ABSTRACT
On June 30, 2010, Ken Clarke, the British Justice Secretary, announced a £4 billion cut in the prisons budget, raising the prospect of a sharply reduced prison-building* program a‡er years of expansion in inmate numbers and the probable slashing of the previous government’s plans to support another …ve, 1500-capacity jails managed by private contractors.*
Financial cuts across all areas of public spending had been anticipated because of the global economic crisis, and the prison budget reduction of up to 25% was in line with other government departments. What was surprising was the apparent ideological change of the dominant Conservative section of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government’s beliefs about the e„cacy of prison as a deterrent or suitable punishment. e last Conservative government of 1990-1997 is remembered in part for its hard-line approach to oženders:
Hence, it was surprising that this Conservative orthodoxy was challenged by Ken Clarke in his …rst major speech as Justice Secretary. Although certainly appeasing to many of his Liberal Democrat colleagues, his views would have been much less welcomed by hard-line right-wing Conservative Members of the Parliament, and the change in direction was certainly absent from the Conservatives election manifesto. Clarke said he was “amazed” that the number of people in prison had grown to 85,000 and maintained that keeping a prisoner in jail was “a costly and inežectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens.”
