HIGH-EARNING offenders will pay heavier fines, and young thugs will help to build Britain’s Olympic village, under plans announced yesterday to cut the jail population.
Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, promised that young thugs would be “frightened” by the prospect of unpaid work while serving non-custodial sentences. They would wear identifying clothing so that the public could see them. His five-year strategy is to revive the use of fines and improve the effectiveness of community punishment in the hope that this will encourage the courts to send fewer people to prison.
Mr Clarke said he wanted to ensure that fines had the same effect on the rich as on the poor. Under his plans middle-class people who commit a range of offences that are dealt with by magistrates’ courts could pay hundreds of pounds more than poorer neighbours convicted of the same crimes.
The level of fine will be dictated by the disposable income of the offender. High-earners face fines three or four times higher than now. A minor offence that carries a maximum fine of £200 now could attract a penalty of £750 for the wealthy.
The maximum fine for an offence such as failing to give particulars after an accident could jump from £5,000 to £15,000. The fine will be determined by the number of income units imposed for the seriousness of the offence multiplied by the offender’s disposable income. The Home Office plans to set upper limits for fines, with a maxium income unit of 75 and a maximum disposable income of £200.
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The Government put forward plans for a similar system last January in a Bill that was withdrawn because of the general election. A similar scheme was introduced by the Conservatives in the early 1990s and abandoned in 1993 amid widespread concern at anomalies.
Mr Clarke’s plans are part of a strategy intended to reduce the number of prisoners — 76,000 — in the 140 jails in England and Wales. The number of short-sentence offenders in prison will be reduced, as well as the number of psychiatrically ill, and women prisoners. Under the proposals thousands of criminals will spend less time in jail and more time being punished in the community.
In an attempt to convince the public that community punishment is not a soft option, the Home Office wants the number of hours of unpaid work done by criminals given non-custodial sentences to double to ten million by 2011.
“We hope this will include an important contribution towards the work necessary to prepare for the Olympic Games,” the strategy says.
Asked what a 21-year-old thug would find frightening about unpaid community work, Mr Clarke replied at a press conference: “Work.” He added: “Unpaid work is the core of it all. I think if you have to work rather than hanging around in a prison cell, I think that is tougher.” The strategy, which contains few costings, includes plans to bring in “going straight” contracts, reflecting the privileges system operating in the 140 jails.
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The idea, first put forward four years ago, is that criminals given community punishments will have less supervision if they convince their probation officers that they are committed to changing their ways. From October, every year an estimated 60,000 criminals who are sentenced to less than a year in jail are likely to receive very short terms combined with a longer period under Probation Service supervision.
Mr Clarke criticised the Probation Service over its record on supervision. “We have had some recent examples, in particular the Monckton murder, where the supervision of those concerned was not acceptable,” he said. “Unfortunately there are too many cases still where there are individuals who are under probation and under scrutiny who have not been properly controlled.”
Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, ridiculed the idea of offenders helping to prepare facilities for the Olympics. “Are they going to bus offenders in from all over the country to work in East London?” he asked. Mark Leech, the editor of the Prisons Handbook and a former prisoner, said: “There is nothing new in these plans, nothing that hasn’t already been said a hundred times.”
WORK TO SCARE A YOUNG THUG
Some of the tasks carried out by offenders on community punishment