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The UK government is reportedly considering sending offenders to serve sentences in Estonian prisons to ease overcrowding in Britain’s jails. Although it’s not officially been confirmed, cabinet minister Angela Eagle says ‘anything’ is being considered to ease the prisons crisis.
The move is supposedly one of a number of options being considered to address the ongoing crisis which has seen prison populations reach record levels.
The number of inmates in jails in England and Wales hit a new high of 88,521 on Thursday, up 171 from 88,350 a week ago - the previous record - and a jump of 1,025 from 87,496 four weeks ago.
The prison population in England and Wales has been increasing for much of the past three years, having dropped as low as 77,727 in April 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, the figure had been above 80,000 since December 2006.
Our Courts Correspondent, Tristan Kirk, reveals what we know so far about the reported Estonia option, and discusses the urgent issues facing our country’s prisons.
In part two, film critic Jo-Ann Titmarsh joins us from the Venice International Film Festival to give her verdict on Joker: Folie à deux, all the very long standing ovations, and the movies that should be on your list to go see.
You can listen to the full episode in the player above, find us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here’s a fully automated transcript:
From London, I'm Rochelle Travers, and this is The Standard.
Could UK offenders soon be on their way to Estonia?
The government is reportedly considering sending prisoners to the country in a bid to alleviate overcrowding in British jails.
It's supposedly one of a number of options being considered to address the ongoing crisis, which has seen prison populations reach record levels.
I'm now joined by Tristan Kirk, The Standard's court's correspondent.
Tristan, what do we know about this potential option of sending UK offenders to Estonia then?
The reports emerge today that the government, the Ministry of Justice, is considering the idea of sending prisoners to serve their time in jails in Estonia.
One of the ministers in the Home Office, Angela Eagle, was asked about this particular report this morning and didn't deny it, although it is not necessarily something that's actively within her brief.
Although as a minister in the Home Office, you'd expect she would know about something like that.
The idea is because the prisons in the UK are chronically full to the point where there are only a handful of places actually left, is that there needs to be some action taken to free up extra capacity.
If not within our system in this country, then potentially in a different country entirely.
Do we know anything about any of the other options potentially being considered?
Well, I mean, this is a crisis that's been building for years, frankly, and can be blamed squarely on neglect in the prison system, in the criminal justice system, and the wider area of law and order.
From successive governments, ministers, officials, the blame is widespread.
And already over the last year, there have been action that's had to be taken to try to alleviate the prison spaces crisis, if only for a day or two or a few weeks.
Measures taken so far include delaying court hearings, utilizing police cells for prisoners, and more recently, releasing prisoners at 40% of their sentence, having served, instead of the usual 50% halfway stage.
So, letting out people who were sentenced, say, for 10 years, at the time that they served four years, instead of five years.
So, already measures have been put into play, because, as I say, this is a crisis that is at the disaster level, where we literally don't have any places.
Do we know the reasons behind this?
Why is the prison population so high now?
Is it because there's not enough prisons?
Sentences being too harsh?
What do you think it is?
I think that the reasons behind this crisis that we have at the moment can be broadly put into two categories.
The first one is neglect.
Over years, the criminal justice system has been neglected routinely, systematically.
So it has not been seen as in any way an important area of policy to put in the funds that are necessary in the same way that you would fund the health service as best you could, because that is seen as an important priority of government.
Almost the opposite has happened to criminal justice, where you have withdrawn funding time after time.
And prisons have been closed down, the new capacity wasn't planned for, they haven't been built in time.
There are plans in the pipeline to build more prisons, but frankly and bluntly, they haven't been built yet, and so they don't currently exist.
The second category where blame can be apportioned is to do with ideology and the approach to sentencing prisoners, sentencing defendants, people who have committed crimes.
For years now, I think it's fair to say that the only answer that anybody in power, in positions of influence has put forward for solving an issue of law and order is to lock more people up for longer.
It's a basic response.
It's driven by a populist approach to law and order and sentencing.
And so what that means is that you are putting more and more people in prison for longer, whilst at the same time not actually planning for all of those people to be in prison.
There's certain laws that were passed in recent times that really illustrates that kind of dogmatic approach, which doesn't take a holistic view to criminal justice and just simply says, lock them up, lock them up for longer.
I think it was a few years ago that a law was introduced by the previous conservative government.
We said that anybody who defaced a statue or a war memorial could be jailed for up to ten years.
Now, that is obviously the kind of law that grabs a headline and plays to a particular base, who see locking people up for years and years as the only answer to these solutions.
But it's when you actually do that, if you would actually do something like that, you would place a great strain on the criminal justice system.
And then you've got to ask yourself, what is that actually achieving?
Locking someone up for, if not 10 years, maybe two or three years, for doing something that is an obvious criminal act, an incredibly offensive criminal act.
But does it really warrant the kind of sentence that you would also hand out to somebody who's potentially committed a child sex offense or a series of burglaries?
There's no nuance in that kind of approach to law and order.
And it leads to a system, prison system and a court system being just left in utter crisis.
Do you think the length of sentences for certain crimes could be reevaluated then under this new Labour government?
I think now is absolutely the time for a complete reset of the approach to sentencing, to criminal justice generally, to the rehabilitation of offenders.
At the moment, we have a prison system that's full of bursting.
And if you look at a jail like HMP Wandsworth, the people who are actually in that prison, they're getting no real value out of it.
No learning, development, rehabilitation.
They are simply locked up or have been locked up for 22, 23 hours a day.
And it is there just for punishment in terrible conditions.
Drugs are rife, violence, self-harm, suicide even.
And so that's a failing system.
And that's perhaps reflected to certain degrees across the system.
What we really need to do is look at the people that we are sending to prison.
Do we need to send them to prison or are there better ways of handing out punishment and rehabilitation?
Ultimately, what we really want is for people who commit crimes to not commit the crimes again and to turn their lives around.
If the only answer you're offering is prison, then in many cases, you're not going to achieve that aim, which is making a better society.
There are obviously always going to be people who commit heinous crimes and need to be sent to prison.
Murders, for example, terrorism, sex crimes, you could go on.
But there are other categories of offending where you could take a different approach.
One of the ministers who's now in government, Lord Timpson, has spoken about that previously at length.
He's been involved for years in prison reform, and he's said to be looking at driving that agenda.
I must say that the prisons which are dominating the headlines today are not the only problem within criminal justice.
As the court's correspondent, I know intimately how bad things are in the courts, chronic delays, backlogs, spiralling up to nearly 70,000 cases.
So I think as well as resetting the approach to sentencing and sentencing guidelines, we should look at the whole system and to see how it can make work better to help people into early intervention.
So for example, somebody who's committed a crime such as stalking or harassment or when they're accused of that particular crime, is there an opportunity to put that person into a rehabilitation scheme whilst they're still in the court process?
To be able to stop them having to go to prison at all, potentially, and to make sure that their rehabilitation is fast-tracked.
And so the kind of behaviour, whether it's due to be passing the criminal threshold or not, that kind of behaviour can be tackled and it potentially would be better for society as a whole.
Let's go to the ads.
Coming up in part two, we speak to film critic Jo-Ann Titmarsh about Joker 2 and the other talking points from the Venice Film Festival.
If you're gonna put Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a room together and have a room full of the adoring public, they're gonna get a really long standing ovation, even if they haven't made a particularly good film.
The Standard podcast will be back in just a moment.
Welcome back.
The Venice International Film Festival is drawing to a close this weekend after some huge star studded premieres and lots of very long standing ovations.
But which are the films to see and which ones are the flops?
Here with me now is film critic Jo-Ann Titmarsh, who joins us from Venice.
Jo-Ann, one of the most anticipated films before the festival was Joker: Folie à Deux, which has received some mixed reviews from critics.
What did you make of it?
I didn't love it.
I think that it was very flawed, but at the same time, it's a really courageous piece of filmmaking.
I have to say that I was quite surprised when the original Joker won here in Venice in 2019, because I certainly didn't think it was worthy of The Golden Lion.
Despite the most sensational performance by Joaquin Phoenix, he's back here.
Todd Phillips, the director, has decided to turn Joker: Folie à Deux into a musical, using lots of well-known songs from the American playbook throughout the film.
So he hasn't written any new songs for it.
And I think that was a really brave decision, and it works to an extent, but then the songs start to slow the film down.
And so it becomes a little bit plodding, and while I like the fact that we are looking into the inner machinations of the character Arthur, the Joker, through these songs, I just think at a certain point they started to grate and they didn't really do enough.
Joaquin Phoenix is in incredible form again here, and you certainly can't fault his performance.
He is dangerously emaciated and you see so much in his eyes.
He's just such an incredible actor.
So there are lots of really great things about it, but as a whole, I just think it needed a bit more action and fewer songs.
What are some of the best films that premiered at the festival and the ones our listeners should put on their list to go see?
I think that two of the films that I was really looking forward to did not disappoint.
And I think they're both potential winners, but the first is Walter Salles, who viewers might know as the director of Motorcycle Diaries.
He's here with a film called I'm Still Here, and it's based on the true story of Eunice Paiva, played by the phenomenal Fernanda Torres, in what definitely could be a Golden Lion winning film.
Another film that I really wanted to see was The Brutalist.
This tells the story of Laszlo Toth.
It's a true story.
He was a Jewish Hungarian architect who survived after the Second World War.
He's played by Adrian Brody.
It's a great performance, and it's a very complex, very challenging film.
Don't be put off by the three and a half hours.
There is an intermission about halfway through.
It's really worth it.
It's intelligent, it's complex, but it's also very funny and fascinating.
And this particular Venice Film Festival has been a good one for women, hasn't it?
It's been a great festival for women.
Not so much behind the camera.
There haven't been too many films in competition by women, but there have been great performances by women in front of the camera.
We've had Nicole Kidman in Baby Girl, who is fantastic.
She's brave, she's funny, she's sexy and sexual, and I think that's a really good film, and people should put that one on their lists.
We've had Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, which I have to say, I was worried about going into that film, but she gives a perfectly fine performance as Callas.
And there have been great performances by Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Leslie Manville in Queer as a brilliant cameo.
So I think we can definitely say that this is the year of great performances by women of a certain age.
The very long standing elations were a big talking point of the festival.
How seriously do you think we should take them into consideration when judging how good a film is?
I think we should take them with a pinch of salt.
You know, if you're gonna put Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a room together and have a room full of the adoring public, they're gonna get a really long standing ovation, even if they haven't made a particularly good film, let's say.
It's a mildly entertaining film.
We want to stop sending in reporters to time them, which is ridiculous.
And we've just got to let these people go.
They don't want to stand there for 17 minutes and have people clapping at them.
You can read more about these stories and others on our website standard.co.uk.
And that's it from this episode.
This podcast will be back tomorrow at 4pm.
