Issue 378  28th December 2024

More prisoners should go to open prisons to help reduce reoffending, the man leading a sentencing review for England and Wales has suggested. David Gauke told the BBC's World At One programme the focus should be on rehabilitation, including allowing inmates to leave prison to study and work during the day. The former Conservative justice secretary has been called in by the government to review sentencing and tackle overcrowding. His comments follow his visit to prisons in Spain, where reforms have seen 25% of inmates placed in open prisons.

Speaking to the Times, Gauke said the policy of using low-security open prisons saved money and better prepared inmates for release which made them less likely to reoffend. Gauke served as justice secretary between 2018 and 2019 under Theresa May. The sentencing review, which was a manifesto pledge, is expected to consider scrapping short sentences and toughening up community orders as an alternative to jail. Gauke told the BBC that Spanish open prisons focus on ensuring that when prisoners reach the end of their custodial sentence, they are "as prepared as possible for life outside". He said strong relationships with family members, employment and secure housing were three factors that helped decrease the chance of reoffending, but added open prisons were not a "silver bullet" to fix the problem of overcrowding...

Tackling the “scourge of femicide” in the UK will be a central part of the government’s promise to drastically reduce violence against women and girls, the minister leading the policy has said. Revealing details of one of Labour’s central missions in office for the first time, Jess Phillips said the success of the government’s target to halve violence against women and girls had to include reducing the rate at which women are killed by men. “A woman is killed by a man every three days. This is not just a statistic, these are real lives that have been taken. These are women with names, families, jobs and people who love them,” she said. “We must tackle the scourge of femicide – which is a fundamental part of our mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.”

The rate of femicide – the misogynistic killing of women and girls by men – is stubbornly high in the UK. According to the Femicide Census, a woman has been killed by a man, on average, once every three days over a 10-year period, with no tangible decline since 2009, the first year the organisation began recording deaths of women...

Challenged on the lack of detail around the goal, Phillips said the target meant that the full force of government machinery would be deployed to tackle a problem that police chiefs have described as a “national emergency”, with one in 12 women in England and Wales affected by stalking, harassment, sexual assault and domestic violence. She pointed to new protection orders for women experiencing domestic abuse, a review of how police deal with stalking and the embedding of domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms from early next year. Phillips said more measurable targets would be announced in the new year, alongside its updated violence against women and girls strategy. “I refuse to allow it to be like previous cross-government strategies: just a piece of paper that no bugger does anything with,” she said. “And what I don’t want to do is hit a target and miss the point”...

Girls falling out on Snapchat and a dispute over a car parking space are the latest incidents responded to by police, according to an audit of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs). Analysis by The Times has found that officers have been called regarding a hand-painted teddy bear picnic featuring a golliwog and a rude word being spelt with alphabet cups in Tesco. Other incidents included someone getting upset about the name of a dog and a report of a dead cat being found outside a resident’s home. Freedom of information requests have found that the police were contacted after a garage recorded faults during an MoT and someone believed they were a victim for being discharged from hospital...