Costly failure finally addressed: Revolving Doors responds to the Sentencing Bill
After over 30 years of campaigning, the end of short sentences is a milestone – but this is just the first marker upon the long road to ending the revolving door.
With a staggering cost of over £1billion per year, and reoffending rates of 55%, it has long been clear that short sentences are no deterrent and do not rehabilitate. Rather, for our group they are the very mechanism that keeps the revolving door turning, facilitating a downward spiral of crisis and crime.
While we welcome the Sentencing Bill, we have strong concerns about the proposed use of suspended sentences as an alternative to short prison sentences, rather than community orders.
Too often, suspended sentences function less as an alternative to custody, and more as a delay before prison. Many people caught in cycles of crisis and crime breach their orders not out of wilful disobedience, but because of unmet health and social needs. Addressing these issues takes time, resources, and consistent support, yet services are often slow to respond and the stability people need is not in place.
For those in our group, help frequently arrives only after a breach has already occurred. Their lives are chaotic, and while they struggle, the responsibility for failed compliance does not rest solely on them – probation and wider systems are not providing the support required. Without that, a suspended sentence risks setting people up to fail rather than offering a genuine alternative to custody.
Instead of suspended sentences, the presumption must be in favour of community sentences if it is to succeed.
People in the revolving door need help to address the root causes of their offending in a consistent, supportive environment. They need wrap-around support in the community to divert them away from the cycle of crisis and crime.
The benefits of this are manifold: safer, stronger, happier, healthier people and communities. Money and lives saved.
As the Bill makes its way towards becoming law, and in the years ahead as we look to the future, Revolving Doors and our members will be here to make the case for what works: pre-arrest diversion, community sentences which address root causes, peer support to build empathy and understanding, and whole-system approaches to breaking the cycle of crisis and crime.
We are getting closer to ending the revolving door. Now, more than ever, it’s time for bold action.
