News

In an article for the OpenDemocracy website, our Senior Policy Associate, Rebecca Roberts, has criticised the government's plans to expand the prison system by 10,000 places and build new prisons, arguing that it will do little to solve the ongoing crisis in the system.

Rebecca describes how the prison reform programme is part of the wider public sector reform of asset stripping, privatisation and deregulation in which the burden of austerity is imposed on individual prison governors under the guise of greater autonomy. 

Building magazine examines progress on the government's new-build prisons programme concluding that the sale of 'old Victorian' prisons is unlikely to be a 'cash cow' for the Treasury.

The article questions the profitability and viability of closing and selling old prisons to fund new prisons. Complications include the cooling of the property market, the pressure from local authorities to maximise affordable homes on prison sites, and the high costs of redeveloping listed buildings.

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies is one of a number signatories to a letter in The Guardian today calling for 'an immediate moratorium on prison construction and a national debate about how to build a safer society and secure communities instead of continuing with a failed policy of criminal justice expansion'.

Our Director, Richard Garside, has called on the government to develop a long-term plan to downsize prisons across England and Wales. The government should aim to at least halve the number of people locked up over the next twenty years, he said.