More probation officers will be needed in London and elsewhere to report on offenders being kept out of prison, ministers were warned on Monday as they unveiled a sentencing shake-up to ease jail overcrowding.
The overhaul, which was being announced in Parliament by Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, aims to shift away from the use of short prison sentences because they often fail to rehabilitate offenders who can be dealt with more effectively in the community.
His plans also include sending more foreign prisoners to serve sentences in their home countries, as well as the creation of extra “pop-up” cells in prefabricated buildings inside prison walls.
The reforms are intended to reduce the pressure on prison capacity amid fears that the current total of around 88,000 inmates will otherwise rise by more than the remaining 600 places available nationwide.
Judges have already been told to delay sentencing where possible in a short-term measure to address the crisis. But although penal reformers will welcome the proposed shift away from short sentences after years of campaigning for the change, Tom Franklin, the chief executive of the Magistrates Association, warned that without more probation officers and better availability of effective community sentences the overhaul would not be effective.
“Non-custodial sentences can be a very good option because they can help both the victim of crime and the offender in terms of rehabilitation,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“The issue for us is that very often there aren’t suitable community sentence options — there needs to be more of a range of them and more availability to make sure that magistrates can sentence appropriately. There need to be more probation officers as well. Magistrates are very reliant on the probation service to provide pre-sentence reports which talk about the offence, the offender and the options available.”
Ministers have announced plans to increase the number of probation officers following warnings that serious shortages, particularly in London, are undermining the effectiveness with which freed offenders are supervised.
