Only the very serious for prison?

Last week the prison governors became political (with no protest like that lumped on General Dannatt).

The governors association voted to abolish all prison sentences of under 12 months. Their argument is that short sentences give them little opportunity to reform offenders, and that the cost is high. (Besides which there is a shortage of prison places and overcrowding - could this be their main motive?) It has to be said that the Magistrates' Association, who are responsible for a large majority of imprisonment sentences opposed the idea. The maximum sentence available to them is six months, so they would lose imprisonment as an option.

It has also to be said that those sent to prison may have spent time on remand, so their stay in normal prison may be much briefer. It must also be admitted that the offending rate for those sentenced to 12 months or less is too high - 60% re-offend within two years.

I have no figures on the failure rates for those given more than 12 months in prison, nor for those given the community sentences advocated by the prison governors, but there are apparently many failures of the latter to complete their programmes, perhaps as many as 50% on some schemes, so what do we do with them - send them to prison? What we do know is that many serious, i.e. violent, offenders released early very quickly commit similar crimes.

If incarceration for less than one year is abolished, then presumably we would have to consider giving those who might have received 11 months,or whatever, a sentence above 12 months? If community service is so widely failing, what do we do with those who fail to complete? Presumably they would have to go to prison for more than 12 months?

The governors, and the government with or behind them, urge that it is cheaper to sentence people to community service, but this considers usually only the prison costs against community supervision costs. If we accept Michael Howard's argument, that those in prison cannot commit crimes against the community, then what costs are saved by society by imprisonment? The answer is a large figure, almost certainly larger than the prison cost - insurance, security costs, police costs, hospital costs, etc. These are costs imposed on private citizens in part and rank as less important than public costs for some reason.

So to take the governors' assertion on expense, it could be argued that sentences of less than 12 months should in fact not be abolished or replaced, but rather should be increased, in order to reduce the total cost on society.