Main Edition
US
FR
December 5, 2024 - 1:25pm
Thanks to a new National Audit Office report on jail capacity, we now know that prison is awful — but there’s also not enough of it. This paradox sits at the heart of the present overcrowding crisis.
The report highlights that the current prison expansion plans are insufficient to meet future demand, projecting a shortage of 12,400 prison places by the end of 2027. The Government’s commitment to provide 20,000 new prison places is significantly delayed and over budget, with completion now expected to take a decade.
Let’s not forget that the absurdly optimistic forecasting, brought to you by the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, has resulted in the emergency release of thousands of dangerous prisoners. These measures, themselves beset by mistakes, were started in the dying days of the last Conservative government and were a hospital pass to Keir Starmer’s incoming ministry in July. The political damage wrought by this will dissipate; the damage to voters who have been victims of crime will take much longer.
It is certainly true that the whole prison system has been neglected, and Conservative ministers have presided over criminally stupid austerity cuts that drove out experience on the prison service front line and brought in chaos. Promises to build new prisons and expand old ones were a convoluted mess, mired in spin and sophistry.
But ministers also rely on the one part of the prison service not light on manpower — the HQ boss class — to give them realistic information on how the jail population will develop and what needs to be done to keep pace with it. It now appears these projections were little more than guesswork. Allied to that, the “spades into ground” estimates on when new prisons could start expanding were so hopelessly optimistic that existing plans will now cost £4 billion more to deliver.
If we want a system that has the capacity to lock up and at least have a shot at changing people who pose a danger to society, we need accurate forecasts and competence. More than that, we need political courage. Removing foreign national offenders to their country of origin to serve their sentences could cut the prison population by up to 12%. Removing non-violent prisoners whose crimes relate to drug addiction and putting them in NHS secure detox could shave that figure further.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeNone of this is funny and yet I wanted to laugh through all of it!
It’s the irony. Whenever I think of prison I think of Papillon and Solzhenitsyn, who came to the same conclusion as Jesus; that they wouldn’t change places with the guards for all the tea in China!
The Conservatives found making excuses for non-action far easier than taking action. They were rumbled by the electorate and the Conservatives roundly punished in the General Election.
Labour can’t even keep their promises straight and have only taken a few unconsidered actions required for their class war. I think they have been rumbled too.
The place to fix criminality is school, not prison. By then it’s too late.
Idealistically maybe, however given that schools are failing to teach basic subjects, I think it would be wise not to add more to their plate. Historically, church and home were where children were raised to have good morals and behaviours. Today, when faced with challenging behaviours, schools either suspend the children or put them into “reflection” which sounds nice and therapeutic, but is in fact a day of what us older people remember as detention.
Nothing in the article is new. The worrying bit is that there are people out there who don’t believe in prisons (as well as the prisoners of course). I suspect that most of these people are Labour supporters/communists, who believe that everyone is equal – including murderers; in their eyes the prisoners have had a bad childhood, bad meaning that they have been oppressed by parents or rich bosses.
Clearly, we have become soft and stopped policing the system. I suspect that many who had responsibilities for the prisons are now working from home and can’t be bothered to do their regular checks. Even the real police are working from home, which is why shoplifting is now not against the law. Working from home has become laziness and it is contagious.
“ Thanks to a new National Audit Office report on jail capacity, we now know that prison is awful — but there’s also not enough of it.”
We’ve been told precisely this for years. The use of ‘new reports’ is a simple method of procrastination.
10k foreign criminals in UK prisons who could be deported? Certainly the Trump deportation offensive starting in 2025 is going to change the zeitgeist on these types of initiatives, and whilst I don’t expect him to make the kind of progress he’s X-ing about, I do believe he will remove the identifiable criminal element.
Here’s an idea, maybe stop sending people to jail for mean tweets that could be a start.
Does that happen? Perhaps it does.
Prisons are run my inside criminals, are a school for islamist extremism, have bent screws providing drugs, are an academy of crime for inmates who are otherwise unemployable upon leaving, and cost a fortune.
Judging by recent court cases, there are some very easy on the eye warderettes providing their services to prisoners..
There seems to be a running theme for this government that seems to result in the death of the electorate. Early release of violent offenders, a collapsing NHS and the assisted dying bill. The question begs, do we need the latter when we recognise the first two listed.
Ian Acheson writes, “Removing foreign national offenders to their country of origin to serve their sentences could cut the prison population by up to 12%. Removing non-violent prisoners whose crimes relate to drug addiction and putting them in NHS secure detox could shave that figure further.”
So the Prison population (England & Wales) can be reduced by 15-20% by these means….
Another article is needed to examine why prisoners with foreign citizenship are not deported to serve their sentences in their home countries. Probably very few of them are from Western European countries (France, Belgium, Neths, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia) but couldn’t the Justice Ministry make a start with sendsing them home to serve their sentences? They won’t (or shouldn’t) be let back into the UK after completing them.