The MP for Harborough, Oadby, and Wigston has published new data, available here, on super-prolific criminals - people with very large numbers of previous convictions.
Data from the Ministry of Justice shows that roughly half of all crimes are committed by 10% of offenders. Neil suggests that to take these people out of circulation with longer prison sentences creates an option to reduce crime at a relatively low cost.
However, this is not occurring. Instead, Neil's research shows that 315,000 people have been spared jail, despite having over 25 previous convictions. In fact, some of the data demonstrates that the more prior convictions an offender has, the less likely they are to receive an immediate custodial sentence.
Neil said: "Most people would generally expect people with large numbers of previous convictions to be jailed most of the time if they commit further serious offences - but most are not. You'd also expect those who are jailed and have many previous convictions to get longer sentences than people with fewer, but in general they do not - in fact more often the reverse is true.
"The cost of endlessly arresting and processing and putting people through the courts is huge. And successful clear up rate for most crimes is always low. In 2022/23 in England and Wales the proportion of crimes (excluding fraud and computer misuse) resulting in a charge and/or summons was 5.7% - not much above one in twenty.
"So, from a technocratic point of view the policy solution is to jail the highly prolific offenders who commit such a large chunk of crime for longer. For this opportunity to be grasped realistically we will need to grow the number of prison places. But it will also require a rebalancing of attitudes in the judiciary."
