Jail sentences to end for thousands of abusive men under plans to tackle overcrowding crisis

[IwantToRetire]

Thousands of abusive men could walk free from court under the government’s plans to scrap some shorter sentences as it scrambles to tackle the overcrowding crisis gripping prisons – putting women’s safety at risk.

Some 11,040 men were jailed for around 12 months or less for harassment, stalking and revenge porn last year – all sentences that could now be served in the community to free up space in jails.

Justice secretary Alex Chalk’s proposals, announced earlier this month, would see prison terms of under 12 months axed for most offenders. Critics say the move will affect criminals who target women and girls who typically get low sentences – despite Rishi Sunak repeatedly pledging to do more to protect these victims.

Politicians, campaigners and the government’s own domestic violence watchdog have raised concerns over the measures amid fears domestic abusers and stalkers could “slip through the net”, with Labour saying the plans had been “rushed out with no consideration for victims”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prison-short-sentences-violence-women-girls-b2432728.html

Well, that's shit.

Fucks sake.

Can’t they just tag all the non violent fraudsters and make them do
loads of community service?

Or let all the non-payment of fines women out and convert half the women’s prisons to men’s prisons?

No consideration for women who may be harmed by this.

Secret Barrister and others have anticipated this for a long time. It's not going to get any better so we need more than a short-term solution.

This is the perfect time for proponents of non-carceral justice to share their ideas as it has to be better abandoning dangerous men into communities they can harm.

There must be more appropriate classifications of male criminals that could be sentenced to community service. They have already decided there are too many paedophiles to even bother finding them, never mind jailing them.
Now harassment, stalking and revenge porn isn't that serious either.
A clear message that women and children really don't matter.

Vote Tory! At least they know what a woman is!

My arse.

Novel idea but how about they build more fucking prisons!

You can get pod designed ones that are manufactured off site and put together dead quick on site. In the mean time im sure there's some existing buildings not in use that could be converted to house the less dangerous and non fight risk criminals doing long sentences.

The solution should not be to reward dangerous thugs who already had ridiculously low sentences with being able to complete their sentence at home on tag.

Prisons are like motorways; if you build them, they will soon fill up. And equally pointless. The Tories had a go years ago. As posters have suggested, there's plenty of women, and a fair few men, who could be released to non-custodial sentences. You'd think that to say that those found guilty of violence and sexual crimes should be very last people to be thrown back into society would be so obvious as to not need saying, but these days, apparently not.

Why can't all these men be put to work building more prisons, or more cell blocks on existing sites? I find it absolutely appalling that we have so many dangerous, abusive men in our society that there aren't enough prisons to lock them up.

Exactly this.

Female prisoners are mostly no danger to anyone, male prisoners mostly are. So convert the female sentences to community sentences and free up more jail space for the violent male criminals.

So it's the abusive ones that get set free. Not the (mostly) women who get jailed for their children refusing school even though children have two parents and far fewer men get jailed for this. Or ffs let's let out the (mostly) women who are in jailed for not paying their TV licence...

I wonder if the Government suggested using the abandoned military bases to take these violent men, whether the local communities would be as hostile to them, as to the idea that asylum seekers waiting the ages it takes to process claims, should be housed there rather than in hotels.

Although personally I would have thought these men should have been given longer prison sentences. Are acts of violence thought to be so inconsequential, or is it that acts of violence against women are thought to be inconsequential?

This is no help for the short term because prisons need staffing, and qualified prison staff can't just be plucked out of thin air. There's already a staffing crisis.

Long term it's a potential solution, but an expensive one. It's probably better to look at whether there are classes of prisoners who can be dealt with by other means (e.g. those prosecuted for TV license evasion and theft), and to look at how we can change our culture so that fewer serious crimes are committed than to simply build more prisons.

They don't give a fuck about women. They really don't.

I see the total myth that women's prisons are full of women who are there for no other reason than they didn't pay a TV Licencing fine is still alive and well, despite being proven to be completely untrue time and time again.

So first off they give absolutely risible sentence for crimes against women. Then they say oh its only a sentence of under 12 months, let's just serve it in the community. Ffs.

Women may not be jailed for not paying a tv license but they are jailed for theft and many are victims of abuse. Over half (58%) of prison sentences given to women in 2022 were for less than six months.

The full statement announcing the changes is here https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-governments-approach-to-criminal-justice

Part of the pressure on prisons is from making rapists serve their full sentences and increasing sentences for certain crimes, part from people on remand, some from non deporting foreign nationals.

Now the problem has been highlighted maybe the government will make these men one of the groups excluded from the scheme.

Part of the pressure on prisons is from making rapists serve their full sentences

The link you provided said “When we legislate to make rapists serve their full sentences” so this isn’t a current pressure, but may a pressure in the future.

"We have ended automatic halfway release for serious sexual and violent offenders so they will serve two-thirds of their sentence behind bars – and in the most dangerous cases all of their sentence behind bars."

This is contributing to current pressures, the legislation means that all rapists will be included in future but some are currently included.

Why would they not release them based on least danger to the community or previous victims rather than sentence length?

Exactly this.

I know fraud isn't victimless and can have devastating consequences, but I reckon rigorous, well organised community service would be a far more suitable punishment for fraud anyway.

Whereas until men learn to fucking control themselves, I'd have longer custodial sentences for all sexual assaults.