Don’t send criminals to jail, because the jails are already full to bursting.
It almost beggars belief that judges were offered this advice at a private meeting last week with Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales, but ministers tellingly won’t deny the reports. Accustomed as we all are by now to things feeling broken, from the trains to crumbling school classrooms to rivers full of sewage, the suggestion that sentencing for rapists or burglars currently out on bail should be temporarily delayed because ministers have failed to build anywhere to put them feels like a particularly dystopian new low. It’s meant to be a short-term measure, a temporary releasing of the pressure valve, but that won’t be much comfort for victims now hearing that their assailants will get to enjoy their freedom a little bit longer. “What am I going to do if a jury finds someone guilty (of rape)?” wondered one judge aloud to the Times. “Do I release that person who is now convicted back into the community, where the victim might see them? What will the victim think?”
