Legislate in haste, repent at leisure: The Criminal Justice Act 2003 and its consequences
| Author | Pete Marston |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550510379884 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Legislate in haste, repent at leisure:
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 and its
consequences
Pete Marston, Probation Officer
Abstract The author began to train as a probation officer in October 2004. In
April 2005 the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (CJA 2003 or the Act) became active and
over the next five years, the criminal justice system struggled to cope. Most of the
author’s career has been spent working with the Act and this critical personal view
will look back at the consequences of the CJA 2003 in three specific areas: commu-
nity penalties, recalls and public protection sentences. Drawing on the available lit-
erature, government statistics and personal experience, it will show how the Act was
an unwise exercise in sentencing reform and an excellent lesson in the law of unin-
tended consequences.
Keywords Criminal Justice Act 2003, prisons, probation
Introduction
The Act became operational on 4 April 2005 and represented a transformation of
the way the probation service and other agencies dealt with offenders. The inten-
tions behind the CJA 2003 were laid out in the preceding white paper, Justice for
All (Home Office, 2002). Justice for All proposed that reform would, among other
aims, join up the criminal justice system (Home Office, 2002: 20) and put the ‘sense
back into sentencing’ (Home Office, 2002: 17). It made clear what was considered
to be wrong with probation and prisons; high re-offending rates, overcrowding, the
lack of prison rehabilitation, and the destructive effect of prison on individuals. The
Act was therefore intended to reduce the prison population by substituting short cus-
todial sentences by the increased use of community penalties (Home Office, 2002:
106). At the same time it would enhance community safety by imposing public pro-
tection sentences on violent and sexual offenders (Home Office, 2002: 95). As a
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright ª2010 NAPO Vol 57(3): 296-303
DOI: 10.1177/0264550510379884
www.napo.org.uk
http://prb.sagepub.com
Comment
296 Downloaded from http://prb.sagepub.com at SAGE Publications on February 5, 2010
To continue reading
Request your trial