THE Howard League for Penal Reform and the Prison Reform Trust yesterday expressed concern over mandatory life sentences being extended to crimes other than murder.
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke announced that anyone convicted of a second serious sexual or violent crime in England and Wales would get an automatic life term.
Jail terms would also be mandatory for over 16s convicted of knife crime.
Frances Crooke, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said she was ‘very worried’ about the proposals.
She said: ‘We have nearly 12,000 life sentence prisoners – that’s more than Russia, Poland, Germany and France all added together.
‘We are using the mandatory life sentence and discretionary life sentences like confetti already, and it is causing huge problems in the prisons.’
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, added: ‘American-style mandatory sentencing may sound tough but it is neither effective nor intelligent, and has driven some states close to bankruptcy.
‘Subject to good sentencing guidelines, what’s wrong with allowing the courts to make sure that the sentence fits the crime?’
Clarke said the new automatic life sentences would apply to somebody who had committed two ‘probably near murderous attacks’.
Further planned changes to the sentencing regime in courts include:
• Extending the category of the most serious sexual and violent offences to include child sex offences, terrorism offences and ‘causing or allowing the death of a child’ so that the new provisions will apply to them.
• The Extended Determinate Sentence (EDS), whereby all dangerous criminals convicted of serious sexual and violent crimes will be imprisoned for at least two-thirds of their sentence, ending the release of these offenders at the halfway stage.
• Extended licence period so that criminals who complete an EDS must then serve extended licence periods where they will be closely monitored and returned to prison if necessary.
• Courts have the power to give up to an extra five years of licence for violent offenders and eight years for sexual offenders on top of their prison sentence.
All the new measures will be debated in the House of Commons next week and, if passed, will be added to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill which is currently going through Parliament.
