How did our prisons get so crowded and can the cell blockage be solved?
The headline news is that the prisons crisis is not going to get much better for many years. The justice secretary Shabana Mahmood warns that despite the current, deeply unpopular, prisoner release scheme and plans to create 14,000 more prison places by 2031, the authorities could still run out of space over the next few years. So the UK keeps passing laws, tightening up sentencing guidelines and giving victims and ministers the right to ask for “lenient” sentences to be increased; yet in the past 14 years of Conservative rule, it must be said, only a net gain of 500 additional places were delivered; and the prisons were allowed to become unmanageably overcrowded – operating at 99 per cent capacity. According to the government, some 4,500 more prison spaces are needed every single year to keep up with demand, and four new prisons over the next seven years will create 6,400 new cells. The public deserve better.” ‘Former prisoners make great colleagues,’ said prisons minister James Timpson What about the prisons minister?
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