Robert Jenrick

What do these changes amount to? They are a “get out of jail free” card for dangerous criminals. Has the Justice Secretary even gone through a court listing recently? Pick one from anywhere in our country: those currently going to jail for 12 months or less are not angels. They are Adam Gregory in Calne, who got 12 months for sexually assaulting his partner; Vinnie Nolan, who got 12 months for breaking someone’s jaw; Shaun Yardley, 10 months for beating his partner; or Paul Morris, who got six and a half months for shoplifting 36 times. Her plan is to let precisely these criminals loose. It is a recipe for a crime wave. What about the Justice Secretary’s plan for most criminals going to jail to serve just one third of their prison sentence there and for her slashing of sentences across the board—discounts so big they would make Aldi and Lidl blush? I would call it a joke if the consequences for the public were not so terrifying. In fact it gets worse, because criminals who plead guilty—and most do—already get a third cut in their sentence, so under her scheme a burglar who pleads guilty to an 18-month headline term would spend just one fifth of that term in jail—barely 11 weeks. Eleven weeks for smashing through a family’s door and storming through a child’s bedroom looking for valuables, leaving them traumatised for life. Is that the Justice Secretary’s idea of justice for victims? The least she could do is here and now guarantee that violent criminals, domestic abusers, stalkers and sexual assaulters will not be eligible for any discount in their sentence. Will she commit to that? If not prison, what is the plan to punish these criminals and to keep the public safe? Well, the Justice Secretary says it is digital prisons—as she puts it, prison outside of prison, words that lead most people in this country to conclude that the Justice Secretary is out of her mind. I am all for technology but tags are not iron bars—they cannot stop your child being stabbed on their walk home from school, or a shop being ransacked time and again, or a domestic abuser returning to their victim’s front door.