Let’s divide this into two groups. The “definitely should be in jail” group and the “maybe not group”.

Definitely Should Be in Jail

As we can see, Violence Against the Person and Sexual Offences are about 25% and 17.5% respectively. Criminal damage and arson make up less than 2%, but setting fire to houses is bad, let’s stick them in jail. Robbery means the person used force, making them violent; they go in this group with 10%-ish. Owning a weapon is currently illegal (4%), and probably means you’re going to be violent, so we can put them in as well.

In regards to theft, it could mean just picking up a Mars bar, but according to the Code for Crown Prosecutors (2019), theft that leads to jail is for burglary, robbery, and in the case of harm to an individual and community. We can say then, they are more likely than not to be in jail for a serious case, and should stay there. So we’ll put theft here for 15%.

Maybe Not

Let’s say that drug offences are innocent (no trafficking, no dealing); that puts 15% of the prison population able to be released. Let’s say all miscellaneous are also fine to release (4.5%). Summary non-motoring are usually fine; it’s people who don’t pay parking tickets, TV licenses or child support; safe to release (4%). We shall also put public order offences (1.5%) and fraud offences (1.5%) in this category.

Why do this little exercise? So we can examine how many people are in jail for legitimate, ‘dangerous for society’ crimes, and because of the next policy of the Libertarians:

Policy 2: We will bring an end to the early release of the violent or abusive

Because the most the Libertarians can release from jail is around 26.5% (above estimate) of the population (of which, we must assume the most generous degree of innocence of these men), whereas the remaining 73.5% (estimate) are, we can safely assume, are unsafe to be released.

As such, the only way to reduce the population immediately is to assume the best from the “Maybe not” group, and then begin to release people who are dangerous to society. The numbers simply don’t back the Libertarians ideas up. Here are the estimates put together from government resources:

They will need to release 8,600 people just to reach capacity (or 76,400 possible rooms)! Currently, the prison holds 85,000 prisoners. That means that 10%, over 30% of the ‘safe’ prisoners (and remember, it’s probably less safe than that) would have to be released for Britain to have NO spare rooms. If all the safe prisoners are released, we could release up to 22525; which would leave us with only around 14,000 spare prison cells available for all of the United Kingdom.

The reason we have a lot of people in jail is that a lot of people are dangerous, and need to be in jail.

We know the Libertarians don’t want to build more prisons; that’s government spending, and we’re already at a deficit (which they want to remove). But let’s say they did; we know that 67/68 (depending on source) prisons hold all 76,000 prison cells. So let’s assume the average prison holds 1,100 prisoners. The government currently estimates building 10,000 new prison places to cost around £1.3 billion (House of Commons, 2018b). So each prison will cost around £144 million, for 1,100 places, or £131,000 per prison place (to be built, not held).

Policy 3: We reserve prison sentences for the violent and repeat offenders, and first-time offenders shall have community sentences, education, and curfew measures

Policy 4: Improve education and training within prison

The violent make up (in the most generous view of things) nearly three-quarters of prisoners; they make up 62,000 out of 76,000 possible prisoners (if we don’t overcrowd).

According to the Guide on Proven Reoffending Statistics, 30,000 people would fit the multiple offender definition (as in, two crimes proven in one year) in 2016, and this is the lowest year on record. It seems to normally hover around 45,000 people, which is over half of our capacity (Ministry of Justice, 2019).

This policy would load the prison system immediately in less than 2 years. We discussed above that creating new prison places would cost £131,000 per prisoner initially, and then between £23,000 (England and Wales) to £35,000 (Scotland) to Northern Ireland’s £53,408 per year (House of Commons, 2018a).

What does this mean? We can guess that 35% of the prison population leaves every year (that’s 10% for less than a year sentence, and that a half of the 1-4 year sentences leave, adding 23% more, and some of the longer sentences as well; we’ll provide the Libertarians a positive example). That’s around 30,000 leaving each year. If crimes remain at current levels, then this policy could be maintained. If they climb back to 45,000 per year (as they normally are), then the government would be forced to either reduce sentences (against party policy) or build 15,000 places each year with will cost nearly £2 billion per year (which is against party policy). This policy is only possible in the most optimistic circumstances.

In regards to policy 4, does education work? Perhaps, but it’s not the most important factor. A study in Norway by Skardhamar (2012) found that getting a job was one of the most important factors; those who found work before re-offending would reoffend 33% of the time, whereas without work, it was 71%. Those who went onto education, however, would reoffend at 41%. Going onto welfare doesn’t work, by the way; they reoffend 68% of the time.

What does all this mean? Education doesn’t work in of itself, reoffending would continue 41% of the time. Work, however, is far more important, reducing re-offence to 33%. If the Libertarian Party want to make this policy work, they must focus on education leading to employment.

It’s expensive to educate prisoners though; three times as expensive as England currently spends. It is difficult to find an English language source on the expenditure of this program, but Norway spends £74,000 per inmate per year (Benko, 2015). It may be a Libertarian policy, but they’ll have to spend money to do so; money they do not have under their own manifesto.

To non-prisoners, if we compare it to is vocational education; it’s hard to find this number either, but the University of York puts the number at £7,500 per person per year, and Germany pays around £10,000 per person per year (OECD, 2008). This does not include living costs.

As we have around 400,000 committing their first crime each year, and we educated 25% of those, that puts the year cost between £750 million to £1 billion. If the rate is higher, the cost rises. There is also the problem that recently built free schools are closing; even free education is not appealing enough (Adams, 2019).

The cheapest is community service which costs about £2,800 per person (McFarlane, 2010). If this covered the remaining first-timers, it would cost £840 million.

This assumes all first-timers are committing petty crimes, and not something violent, sexual, or extremely damaging and would require jail.

In the end, we find this policy very expensive, would require either massive government spending or heavily reducing sentences, and would lean to cheaper alternatives such as providing free education or community service (but that would undermine policy one above). There is also the usual critique of Libertarian ideas; they will not help the citizen get education, but will help criminals? For a party that loves to cite economic ‘incentives’, they’re providing the incentive to simply commit a crime to get education; they’re also taxing the population (which they call theft) to pay for this education. The policy is unfocused, going against many of their principles.

Policy 5: End the practise of using prisons for the incarceration of the mentally ill

This is a noble goal; the mentally ill need help, of course. But how would it work in practise? The Committee of Public Accounts found that between 10% to 90% of prisoners have mental health issues (unsurprising; . The government spends £400 million on healthcare in prisons, of which 37% is spent on mental health (around £150 million) (House of Commons, 2017).

It’s difficult to figure out precisely how many people need help; 10% of prison inmates are currently in treatment, and a further 15% want treatment but cannot get to their appointments. If £150 million is spent on 10%, then we can expect the total cost for that 25% to be around £375 million. This would be fine, but the Libertarians do not want to increase taxes or print money, so I don’t know where they’d get the money.

Policy 6: Gender is not a consideration for sentencing.

Again, I’m personally supportive of this policy. Look at the information below (Ministry of Justice, 2018):