to “lock ‘em up and throw away the key”.
After the alleged escape of a terror suspect from HMP Wandsworth, which highlighted chaos within the system, campaigners for reform say urgent action is required on staffing levels, infrastructure and overcrowding.
But recent skirmishes between the two main parties in Westminster have become a competition to see who can talk tougher on crime.
There also appears to be a tacit agreement between Labour and the Tories that there will be no announcement of new money for the Prison Service despite significant cuts to the budget.
One government adviser told the Guardian: “Why would a politician promise to put money into prisons rather than hospitals if they wanted to win over voters?”
Successive Conservative administrations have been blamed by reformers for failing to repair crumbling jails and cutting the pay of prison officers in real terms, leading to staff shortages.
But the immediate crisis is prison capacity, campaigners say, which is fuelled by longer sentences.
Despite government projections that the prison population will rise by a further 7,800 people to reach 93,200 by 2024, the Tories will emphasise pledges to lock up serious criminals for longer as the election approaches, party sources say.
Ministers have proposed plans that would force judges to impose jail terms when sentencing repeat offenders for shoplifting, burglary, theft and common assault and, separately, to expand the use of the rare whole-life term.
The immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, said lawyers coaching migrants on how to remain in the country by fraudulent means “will face a sentence of up to life imprisonment”.
With Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, leading Labour, there is a sense that the party feels law and order is an area of fertile ground.
But past Labour leaders should also accept their share of the blame for overcrowding, according to Andrea Coomber KC, the chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform.
Under Tony Blair, as he sought to make gains in a policy area of traditional Tory strength, Labour introduced detention without trial and, more significantly when it comes to prison overcrowding, schedule 21 of the Sentencing Act. This increased the minimum tariffs for murder but Coomber said the effect was “hoiked up sentences across the piece”.
Labour insiders say it would be unfair to blame the Blair years for problems within the prison system today. “This government would be over the moon to have Tony’s record on law and order,” a source says.
The importance of law and order as an electoral battleground for Labour was illustrated by the recent reshuffle in which Starmer appointed his trusted confidante Shabana Mahmood as the new shadow justice secretary, moving her predecessor, Steve Reed, to the environment brief.
The justice brief has not, either in opposition or government, been seen as a plum job – there have been 10 justice secretaries in a decade in a department that has suffered unparalleled spending cuts – but Labour insiders say it is important to Starmer, who believes it is key to rebuilding trust with the public.
While that may suggest a change in approach to the role, it has so far not equated to a shift in policies.
Reed showed little sign of transcending the usual debate on law and order when reprising Blair’s slogan “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” – albeit saying that it would be updated to tackle trauma that causes offending. Labour also posted an attack on the prime minister on X, formerly Twitter, saying: “Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.”
Labour sources on Wednesday said “serious work” was now being done on prison numbers and budgets behind the scenes, but “it would not make sense” to release details before the election campaign had officially begun.
To Coomber, it is all depressingly familiar. “In the lead-up to an election, it’s much easier to talk about just banging people up than it is to talk about the real causes of crime and the solutions to that, which are more complex than just locking someone away.”
