Plan to increase magistrates’ powers ‘will worsen prisons overcrowding crisis’

Plans to double the length of jail sentences that can be handed out by magistrates are “a knee-jerk reaction” and will worsen the prisons overcrowding crisis, a lawyers’ group has said.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the Government is considering giving magistrates power to pass sentences of up to one year, twice the length of jail term they can currently hand down.

This is intended to reduce the number of prisoners being held on remand by bringing them to trial more quickly.

Currently around a fifth of the prison population are suspects being held on remand, and of these a third will either go on to be cleared and released, or will not receive a jail term.

But Mary Prior KC, chairwoman of the Criminal Bar Association, said: “This will simply make things worse.

“This is a knee-jerk reaction, done without consulting, once again, the criminal barristers or solicitors who deal every day with these cases.

“The Government must stop simply tinkering around the edges of a system in the midst of collapse.

“We need to have a collaborative and sensible approach to the impact of sentencing when prisons are already full.

“This suggestion has been tried before but removed very quickly.

“Doubling magistrates’ maximum sentencing powers will only increase pressure on reduced prison space, by speedily raising the much bigger sentenced prisoner population.”

Tom Franklin, chief executive of the Magistrates’ Association, said the move would be “sensible” but not “problem-free”, adding: “Magistrates’ courts are ideally placed to relieve the pressure on crown court capacity, help reduce the backlog and thus enable the most serious offences to be dealt with quicker in crown courts – speeding justice for all.

“There are serious bottlenecks in magistrates’ courts too. So, to be most effective, this change would need to go together with more court resources.”

Then-justice secretary Dominic Raab doubled the jail terms that could be handed out by magistrates in 2022, in a bid to reduce the backlog of Crown Court cases exacerbated by the pandemic. The scheme was dropped after a year.

Last week 1,700 prisoners were released early after serving 40% of their sentences rather than half, in a bid to relieve overcrowding in prisons.

Another batch are due to be released later in October.

The Government said those serving sentences of more than four years for violent crimes, as well as terrorists and sex offenders, are excluded from the early release scheme.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new Government inherited prisons on the point of collapse, which is why the Lord Chancellor took swift action by introducing emergency measures.

“We will continue to consider other long term options to deal with the prisons crisis in a sustainable way.”