Prisons should cease ‘churning out crooks who find yourself again in jail’ to repair disaster
Prisons must stop churning out “crooks” who wind up back in jail to fix the overcrowding crisis, the Justice Secretary has said.
Around 1,700 prisoners will be released from jail early on Tuesday as an emergency scheme to free up space kicks in. Shabana Mahmood has warned that spiralling reoffending must be tackled to stop the jail population continuing to increase.
The Labour minister has vowed to focus on long-term plans to drive down reoffending and make sure people leave prison as “better citizens” than when they go in. Concerns have been raised that it is only a matter of time before jails are jam-packed again.
Around 80% of offenders have committed crime before, official analysis shows. And nearly 2,000 prisoners a month are recalled to prison for breaching their licence after release. With not enough support or funding for rehabilitation services, offenders become locked in a cycle of crime where they constantly end up back in jail.
Writing for the Mirror, Ms Mahmood said she inherited a prisons system on “the point of collapse”. There are currently just over 1,000 prison free spaces, with the pandemic, the courts backlog and years of increasing sentences all contributing to a growing prison population.
It forced the new Labour government to bring in a temporary solution to release some prisoners sentenced to four years or less after serving just 40% of their sentences. But Ms Mahmood has vowed to reform the prisoners system and face up to the deep-rooted problems the Tories ignored.
“The hard work of rebuilding our prisons system is not over,” she said. “We will build the prisons the last Government promised but never delivered.
“We will also focus on driving down reoffending so prisons stop churning out more hardened crooks and make better citizens instead. The last Government dodged difficult decisions and left our prisons in crisis. We will do what it takes to rescue and rebuild law and order in our country.”
