The government plans to build four new prisons, but says this will not be enough to tackle the crisis | United Kingdom | News
HMP Norwich is one of the country’s overcrowded prisons (Image: Getty)
The government has announced it will build four new prisons over the next seven years to combat the overpopulation crisis.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has promised to create a total of 14,000 cell places in prisons by 2031.
Some 6,400 of them will be housed in newly built prisons, costing £2.3 billion over the next two years.
Remaining places will be found through measures such as building new wings in existing prisons or renovating cells currently out of service, and a further £500m will be spent on “vital building maintenance”, it has been announced Wednesday the department.
The move is part of a 10-year plan to “ensure we can always lock up dangerous criminals”.
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Prisons will be considered sites of “national importance” as part of efforts to avoid long planning delays, and new land will be purchased for future prisons, the Ministry of Justice added.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “The last government claimed it could send people back to detention for longer and longer without building the prisons it promised.
“This strategy reveals that their prison building plans have been delayed by several years and almost £5 billion over budget. They left our prisons in crisis, on the verge of collapse.
“This capacity building strategy, part of our plan for change, together with an independent review of sentencing policy, will keep our streets safe and ensure that no government runs out of prison places again . »
Full details of the plan are expected to be released later.
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The announcement comes after government estimates published last week indicated that more than 100,000 prisoners could be held in prisons in England and Wales by 2029.
It followed warnings from Whitehall’s spending watchdog that the government’s plans to increase prison capacity could run out of thousands of cell places within two years and cost taxpayers billions of pounds in more than expected.
Since September, thousands of prisoners have been released early in a bid to reduce prison overcrowding, by temporarily reducing the proportion of sentences some prisoners must serve behind bars in England and Wales from 50% to 40%.
But prisons are still expected to reach critical capacity by July.
Ministry of Justice figures show there were 86,089 adult prisoners behind bars in England and Wales as of Monday.
The operational capacity of English and Welsh prisons for men and women is 88,822 places, indicating that there is now cell space for 2,733 criminals.
Meanwhile, a monitoring body found that at HMP Kirkham, Lancashire, boredom contributed to the highest drug use among open prisons in England and Wales – prisons in the category offering the lowest level of security.
Men serving time there said they were “frustrated and bored” and many were using drugs, according to Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor.
The rate of positive mandatory drug tests at the prison was 25 percent of inmates, the highest level in open wards, and inspectors “often smelled cannabis when walking around the prison,” according to its findings.
In response, the Ministry of Justice said the new government “inherited a prison system in crisis”, adding: “Reports like these demonstrate the need for forceful action to regain control of the situation .
“We have zero tolerance for drugs and will continue to work hard to ensure that prisons like HMP Kirkham become places where offenders can turn their backs on crime for good. »
Labor said Tory “gross negligence” in prisons was “unforgivable”, saying the government was taking action.
But shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick accused chancellor Rachel Reeves of funding “anti-inflationary pay rises for her union paymasters, but not new prisons to keep the public safe”.
Pavan Dhaliwal, chief executive of the charity Revolving Doors, said: “We can’t just slide our way out of this crisis. There is a need to increase prison capacity and improve the condition of the estate, but this must go hand in hand with a commitment to exploring alternatives to detention. which the government examines as part of its sentencing review.
Andrea Coomber, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said money earmarked for opening new prisons “would be better invested in ensuring an effective and responsive probation service, working to reduce crime in the community.”
The Law Society of England and Wales reiterated calls for these plans to be accompanied by investment in legal aid, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts, and insisted that the focus should be on ” prisoner rehabilitation to reduce recidivism rates and reduce court backlogs to help reduce the pre-trial detention population.”
