Prisons

Child Imprisonment: Why we should abolish imprisonment for children and young people, the latest from the campaign to end child imprisonment, is a short documentary about the harms of depriving children of their liberty.  

Dr David Scott interviews campaigners who have been personally affected by the issue, and Carolyne Willow, Director of Article 39. 

David closes the video saying:

October's Treasury Budget announcement confirmed the construction of two new mega prisons as part of the Prison Estates Transformation Programme, Corporate Watch reports. 

The programme plans to build six new prisons altogether, whilst the two confirmed in the budget will be built on the HMP Wellinborough and HMP Glen Parva sites and will create 4,000 new prison places. 

On 10 March, JM Moore wrote an article on the Reclaim Justice Network website titled 'Reframing the "Prison Works" debate. For whom and in what ways does prison work?'

Moore writes that prison fails to deter, rehabilitate, or incapacitate, so poses the question: what does it work for?

He argues there are six ways that prison does 'work':

A letter published today in The Daily Telegraph criticises government plans to build the largest children's prison in Europe, describing it as 'bad for children, bad for justice and bad for the taxpayer'. The Centre's director, Richard Garside, is among the many signatories which also include Liberty, the NSPCC, Howard League, Inquest and others.

According to Ministry of Justice figures released last Thursday, there has been a 69% rise in suicides in penal institutions in the 12 months ending in March 2014. The Guardian reports on the 30% rise in serious assaults (1,661) and 3 murders over the same period. The Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said 'there was no simple explanation for the increase'.

Back in November 2012, in his first major speech as Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling said that 'we have to focus on making the prison system cheaper not smaller'.