SPOTLIGHTS: Sentence inflation

• Date: 27 Sep 2024

• Location: Online

In the last month, our crumbling prison system has held more people than ever before. On 10 September about 1,700 people were released early from prison in an attempt to tackle overcrowding; the same day His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons published a scathing annual report on the conditions in which prisoners are held. The scale and severity of the prisons crisis is front-page news.

If we are to find lasting solutions, we must understand what led us here in the first place; which means talking about sentencing.

This Spotlights event will reflect on the Howard League’s latest paper, Sentence inflation: A judicial critique, which calls on the government to reverse the trend of imposing ever longer sentences. The paper is signed by Lord Woolf, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and Lord Burnett of Maldon – each of whom served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales – and Sir Brian Leveson, the only surviving President of the Queen’s Bench Division who was also head of Criminal Justice.

The former judges say there is nothing to justify the fact that custodial sentence lengths have approximately doubled over the half-century that they have been involved in the law. The number of people in prison rose from about 40,000 in 1991, the year in which the Woolf Report into the Strangeways riot was published, to more than 88,000 on the eve of the early release scheme this month.

With the government promising to hold a sentencing review in the near future, there is no better time to join our panel of experts as we examine the issue in depth.

This online event will be hosted by our Chief Executive, Andrea Coomber KC (Hon.). The panel will include:

• Sir Brian Leveson is a retired English judge who served as the President of the Queen’s Bench Division and Head of Criminal Justice.
• Nicola Padfield KC (Hon.) is a barrister and Professor of Criminal and Penal Justice in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge.
• Dwaine Patterson, prison consultant.

Book your place for this free event, on Friday 27 September, 12pm to 1pm, online via Zoom webinar.
For anyone that cannot make it, this event will be recorded and available on our YouTube.

Bookings through the website for this event have now closed. To book a place, please email Katie Logue.

About the Howard League Spotlights series

Howard League Spotlights is a series of events aimed at lifting the lid on prisons and finding more effective ways to reduce crime and keep our communities safe. Each event will focus on a particular theme and bring together experts to approach the issue from different perspectives. Spotlights events are free of charge, but if you would like to support our work, please consider becoming a Howard League member.

Support our work
The Howard League will continue to do what it can, both on specific issues and larger, systemic challenges, to see meaningful prison reform take hold. But it is only with your support that we can do so. If you can, please help us to continue this important work, either by joining as a member or making a donation. Thank you.