Lockdown limits could end jail crisis

A sign for the visitors entrance outside HMP Wandsworth prison in London, UK on Sept 5, 2024. Current plans were also deemed "insufficient to meet estimated future demand," and the cost of prison expansion was forecast to be up to 80 percent higher than estimated in 2021. It cited "previous governments'failure to ensure that the number of prison places was aligned with criminal justice policies such as sentencing and police numbers" as the cause of the capacity crisis. In a BBC interview when that NAO document was published, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the prison system was "appalling" and prisoners were "coming out better criminals than they were before they went in". Michelle Heeley, who is head of the Bar Council's working group on sentencing proposals, told the Observer newspaper that the current system was "not working" and "you've got to get more creative" about finding ways to punish off enders, rather than just putting them into an already overcrowded system.