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Tories Prepared to Lead UK Away from Mass Incarceration

By Jonathan Simor

The new UK Justice Minister, veteran Conservative politician Ken Clarke is roiling British politics by suggesting openly that the UK's massive increase in imprisonment over the last decade and a half is not, I repeat, is not, the main reason for drops in crime experienced there. According to the Guardian newspaper (read it here), Clarke said:There is and never has been, in my opinion, any direct correlation between spiralling growth in the prison population and a fall in crime," he said. "Crime fell throughout most of the western world in the 1990s. Crime fell in countries that had, and still have, far lower rates of imprisonment than ours."Crime has fallen in Britain throughout a period of both rising prison populations and throughout the same period of economic growth, with strong employment levels and rising living standards...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on July 14, 2010 (boomark / email).