Duncan Smith calls for reform of chaotic criminal justice system

|PIC1|Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith is calling for the urgent reform of Britain’s “chaotic” criminal justice system.

Mr Duncan Smith will make the call in a speech today to criticise the Labour Government on its “epic” failure to stop most offenders from going on to commit another crime within two years of their release, in spite of increasing spending on public order and safety, policing and youth justice by 50 per cent in the last decade.

Mr Duncan Smith will use his speech to warn of a “revolving door” of serial offenders “clogging up the prison estate” and to urge reforms aimed at cutting Britain’s high crime and reoffending rates, which currently costs Britain around £11 billion a year.

“If the criminal justice system were a business, it would have been liquidated long ago,” he will say.

The speech coincides with the launch of a new report from his think tank, the Centre for Social Justice, which calls for greater powers for magistrate courts, a more active role for the probation service, and greater provision of drug and rehabilitation courses.

The 192-page report has been compiled by a team of 12 experts led by barrister Martin Howe QC. It warns that 75 per cent of crack and heroin users claim to commit crime to feed their habit, and calls for an end to short sentences of two months or less.

Short sentences, it says, fuel overcrowding and should be replaced by “tougher, longer, more tightly structured community sentences”.

“Sentences of six months are reduced to six weeks, and those of 28 days are being waived. Even more farcical is a 42-day sentence handed down on a Friday,” the report says.

“Forty-two days is automatically cut to 21 days, and cut again by 18 days due to emergency early release schemes. But because prisoners are not released over a weekend, the offender is actually set free that day with a discharge grant and no time to serve.”

The report goes on to claim that a centralised, “box-ticking” culture of targets has “hamstrung” police and the Crown Prosecution Service, while police are increasingly resorting to cautions because they count just as highly as convictions and take less time and effort.