A COUNCILLOR said criminals should be able to pay to be released earlier from jail.

Liberal Democrat Roy Davies has won the support of his local party which is to put the matter forward to ministers in the coalition government.

But the councillor has been criticised for a ‘crackpot idea that would never work’.

The Darwen councillor believes the scheme could work for non-violent offences, and suggested a £10,000 payment to halve a six-month sentence.

He said it would help ease overcrowding in jail, and recoup money to make up for Government cuts, such as closing the front counter at Darwen police station.

But former Justice Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw said the proposal was ‘totally wrong’.

He said: “It’s the kind of thing we oppose in other countries.

“It is the job of the court system to decide the appropriate penalty and the court system should be blind to how deep a person’s pockets are, or it becomes completely unfair.

“There is also a question of where the criminals have got the money from in the first place.”

Mike Cotton, of the Campaign for Justice and Public Protection, added: “I think it’s a crackpot idea that wouldn’t work.

“Most of the people who go to jail do not have the finances to pay for that kind of thing, and as it is, courts struggle to get fines of even £25 off people.

"It just doesn’t work like that.”

Coun Phil Jones, leader of the For Darwen Party, said the idea would not work as people were likely to be paying the fines through criminally-obtained funds.

He said: “The better criminal they were, the more money they’d have available to cut their sentence.

“Rather than getting the criminals to pay with cash, maybe we should get them to work to pay off their sentence.

“Recycling costs the borough a heck of a lot of money, so why don’t we dump all the rubbish in the prison yard and get the criminals to sort it out?”

Coun Davies, a Sudell ward representative, made his suggestion in an email to Liberal Democrat members in Blackburn with Darwen.

He said: “The law-abiding people in this country are having to take on the problems caused by cutbacks.

"Why should we have to do this?

“The criminals should be made to pay fines for early release.

“They get time off for good behaviour, so why not allow them the chance to put money back to cover the cuts?

“It would be win-win. There would be less money spent on keeping them in prison, and more money for the police service to keep us safe.

“The money would definitely have to be ring-fenced to be spent only on covering budget cuts, though.”

Coun Davies said his idea would only apply to non-violent crimes such as car theft, drug dealing, people trafficking and fraud.

He said the amount payable should be decided by government in a unified way depending on the crime, but suggested that a fine of £10,000 could halve a six-month sentence.

Coun Davies added: “A lot of criminals play the system, and some, like drug dealers have a lot of money hidden away that the court never get to know about.

“But if they couldn’t come up with the money, then they serve a harder sentence, that’s all.

“Some professional criminals who go from one sentence to another won’t be bothered about getting off early, but others will.”

Blackburn with Darwen Liberal Democrat leader Councillor David Foster said he supported Coun Davies’ idea and would be sending it on to ministers.

He said: “I think it’s useful. We should always try and make criminals pay for their misdemeanours and this would be a way of them contributing back to the community.

"It could also be a way of them contributing to the police.

“Getting criminals to pay for what they have done is all to the good.”