It would be ‘nonsensical’ to deploy a Texan-style prison early-release scheme in Britain because the American state has a much tougher justice system, ministers have been warned.
Experts said it would be impossible to ‘cherry-pick’ elements of the Texan scheme, which Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood travelled to America to see in person this week.
Texan jails offer discounted sentences to well-behaved prisoners who take part in work or rehabilitation programmes.
Convicts, excluding most violent and sexual offenders, can earn ten or 20 days of ‘good conduct time’, depending on their jail status, for every 30 days they toe the line. The project is credited with helping the state reduce its prison population from 152,661 at its launch in 2007 to 134,668 last September, and has enabled the closure of 16 jails.
But British experts said Texas has its own equilibrium, meaning prisoners facing decades in jail are more likely to conform to win their only chance of freedom.
David Wilson, emeritus professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, said: ‘The idea that one can import a single aspect of the criminal justice system in somewhere like Texas is nonsensical. If similar levels of discounts were imposed in the British system you would end up with punishments that are essentially meaningless.
‘Compared to this country there is a completely different culture towards crime and punishment in Texas which, for example, executes the largest number of offenders in the US.’
Texas has carried out 593 executions since 1976, more than four and a half times that of Oklahoma, in second place. Jail terms in Texas sometimes run to centuries for serious sex offenders and the killers who avoid Death Row.
By comparison, the average time served by a convicted murderer here is 16 and a half years.
Punishments for other crimes are also much heavier in Texas.
For example, aggravated assault carries five to 99 years imprisonment, compared with ten to 16 years in England and Wales. Steve Gillan, general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: ‘I do not think it is credible to cherry-pick what appeals under another country’s or state’s laws.
‘Texan sentencing laws cannot be compared with those in England and Wales. It’s comparing apples with pears.’
Ms Mahmood has commissioned a sentencing review led by former Tory justice secretary David Gauke, who may recommend a similar ‘good conduct’ scheme here when he produces his final report this spring.