>> >> How are you planning to pay for all of this extra prison time and
>> the extra prisons we'll have to build?
>> By decriminalising some current crimes, and freeing up space by removing people from prison who
>> should not be there in the first place. Prison is wholly inappropriate for many offenders.
I certainly agree with the sentiment that prison is wholly inappropriate for many.
>> Now please answer the obvious counter-question from me. Since you are opposed to building extra
>> prison capacity, if we found ourselves in a situation where we had more offenders than
>> we had prison places then which ones would you let off?
Well, the simple answer is "the less serious ones".
It's a complex subject, of course. To sum up, I think that prison should be used very sparingly, but when it is used then sentences should be very heavy, and outside of that there should be as little impact as possible on an offender resuming a normal life (e.g. no need to declare a criminal record in most cases).
>> All I am after is clarity and consistency.
>> The prisons won't be any more or less full if the judge sentences an offender
>> to six months AND MEANS SIX MONTHS, than if he/she sentences them to 18 months
>> BUT ONLY REALLY MEANS SIX!
Ah, so it's transparency you're after.
There may, I think, be logistical problems with sentencing for 6 months and then extending it to 18 months (using your example).
What you really want, and I think that I have seen this done on occasion, is for the judge to say, "your sentence is 8 months, so you will normally be out (on a tag) in 4, but you may be out in as little as 2 if you behave, and if there's overcrowding, you could be out in a week".
If judges always had to phrase it that way, I'm not really sure what difference it would make. The papers will still report "X gets 8 months in prison", and I think that most people know that many offenders get out much earlier.
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