PCC: Short-term jail stints increase crime

Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Ellis used a report released this week on prisons to highlight how criminals run organised smuggling rackets from inside their cells.

The report, revealed in the Star yesterday, was compiled by Mr Ellis alongside academics from Staffordshire University and the University of Leicester.

The Staffordshire police commissioner says issues inside prison affect inmates on short term sentences who end up being manipulated inside by organised crime gangs, who recruit them to smuggle in contraband.

He supports the argument that the sentences do more harm than good as they ended up turning soft offenders into more hardened criminals.

It comes just more than a week after Justice Secretary David Gauke announced he wanted to abolish sentences of six months or less.

On the issue of inmates on short sentences, Mr Ellis says: "The churn of short-term prisoners may contribute to the flow of drugs in prison, and hence the general instability encountered in some prison regimes.

"We were told by a number of prisoners that those conveying drugs into establishments were often short-term prisoners who were induced, or intimidated, into conveying drugs and mobile phones into prison by plugging items in their rectum, or ‘swallowing’ items and conveying them in the stomach internally.

"The Government have recognised this as a problem and moved to act on acquiring body scanners to detect when this happens in prisons, but these prisoners still have to be received into custody, and even from segregated status can manage to move prohibited items conveyed inside into the mainstream prison population."

The report also highlighted the increasing number of prisoners being recalled back to jail.

It says: "Over the course of the last 20 years, the number of people in prison due to recall has increased substantially.

"In June 1995, on any given day, about 150 people were in prison because they had been recalled. By June 2016, this number had grown to 6,600. In the 12 months to the end of September 2016, 22,094 people were recalled to prison.

"There is evidence that this has inadvertently driven the disorder and drug markets in our jails."

Mr Gauke said that jail terms of less than six months were ineffective in preventing crime and outlined plans to encourage judges to use strengthened community orders instead.

He said: “If it is necessary to legislate, which it may very well be, that is something I'd want to explore,” he said, amid a prisons crisis in which violence and self-harm are at record highs.

His comments were welcomed by reform campaigners, but a report by the Civitas think tank claimed the proposals would amount to an amnesty for prolific thieves and burglars.