Forty-seven per cent of people think offenders with a drug or alcohol problem linked to their crime should be sent to a rehabilitation programme instead of prison, according to a poll by Opinium on behalf of the Forward Trust.
The idea was opposed by just 20 per cent of respondents, the trust says, while there was also ‘strong support’ for its proposal for an ‘earned release’ scheme – where non-violent prisoners are able to work towards early release if they make good progress in their rehab programme.
The Forward Trust will be presenting the poll results to the Labour Party conference this week, with the ‘earned release’ scheme put forward as an alternative to the government’s current early release programme, where people are automatically released between a third and halfway through their sentence to ease prison overcrowding. ‘We think this is not the best way to protect the public, or improve rehabilitation of offenders, and will likely mean a continued high reoffending rate which will do nothing to bring down prisoner numbers’ the trust states.
A review by former chief inspector of prisons Dame Ann Owers last year found that the prison estate had come ‘close to collapse’ on three separate occasions as a result of overcrowding, with the government-commissioned sentencing review by former justice secretary David Gauke recommending a shift away from sentences of less than 12 months apart from in ‘exceptional circumstances’. A report from the Independent Monitoring Boards earlier this year found that drugs were now the ‘single most destabilising factor’ across the entire adult prison estate.
‘Government should see these results as a green light to launch bold, courageous, and creative rehabilitation initiatives,’ said Forward Trust CEO Mike Trace. ‘It’s obvious that cramming together lots of people with histories of trauma, neglect, poverty, and addiction in understaffed and rundown conditions is not going to lead to good outcomes – either for offenders or the public. Change is long overdue. The way out is to create a system that genuinely rehabilitates, rather than simply punishes. Rehabilitation gives people a second chance. Taking rehabilitation seriously is cheaper than current strategy, will reduce crime and prison pressures in the long term, and has the support of the public.’