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Outrage as Lord Chief Justice says life sentences are 'too long'
Last updated at 23:22pm on 10.10.06
Lord Chief Justice: In a speech Britain's most senior judge shared his 'personal concern' that sentences were too long
The Lord Chief Justice declared yesterday that serious criminals are being sent to jail for too long.
Lord Phillips said politicians and judges have been pushed into setting increasingly long sentences and called for more community punishments outside jail.
And he said future generations will see the whole life sentences handed down to the most atrocious killers as too harsh.
Lord Phillips, the most senior judge in England and Wales, spoke amid an outcry over the sentences handed down to the teenage killers of ten-year-old Damilola Taylor.
The Preddie brothers may be freed from jail in three years' time.
Damilola's father Richard said yesterday: "The Lord Chief Justice is wrong and he is out of touch with reality."
But Lord Phillips compared the jail terms given to murderers with the cruel and barbarous punishments of past centuries.
In 100 years' time, prison terms of 30 years or more will be seen as comparable to the ducking stool, the cat-o'-nine-tails or the hanging of children, he said.
Lord Phillips said he was worried about the increasing length of prison sentences handed down by the courts for serious crimes and added: "I am inclined to think that to be confined in prison for five years is a very weighty punishment indeed."
The Lord Chief Justice's condemnation of long sentences, delivered in a lecture in Oxford, came just two days after he permitted himself to be pictured carrying out a day's work sampling community sentences and said it was "madness" to send criminals to jail when they were available.
Yesterday a Labour minister admitted such sentences do not work. Constitutional Affairs Minister Harriet Harman told MPs: "Nobody can say that unpaid work is working fantastically at the moment.
"Sometimes they will have got away with it but we are looking at that."
But in his speech Lord Phillips gave his audience of lawyers and students a history lesson on the development of punishment.
In it he dwelled on the 18th century evils of whipping male and female criminals with the vicious cat-o'-nine-tails and throwing prostitutes into rivers with the ducking stool.
He condemned the way century judges hanged children for minor theft until the 19th century and referred to Judge Jeffreys, head of the notorious 'Bloody Assizes', who took sadistic pleasure in hanging hundreds of rebels against the Crown.
Many of these punishments, he said, "are today recognised as utterly barbaric."
Now, Lord Phillips said: "Some murderers are being sentenced to a minimum of 30 years, or even full life terms.
"Lengths of sentence reflect, to a degree, public sentiment and, as chairman of the Sentencing Guidelines Council, I am in part responsible for them.
"But I sometimes wonder whether, in 100 years' time, people will be as shocked by the length of sentences we are imposing as we are by some of the punishments of the 18th century."
Few more than 20 murderers are thought to have been told to serve whole life terms. Among them are the most notorious killers, including Soham murderer Ian Huntley and the paedophile killer of Sarah Payne, Roy Whiting.
A typical murderer is now expected to serve a 'tariff' of 14 years in prison and can expect the term to be shortened if he pleads guilty.
Lord Phillips, however, said he had a "personal concern" over "the increasing length of sentences imposed for serious offences."
He said: "If you have never experienced imprisonment it is very difficult to estimate the punitive effect of a month, or a year, or ten years deprived of one's liberty in such an institution.
"Some elements of the media are inclined, however, to make light of sentences of imprisonment - to speak of defendants being permitted to 'walk free' after only five years inside."
He said that this was "an incitement to the public to exact vengeance from offenders that is not dissimilar from the emotions of those who thronged to witness public executions in the 18th century."
It could not, he said, fail to have an impact on the public, politicians and judges.
The Lord Chief Justice added that the causes of prison overcrowding were increasing deprivation in society and a growing willingness to send people to jail.
He called for more community sentences for those, including burglars and violent offenders, and said he wanted to see "general appreciation of the importance not merely of punishing criminals but of attacking the causes of their criminality."
Mr Taylor, a 60-year-old civil servant whose son bled to death in a stairwell after being attacked in Peckham, South London, nearly six years ago, said: "How can the Lord Chief Justice talk about bringing down sentences for serious criminals?
"We have lost control of crime. There are people who feel free to carry out stabbings and killings and they are not worried about what they do to the victim or the families.
"People who do not face the threat of serious jail terms are not going to take account of the effects of what they do."
He added: "I think the proper penalty for murder is capital punishment. If you do not give long enough sentences to people who are violent they will not be deterred.
"They will not care about another person's life and they will not care about the damage they do to families."
Mr Taylor added: "The Preddies will not spend long enough in prison to be rehabilitated. You can see from their faces that they will not have changed in three years."
Criminologist and advisor on crime figures to the Home Office Dr David Green said: "The Lord Chief Justice is ignoring all the evidence that community sentences are not effective.
"Judges are sending people to jail because they feel they have no alternative.
"Lord Phillips' reference to Judge Jeffreys is a slur on his colleagues. It is very wrong - an abomination."
Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: "The Lord Chief Justice is wrong to say community sentences offer a better chance of preventing re-offending.
"Some 91 per cent of young people on the Government's flagship scheme re-offend within two years. While re-offending rates of those who have been in prison have increased, this is due to prison over crowding."
He added: "What the Government should do is answer our call to provide the necessary prison places so that offenders can go to prison with a purpose - to serve an appropriate length of sentence but also to receive proper effective rehabilitation - so as to prevent them re-offending."
Reader views (9)
Do you have the Email address of this guy....Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips?
He has made some outrageous comments lately, about sentences being too long and using Sharia Law in OUR legal system! Is this man suffering from early senility....How does he keep his position??
British Anglo-Saxons must speak-up now about this buffoon! He is past retirement age and should step down and start taking geritol, for ageing!
- Bermuda Shorts, Hamilton, Bermuda
The comment by Johnno in Nottingham are just as ludicrous as those from the Lord Chief Justice. I suggest to both of them this - visit Singapore. There is virtually no crime and why? Because if you get caught, even for something simple as urinating in the street, you get a beating. And obviously nobody wants to endure pain so it works as a very effective deterrent. It all stems from lack of parental and school discipline.
- Gary, Kent
I agree with the Lord Chief Justice entirely! Imprisonment without any prospect of release is cruel and analogous to torture (an international crime). The best course of action would be to abolish mandatory sentencing and allow judges to determine how long murderers should remain in prison.
- Johnno, Nottingham
The legal structure of the UK is losing all credibility. It looks more and more as if the inmates are running the asylum. Money making speed cameras are a deterrent to "crime", while murder and burglary arn't really crimes at all. Maybe the monopoly of the UK legal structure could do with a bit of competition to wake the oligarch judges up.
- Philip, Moscow, Russia
Given the apparent leniency shown in prison these days that allows inmates to have full access to creature comforts and 3 good meals a day, otherwise they claim it is a restriction to their human rights, a short spell inside is possibly a luxury for some. For anything less than 5 years perhaps we should bring back a cat-o'-nine-tails, it may act as a better punishment/deterent.
- Richard, London
If you commit murder and take away the life of somebody else, you are a danger to society. Murderers should be locked up for life. Life meaning life, not 15 years, 20 years or 30 years..
- Sophie Stewart, Wandsworth, London
The victim is dead forever. The family and friends are sentenced to a lifetime of grief and anquish. How can this man say 30 years is too long?
- Rm, London, UK
The purpose of custodial sentences is the protection of society, not the rehabilitation of the offender - that is merely a possible, though unlikely, by-product.
The logical extension of the Lord Chief Justice's argument would be to abolish all custodial sentences, which would reduce the government payroll by abolishing the prison service - is he really working for the Treasury.
Have the lunatics finally taken over the asylum?
- Warren Hertzberg, London
The sooner judges become democratically accountable to the public, the better. The post of Lord Chief Justice goes from bad to worse and nobody - not even Parliament - can do any thing about.
- David Sadler, London
