Labour will unleash “havoc” in communities across the nation and “destroy countless lives” if burglars are spared jail in the coming sentencing shake-up, Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has warned. Crime rates will plummet if prolific burglars are locked up and not allowed to terrorise neighbourhoods, he said. But it is feared a landmark sentencing review will lead to many more offenders being tagged and serving their sentences outside prison.
Former Justice Secretary David Gauke is due to publish recommendations as the criminal justice creaks as a result of the prisons overcrowding crisis. Mr Jenrick warned that stopping sending people guilty of burglary to prison for short sentences could “mean thousands of burglars escape jail over the course of the parliament”.
Warning this would be “tantamount to legalising burglary”, he said it would “wreck havoc in communities and destroy countless lives”.
He added: “The only people benefitting from this Labour Government seem to be trade unionists, criminals and illegal migrants.”
Mr Jenrick said burglaries “take away peace of mind”, adding: “If they locked up the hyper-prolific burglars who are responsible for most of the burglaries, we could dramatically cut crime rates and keep the public safe. Allowing hardened criminals to be ‘punished’ in the community is a recipe for them going on to reoffend again and again.”
A report by the Policy Exchange think tank this month reported that “hyper-prolific offenders” who have more than 45 previous convictions are sent to prison on less than half of occasions. It called for an end to prisoners being automatically eligible for early release and pressed for an additional 43,000 prison places.
Former security minister Sir John Hayes warned against scrapping short prison sentences.
He said: “It’s certainly true that short sentences are a problem. The problem is they are too short.
“The solution is to lock up many people for much longer. By so doing, we keep the public safe and we punish people who do harm to others. Burglars spoil people’s lives.
“They rob them of their dignity as well as their possessions. People feel that their home has been invaded; they rightly expect the people who are caught and convicted to be locked up so they can’t do it again.”
Pressing for an expansion in prison places, he said: “When we had Covid we built the Nightingale hospitals very quickly. It doesn’t seem to me to be beyond the realms of possibility we could build something similar for prisons…
“Let’s have a mass building programme and look at creative ways that we get those prisons up quickly.”
There is concern that many people who serve short prison sentences reoffend quickly. Adults released from sentences of less than 12 months had a reoffending rate of 59.2%, according to the figures for the April to June 2023 period; those with sentences of 12 months or more had a much lower reoffending rate of 20.3%.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The Government inherited overcrowded prisons on the point of collapse. We were forced to introduce emergency measures to ensure we had the space to lock up dangerous criminals.
“More than half of adults released from prison sentences of less than 12 months go on to reoffend and our landmark sentencing review will make sure the most serious offenders can continue to be sent to prison to protect the public.”
A Labour source blasted Mr Jenrick, saying: “This is pretty rich from someone who was a minister in the last Tory Government, which left our streets plagued by crime and our prisons in crisis.”
But David Spencer, head of crime and justice at the Policy Exchange think tank said: “David Gauke’s ‘independent’ sentencing review risks trapping ministers in the cosy and failed consensus of the ‘soft on crime and criminals’ past. As Policy Exchange has previously warned, if the current Government is not willing to enact laws which ensure every single prolific criminal goes to prison every single time they are convicted of a crime they will find the public elects a Government at the next election who will.”