Ministers are to encourage courts to make more use of deferred sentences – when judges give offenders a chance to turn themselves around before being punished – as part of a £500m shake-up of criminal justice in England and Wales. Longer jail time for serious offenders, increased use of whole life orders and the use of satellite monitoring for convicted burglars are among measures set out in a white paper published on Wednesday titled A Smarter Approach to Sentencing. While the bulk of the change will see an increase in the prison population, some changes are aimed at helping rehabilitate offenders such as more flexible community orders and reducing the time before a conviction is classed as “spent”. The white paper says the government “will encourage courts to use existing legislation” on deferred sentencing, which give courts the power to defer sentences by up to six months. But the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, stopped short of committing to removing the risk of jail as an incentive to offenders whose sentence is deferred. Other measures in the white paper include: Piloting “problem solving court” models in up to five courts, targeted at repeat offenders who would otherwise have been sent to custody; Increased use of GPS electronic tagging; Launching a national “call for evidence” on how the justice system supports offenders with neuro-divergent conditions such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia; Reforming criminal records disclosure to reduce the time period in which offenders have to declare offences to employers; Make whole life orders a starting point for child killers; Reducing minimum age for whole life orders from 21 to 18; New powers to halt the automatic release of offenders who pose a terrorism risk or are a danger to the public; Ending the release of offenders sentenced to four to seven years at the halfway point, instead requiring them to serve two-thirds of their term; Longer minimum sentences for 15 to 17-year-old murderers; Prisoners sentenced to life will serve longer before being eligible for parole. An impact assessment for the white paper shows the best estimate put the net cost of the changes at £542.6m over the next 10 years. Asked if the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), a department that has seen significant budget pressures in the past 10 years, could afford the ambitious plans, Buckland said: “We are in a much better place than we were even this time last year. At the heart of the manifesto, the government’s commitment to these provisions. This is close to the PM, this is deep for him and he wants to get it right.” The MoJ expects the net effect of the measures to increase the prison population by around 600 by 2028-29 – but this relies on plans to increase the number of prison places by 10,000 being delivered. But the paper comes just days after MPs on the public accounts committee revealed only 206 out of 10,000 promised new prison spaces have been delivered by the government and warned jails were running out of room. Criminal justice experts and charities questioned how longer prison time would aid rehabilitation or protect the public. Campbell Robb, chief executive of Nacro, a social justice charity which supports people in and leaving prison, said: “Increasing the prison population through longer sentences will only add more pressure to this already stretched system.” Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust said: “Talking tough is a good way to distract attention from a criminal justice system in collapse, failing both victims and offenders. People wait months, even years, for cases to be heard, then at the end of a jail term prisoners leave prison with nowhere to live. There’s nothing smart about rehashing punitive rhetoric and hoping for a different outcome. It’s a missed opportunity.”