The head of the Metropolitan Police said fewer criminals serving jail time under proposals to end prison overcrowding will “generate a lot of work for police”, as he highlighted that “massive resources” had been put in to chasing a teenager arrested on suspicion of firearms and machete offences who was bailed.
Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and five other senior police officers wrote in The Times on Wednesday, publicly calling on the Government to provide “serious investment” at this month’s spending review.
As well as increasing demand and new online threats from organised crime, Sir Mark and the other chiefs said the emergency release of prisoners to alleviate overcrowding and recommendations in the sentencing review would put more pressure on policing.
Sir Mark told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday that a proportion of offenders who would have been in prison will be committing further offences because “probation can’t do a perfect job”.
The sentencing review released last week recommended measures to tackle prison overcrowding.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has agreed to allow some criminals, including violent and sexual offenders, to be released early for good behaviour.
She also agreed to scrap short sentences of under 12 months and have more criminals serve sentences in the community instead.
The Government has said the changes will ensure prisons do not become overcrowded, blaming the previous administration for failing to build enough prison places.
Sir Mark said the policy has been enacted without any assessment of its impact on policing.
He told Today: “Every morning I read a log on the way in to work in terms of what’s gone on in London in the last 24 hours. Yesterday we were chasing around a teenager who has been involved in machete attacks, who has previously been arrested for firearms and machete offences. We thought he was remanded in custody… even under the current system he was eventually bailed, he skipped his bail on his tag and we’ve put massive resources into chasing him round and he’s been caught with a machete again – that’s going on day in, day out.
“Every time you put an offender into the community, a proportion of them will commit crime, a proportion of them will need chasing down by the police.”
Asked what impact he thinks the sentencing review will have on public safety, Sir Mark said: “If probation are going to spend more money on trying to reform offenders, divert them, reduce their recidivism, their repeat offending, that’s fantastic, but a proportion of those who would’ve been in prison will be committing further offences because probation can’t do a perfect job, it’s impossible.
“That extra offending is work that police have to do to protect communities – that involves more arrests, more cases. We’ll get more prison recalls where we’re the agency tasked with chasing around offenders who don’t want to be caught and using all our covert tactics and surveillance teams to find people who are now at large and a risk to communities.
“So this will generate a lot of work for police.”
