Justice Committee

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has welcomed today’s report from the House of Commons Justice Committee on the government’s prison planning approach. The report – Prison Population 2022: planning the future – finds that the government’s current approach to planning and funding future prison accommodation is inefficient, ineffective, and unsustainable.

Speaking today, the Centre’s Director, Richard Garside, said:

Our submission to the House of Commons Justice Committee inquiry into the prison population in 2022 has been published on the Committee's website.

Submitted in partnership with the analytical services organisation, Justice Episteme, our submission offers an analysis of the historical trajectory of the custodial population in England and Wales from 2003, and a projection for the period to 2022 and beyond.

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has called on the Ministry of Justice to shelve plans for so-called 'reform prisons'. Instead, the Ministry should focus its energies 'on the important task of real and sustained prison reform'.

Our call comes in evidence we submitted to the House of Commons Justice Committee inquiry into prison reform, which has been published today.

Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice has warned about deteriorating conditions inside UK prisons and has called for an Inquiry, reports the BBC. 

A new report out today from the House of Commons Justice Committee has called on the government to 'question whether taxpayers’ money is used in ways most likely to reduce future crime and victimisation, including evaluating that spent on custodial sentencing, and develop a longer-term strategy for the use of resources in this manner'.