Ken Clarke: “Serious knife crimes will get serious prison sentences, but we’re not setting absolute tariffs”
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is due to set out proposals to reform sentencing in England and Wales.
A Green Paper will put the emphasis on making prisons more purposeful and toughening up community sentences.
The reforms are driven by the need to cut the £4bn prison and probation budget by about 20% over four years.
Earlier, Mr Clarke said a Conservative election pledge that anyone caught carrying a knife could expect a jail term would not be implemented.
Ministers are aiming to cut the prison population by 3,000 to reduce costs.
They are expected to propose measures to restrict the use of indeterminate sentences, extend the use of bail for suspects and give greater sentence reductions for defendants who plead guilty early.
BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw says the key reform will be to make community sentences a more credible alternative to custody.
Mr Clarke believes unpaid work schemes undertaken by offenders should be more punitive, with activities becoming more physical and intense.
But plans in the Conservative manifesto for prisoners to “earn” their release, as part of a so-called Min-Max sentencing regime, have been scrapped, as has the pledge that anyone convicted of a knife crime can expect a jail term.
Asked by BBC political editor Nick Robinson on Monday whether people caught carrying knives could expect a lesser punishment, Mr Clarke said: “Anybody who is guilty of serious knife crime will go to prison but I’m not in favour of absolute rules.
“I’m in favour of actually allowing judges to see how nasty the offender is, see what the offence was, see what the best way of protecting the public from him is.”
In the Conservative election manifesto, the party said four out of five people convicted of a knife crime did not go to prison and they would send a “serious, unambiguous message that carrying a knife is totally unacceptable”.
The document said: “We will make it clear that anyone convicted of a knife crime can expect to face a prison sentence.”
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