By Sam Baker

Plans to scrap 6-month prison sentences could ease pressures on prison staff a criminology expert has claimed.

Dr Thomas Akoensi from the University of Kent has said that while there is no guarantee that scrapping 6-month prison sentences will help the prison system, it may make the jobs of prison workers easier.

This follows a Daily Telegraph report that the Prisons Minister, Rory Stewart, wants to axe all short-term sentences, except for violent or sex offenders.

Dr Akoensi said that Mr Stewart’s plans are courageous: “This won’t necessarily be a positive decision for prisons although this is a brave move.

“Six months is a very short time for such offenders to undergo and successfully complete rehabilitation programmes in prisons, this policy will be a huge relief to offender managers.”

However, Dr Akoensi added that the measures Mr Stewart intends to replace 6-month sentences with must be adequate or the changes will have no effect.

“If these short-term sentences, usually around 30,000 per annum, are replaced with community sentences where offenders are able to carry on with their normal lives – hold on to their jobs, house/accommodation, have family contact, etc – but under certain conditions, the pressure on our prisons would reduce significantly.

“However, if such offenses which currently attract short term sentences, begin to be captured in medium term sentences of six months or more in the long term, then the reduced pressure on our prisons would be short lived.”

The prison population has doubled in England and Wales since the early 1990s, rising from about 40,000 to more than 80,000 in 2018, official figures show.

Mr Stewart put forward the suggested changes, saying that short jail terms were long enough to damage you and not long enough to heal you.

“You bring somebody in for three or four weeks,” he said. “They lose their house, their job, their family, their reputation.

“They come (into prison), they meet a lot of interesting characters (to put it politely) and then you whap them on to the streets again.”

Frances Cook, the Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, believes scrapping short prison sentences will make society safer in general.

“Cramming more people into prisons than they were designed to hold is a recipe for squalor, violence, drug abuse and mental distress and, ultimately, more crime.

“Scrapping prison sentences of less than six months, as has been proposed by ministers, would better protect the public because evidence shows that short bursts of imprisonment lead to more offending and more victims.

“Sensible legislation that reduces the number of people behind bars will save lives, protect prison staff and help to make local communities safer.”

In 2017 alone, more than half of the 86,275 offenders sentenced in England and Wales were handed sentences of six months or less.