So farewell, Matt Hancock, as the disgraced former secretary of state for health bows to the inevitable and promises to stand down as an MP. For all manner of reasons, we will not mourn his loss to public life. Harsh, perhaps, but all week I have had a very particular bone to pick with him. If we have any hope of ending the inhumane era of mass incarceration in the developed western economies, we must not let politicians like Hancock perpetuate it.
Every step I take in the professional world has been a rebuke to Hancock. At 17, I was convicted of theft and sentenced to a year in prison. After that, I worked in the Conservative party, including as a press secretary on Boris Johnson’s mayoral campaign in London in 2012.
Today, a little more than 20 years later, after a career in American and British politics across the political spectrum, including work for the US Democrats and Joe Biden, I am the global chief marketing officer for R/GA, a New York-based digital design and advertising agency. Most importantly, I also work with criminal justice reform organisations trying to push back against thoughtless policies like those so recently and publicly endorsed by Hancock.
In his recently released The Pandemic Diaries, Hancock gleefully celebrated quashing a plan to release people from prison during the height of the Covid pandemic, calling it a “bonkers proposal”, claiming the “public won’t wear it” and saying, “we cannot lock up literally everyone in the country except prisoners”.
In so doing, he perfectly articulated how the British government stacked the odds against somebody like me.
I understand the need to be sure that we’re protected. However, the UK is keeping too many people in prison even though they are no danger to the public. And the US offers positive lessons. During the pandemic, some American leaders recognised the dire health risks that Covid-19 presented incarcerated individuals.
In New York City, criminal justice reform groups secured the release of 900 people, and the city has remained secure even though headlines might make you think otherwise. Furthermore, what the US, which has 5% of the world’s population, but more than 20% of the world’s prison population, did at the federal level flattens every argument against releasing people in the UK. The Americans did the humane thing, saving lives and reuniting families.
The justice department ordered the release of people in federal prisons and allowed them to complete their sentences from home. More than 11,000 people were eventually released. Of those, the Bureau of Prisons reported that only 17 committed new crimes. That’s a recidivism rate of 0.15%. Many of those released have found jobs, enrolled in career courses and have been reunited with their families. The data serves as proof that it’s time the UK rethinks its incarceration policies and ensure they are equitable and that everyone’s human rights and dignities are protected.
Unforgiving policymaking so celebrated by the likes of Hancock isn’t tough, or keeping Britons safe – they are carelessly killing people. Hancock said: “I am proud of what we achieved.” Was public safety your concern, Matt?
According to UK government data, from March 2020 to September 2022, almost 300 prisoners and supervised people died from Covid-related complications. In the same period, more than 47,000 prisoners and children in custody tested positive for Covid. Hancock could have helped significantly lower these numbers by following the US lead and moving people from prison to home confinement with the goal of easing them back into society.
Hancock might be right, public opinion may all too often dine on fear, not facts. But he was one of those more than willing to cave to public opinion when it is so terribly wrong. Politicians must educate constituents about how freedom and public safety can coexist.
It’s essential to have a criminal legal system that reflects the best of our ideals. Not the worst of who we are collectively. And essential to have MPs to match. He was never one of them.
Ashish Prashar is the global chief marketing officer at R/GA and a justice reform activist. He sits on the board of Just Leadership, Leap Confronting Conflict and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice.
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