Speaking today on government plans to build 14,000 prison place, costing billions of pounds, the Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Richard Garside, said:
Ongoing crisis management in the short-term and an unrealistic plan to waste billions on prison expansion over the longer-term will not solve the entrenched problems in the prison system.
There have been big falls over the past decade in the numbers being sent to prison each year, yet prison staff are struggling to manage record numbers of prisoners, in increasingly dilapidated and dysfunctional institutions.
Resolving the deep crisis in the prisons system is not going to be easy. It is good that the government itself acknowledges that we cannot build our way out of the prisons crisis. But it appears willing to give it a go anyway, while tinkering around the edges of the problem, in the hope that they might do just enough to keep a lid on the problem.
It is time for a reality check: an ambitious and bold plan for prison reform, and a commitment from government to start living within its means, and stop squandering money on unrealistic and unpopular prison expansion.
