Justice and Fresh Starts

The Problem

The UK incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in Western Europe. We spend 48,000 pounds per prisoner per year. Almost half reoffend within 12 months of release. Prisons are overcrowded, drug-saturated, and failing at rehabilitation. Short sentences for non-violent offenders produce the worst reoffending rates and the most disruption to employment and family life, while doing nothing to address the causes of offending. Meanwhile, cannabis is consumed by approximately 7 million UK adults annually but supplied entirely by criminal networks. We criminalise the user. The supplier banks the profit. Zero quality control. Zero tax revenue.

A. Community Service That Rebuilds Britain

Non-violent first-time offenders sentenced to substantial community service rather than short custodial sentences. The evidence consistently shows that short prison sentences (under 12 months) produce worse reoffending outcomes than community alternatives. A short sentence destroys jobs, housing, and family stability without providing the time needed for any meaningful intervention.

• Real, productive, visible work: road maintenance (aligned with the National Resurfacing Programme, Section XV), river clean-up (aligned with the water nationalisation programme, Section X), graffiti removal, support for elderly care services, environmental restoration
• Work is supervised, time-tracked, and publicly visible. Community payback must be genuinely unpleasant, genuinely productive, and genuinely accountable
• Electronic monitoring throughout. Any breach results in an immediate custodial sentence for the full original term plus the breach period
• Target: reduce the short-sentence prison population (under 12 months) by 50% within 3 years, redirecting the 500 million pounds in annual saved custodial costs to supervision, community projects, and reoffending intervention

B. Cannabis: Legalise, Regulate, Tax

Cannabis is consumed by approximately 7 million UK adults every year. All of it is supplied by criminal networks with no quality control, no age verification, and no tax. Prohibition has not reduced use. Every comparable country with legalisation has seen lower criminal justice costs, higher tax revenue, and no significant increase in adult use. Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and 25 US states have gone ahead.

• Legal for personal use at home for adults aged 21 or over. The age is higher than alcohol (18) because cannabis affects brain development more significantly in younger adults. This is stricter, not more permissive, than the alcohol age limit when biological evidence is followed
• Licensed retailers only. Modelled on Canada's provincial dispensary system: licensed shops with age verification, quality testing, labelling requirements. No supermarket sales initially. No online delivery. Physical purchase with ID.
• 30% specific duty plus standard VAT. Projected revenue: 500 to 750 million pounds annually in cannabis duty plus 200 million plus in criminal justice savings. Total fiscal benefit: up to 1.5 billion pounds annually
• Driving while impaired remains a serious offence with the same criminal penalties as drink-driving
• Public consumption banned. Sale to under-21s is a criminal offence with serious penalties for the seller
• Other drugs remain criminal. We are not a libertarian movement on narcotics. Cannabis is the specific case where 60 years of evidence show prohibition is failing and regulation works better

C. Fresh Start Communities

The Norwegian Halden Prison model (reoffending rate around 20%, UK: 48%) demonstrates that prisoners treated as people capable of rehabilitation, given work, education, and normalcy, return to society less likely to reoffend. Forge adapts this for British conditions.

• For prisoners eligible for early release on the second half of their sentence, transition into Fresh Start Communities: supervised housing with mandatory work, education, addiction treatment, and mental health support
• Operated as a partnership between the Probation Service, local authorities, and specialist NGOs. Performance-paid based on reoffending rates and employment outcomes at 12 months post-release
• 3 pilot sites by Year 2, 12 sites by Year 5, providing capacity for 8,000 annual transitions
• Housing first model within Fresh Start Communities: accommodation is provided immediately, before treatment or behavioural conditions, because stable housing is the precondition for everything else working

D. Drug Courts

Specialist drug courts for repeat offenders whose offending is driven by addiction. The court mandates treatment as an alternative to prison. Treatment is properly funded. Compliance is monitored with regular court appearances. Failure results in custody. Success results in a clean record after 24 months.

• The Glasgow Drug Court has shown reoffending reductions of over 30% on this model versus conventional prosecution
• Cost per offender through a drug court is approximately half the cost of custodial sentence
• Extend drug courts from their current limited locations to every crown court centre in England and Wales by Year 3

E. Housing First for Rough Sleepers

Rough sleepers are offered immediate, unconditional housing as the first intervention, before treatment conditions, training conditions, or behavioural conditions are attached. Once housed, support wraps around: addiction services, mental health, employment, family reconnection, financial literacy. Finland implemented Housing First nationally in 2008 and has effectively eliminated rough sleeping. Every comparative study confirms that providing housing first is more effective and cheaper than the alternative pathway of shelter, then hostel, then supported accommodation, then permanent housing.

• Target: zero rough sleeping in England by end of parliament
• Every rough sleeper offered a Housing First placement within 7 days of engagement with outreach services
• Housing stock provided through a combination of new social housing, long-term leasing from the private sector, and repurposed public buildings
• Success metric: sustained housing at 12 months (not just housed on the night a count is taken)

F. Sentencing Reform

• Violent, sexual, and serious organised crime sentences are not reduced. Repeat sexual offenders face longer minimum terms with no early release. The point is to redirect custodial resources from ineffective short sentences for non-violent offending to longer, more effective terms for genuinely dangerous offenders
• Prison reform: mandatory drug testing on entry and weekly during sentence; education and skills training mandatory for all prisoners under 35; family contact rights protected; single-point mental health assessment within 7 days of admission
• IPP sentences abolished. The Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence, ruled unlawful and abolished in 2012, left over 3,000 people still imprisoned beyond their tariff without prospect of release. Forge implements the recommendations of the Parole Board review and releases all remaining IPP prisoners who do not meet the public protection threshold through individual assessment