Rehabilitation and Sentencing

A court has to look at the nature of the offence and the individual offender and give the right sentence. For serious criminals, that means going to prison; for recidivist offenders, that means going to prison; for others, it might be more appropriate for a strong community sentence to be made available. It is not possible to generalise in such a way. At the heart of what we are doing is ensuring that judges give the right punishment and that they give us a rest while people are in prison. The system is simply failing to prevent people reoffending. That is what the policy focus has to be and that is what will reduce crime if it is successful.