What should become of the two idiots who took a chainsaw to the beloved Sycamore Gap tree? Obviously it was thuggish, a pointless desecration of something that gave countless people joy, judging by the outpouring of unexpectedly deep emotion that followed. Landscapes work their way into the soul. But so does the thought of two children whose father is about to be jailed for what the judge warned would be a “lengthy period”. Though a line obviously has to be drawn, is this really the best way we can think of to punish a heartless act that nonetheless posed no danger to human life?
Now is the perfect time to wrestle with questions such as this, about whom we send to prison and why, and whether doing it differently would lead to a more humane but more effective prison system and ultimately cut crime. For this government is – shock, horror – finally about to do something liberals might actually like. Next week the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is due to publish a review of sentencing commissioned from one of her Tory predecessors, David Gauke, expected among other things to recommend that inmates be allowed to earn freedom after serving only a third of their sentences by good behaviour, or by engaging with work and education that will help them get jobs on release. It’s something progressives have wanted for years but which government after government has nervously backed away from, fearful of being branded soft on crime – though the inspiration was tough, Republican-governed Texas, where reoffending rates have fallen by nearly a third since similar reforms were introduced. Unfortunately, a crisis left by the last government means this one now looks as if it’s not exactly acting out of choice.
On Wednesday Mahmood was forced into announcing emergency measures to stop overstuffed jails in England and Wales exploding. Prisoners on early release who then end up getting recalled to prison – for reoffending, or breaking court orders not to go near their victims – will no longer be made to serve the full remainder of their sentence, but merely locked up for another 28 days. Though it won’t cover those committing the most heinous new crimes, or anyone sentenced for more than four years originally, it may apply to some sexual offenders and it holds a particularly intimate terror for survivors of domestic violence.
If he knows where you live and work, where the kids go to school or where your family are, is a few more weeks behind bars enough of a deterrent for men determined to stalk and punish the women who got them convicted? The usual “soft on crime” headlines from the usual quarters are less of a worry than sobering warnings from the likes of domestic abuse commissioner Nicole Jacobs, no natural scaremonger, about “the lack of consideration for victims’ safety, and how many lives are being put in danger because of this proposed change”.
Though it may be a cold day in hell before the current Conservative party admits it, they’re the ones who left Mahmood in the position every justice secretary dreads. Years of Tory governments promising new prison places but failing actually to provide them means we’re back to the boiling point first reached last summer, where if space isn’t created soon then judges would be physically unable to send anyone down, risking a collapse of law and order as criminals realise they’re untouchable. Mahmood, in short, had to act. But it’s an unhelpfully anxiety-inducing runup to a debate about letting even more offenders out early, this time by strategic choice.
What’s frustrating is that the Gauke review represents a once-in-a-generation chance to flip the script. No more talking tough and noisily ratcheting up sentences, even as the last lot of recently released inmates head back in through our prisons’ revolving doors (almost one in five prisoners now are there on recall, and around one in four adult prisoners ultimately reoffend). Instead we could start with a more enlightened approach to cutting crime that examines who should really be in jail, what the effective alternatives should be, and how prisoners can be incentivised to prepare for a productive and law-abiding life outside. If the country could be confident that community service meant something more than bored people in hi-vis listlessly picking up litter, and that locking up a smaller but better targeted number of offenders could counterintuitively make us all safer in the long term, this might be a rare chance for common sense to prevail.
For Keir Starmer, seemingly locked in a cycle of unconvincing tribute acts to Nigel Farage, it was also a chance to do something that feels authentic; a nod both to the reforming lawyer he used to be, and to supporters bewildered by what he seems to have become. But perhaps it’s not too late to build a coalition of all those – starting with former justice ministers of all stripes, some of whom will privately admit they knew that what they were doing wasn’t working – with a genuine interest in rehabilitation.
The fallen Sycamore Gap tree will in time regrow. The National Trust made sure of that, collecting seeds and cultivating hundreds of saplings that will be planted around the country, many in memory of lives lost, and there was something inexplicably moving about the pictures shared from their nursery of new life springing from old. The tree, at least, gets a second chance. Don’t people deserve the same?
