Jails 'create better criminals', says Prisons Minister Lord Timpson

19 September 2024, 07:13 | Updated: 19 September 2024, 07:21

By Charlotte Lynch

@charlotterlynch

Lord Timpson has told LBC prisons “create better criminals”, as he hailed new research on the effectiveness of community sentences.

The new Prisons’ Minister, who was appointed to the Lords by Sir Keir Starmer in order to take up the role, said helping people to overcome addiction and mental health problems to stop them reoffending is “vital”.

The study, published by the Ministry of Justice, found those given mental health treatment as part of their community sentence were up to 9 percentage points less likely to reoffend.

“We need to understand what we can do to help people stop reoffending”, Lord Timpson told LBC.

“Prisons seem to be very good at creating better criminals, not better citizens. 

“We know if we can help people overcome their mental health problems, their drug and alcohol problems, we can help them stop reoffending”, he said.

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Timpson, the CEO of key cutting and shoe repair business the Timpson group, said increasing mental health support can help offenders “go and become normal citizens back in society”.

It’s expected Timpson will use studies like this to form future policy, alongside drawing on his firm’s own success of employing convicted criminals. 

Evidence suggests more than half of offenders serving a prison sentence of less than 12 months reoffend within a year, compared to a quarter of those on suspended sentence orders with conditions.

LBC spoke to Daisy*, who said she was “in and out of the revolving doors of crime” for years, until she was given treatment for the mental health issues that were driving her offending.

“I was just going round and round in the system. Because of my mental health I turned to addiction and substance misuse, and that made my crimes worse”, she said.

“I eventually had a mental health assessment, which I should have had years ago. It was recognised my mental health was contributing to the crimes I was committing, and the judge added a mental health treatment requirement as part of my sentence.

“I wanted to change but I needed that support. Now I live a stable crime free life, I wake up with a clear head and a sense of belonging that has given me strength”, she told LBC.

It comes as jails across the country face an overcrowding crisis, with the government forced to trigger the early release of thousands of offenders, to free up capacity.

There were some 88,521 prisoners as of September 6, with only 1.2% capacity left in the system.

As of Friday, September 13, the number had fallen to 86,333, according to the Ministry of Justice, after around 2,000 offenders were released after serving 40% of their sentence.