- The Observer,
- Sunday August 3, 2003
The unexpected call from the Tories for a more liberal regime - the gates of open jails are often not locked, and inmates come and go to work or prepare for life outside - leaves Letwin risking being labelled 'soft on crime' by right-wingers in his party.
The Shadow Cabinet's token 'Hampstead liberal' says that, with the prison population due to rise on the Home Office's own forecasts to between 86,700 and 100,700 by 2006 - and with only 78,000 places due to be provided by then - more 'imaginative' action is needed. He wants a review of the use of open jails and the categorisation of prisoners as low- or high-risk.
'The best information available is that there is somewhere between a serious problem and a crisis,' he told The Observer.
'We ought to have some kind of public debate about the extent to which forms of imprisonment may need to alter. I am thinking about conditions more like those of open prisons. It may be that there is room for investigation of the degree to which prison authorities believe there are prisoners who are behind [bars in] medium security who don't actually need to be there.'
The advantage of open jails is that they do not take years to build - existing buildings can be converted - so would be a quicker solution than building new prisons from scratch.
They are currently used mainly for white-collar criminals considered very low risk, such as Jeffrey Archer, or those serving long sentences who are due for release. Those who break the rules can be transferred back to tougher conditions - as happened to Archer, after he attended a lunch at MP Gillian Shephard's house without permission.
Letwin backed a review of the system for categorising prisoners, which determines what jail they go to and ranges from category A - those held in the most secure conditions, whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security - to very low-risk category D, trusted to enjoy open conditions without absconding.
It is not just the original offence, but also behaviour inside jail that determines a prisoner's categorisation.
Letwin also demanded a review of the prison release scheme, under which Brendan Fearon, the surviving burglar who broke into farmer Tony Martin's house, was recently freed early. Letwin accused Home Secretary David Blunkett of misusing the scheme to ease overcrowding.
'His response has simply been to free more and more prisoners earlier and earlier. This is not a tough policy and it's not one that is going to create confidence in the prison system,' he said.
'We need to know that, where people are released, they are released because it is right, not just because there is overcrowding.'
He said that, in the short term, with the prison population, which this week stands at 73,911, due to rise by another 6,000 next year and only around 212 places left, Blunkett would probably have to use prison ships. The Prison Service's annual report last month showed overcrowding was making it increasingly hard to control prisons, with a sharp increase in major disruptions.
Letwin's call for more imaginative thinking does not seem to extend to calling in Lord Archer - who has expressed a wish to campaign on prison reform - for advice.
Asked if he would welcome Archer's ideas, Letwin said firmly he had 'no comment whatsoever on that'. The peer has now been expelled from the Conservative Party.
