Action needed to stop criminal re-offending and cut crime
Press Release :
12 March 2008
Convicted criminals in jail will have to work to compensate their victims and will no longer have an automatic early release under new policies unveiled by Conservatives.
At the same time greater resources will be provided for rehabilitation and prison governors would be made responsible for offenders after they are released – not just when they are in prison.
Other plans are: - For courts to set a minimum and maximum period of time in jail. Prisoners would no longer have an automatic early release. They would have to serve a guaranteed minimum sentence.
- For those prisoners who refuse to take part in rehabilitation programmes or stay off drugs will remain in custody the longest.
- Community sentences would be tough with new sanctions, such as withdrawing benefits, on those who did not attend.
- To increase prison capacity and to deport more foreign national prisoners
Jeremy Lefroy, Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Stafford, welcomed these proposals which are intended to restore confidence in the criminal justice system, reform prisons and cut re-offending to break the cycle of crime.
Mr Lefroy, who served between 2002 and 2006 as a member of the Independent Monitoring Board of a Young Offenders’ Institution in the West Midlands, said:
“I have seen at first hand how our prisons are not given sufficient resources to rehabilitate prisoners. Two out of the three ex-prisoners are reconvicted within two years of release under Labour. No wonder prisoner numbers rise inexorably.
“This has to stop. Criminals need both to serve proper sentences – without automatic early release – and at the same time to have the chance for rehabilitation in prison and proper advice when they are finally released. These proposals are welcome and I look forward to seeing a Conservative government put them into practice.”
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