Boris Johnson’s government has pledged to further enlarge the prison estate in England and Wales – despite campaigners’ concerns it will do nothing to tackle the causes of crime.
Justice secretary Robert Buckland promised the government would set out proposals to “go further” than current expansion plans for prisons later this year and create “the next generation of prison places”.
While there are existing plans to spend £4bn on creating 18,000 prison places over the next six years, Mr Buckland said on Tuesday: “We must go further – and we hope that any forthcoming white paper will include a 10-year plan to create the next generation of prison places.”
In a speech to the Centre for Social Justice, Mr Buckland also claimed that Ministry of Justice (MoJ) plans will mean that “many prisoners will spend more time in custody”.
Prison reform groups fear ministers are simply “repeating past mistakes” – warning that building more prison places and increasing the length of time criminals spend in jail will do nothing to address the underlying causes of crime.
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “On a day when Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons has pointed to the deep-rooted failings of a system that is holding the country back, the government has announced plans to make that system even bigger.”
She added: “Any serious plan to reduce crime and make communities safer would start with investment in housing, employment and health services. Expanding the failing prison system, on the other hand, will simply repeat the mistakes of previous governments.”
The UK as a whole has the largest prison population in western Europe, according to a recent report by the Council of Europe.
The same report revealed that the amount spent on locking people up in England and Wales is higher than in any other European country except for Russia.
The government announced plans to build a brand new category C prison in Buckinghamshire – as well as expanding capacity at four existing jails in Dorset, Warwickshire, Rutland and Surrey – at the end of last year.
Meanwhile, Mr Buckland pledged that the government’s proposals will “look again” at improving security to tackle drugs behind bars, suggesting there should be better use of technology overall in jails.
The justice secretary also said the government wanted to see a bigger focus on making the unpaid work criminals have to carry out as part of a sentence more visible so justice is “seen to be done” and to use it to “act as a deterrent”.
Mr Buckland said criminals should be “fully aware that punishments will be served in the full gaze of their local communities”.
It comes as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons laid the latest annual report before parliament. It called for an end to special Covid restrictions inside prisons – which has seen greater use of solitary confinement – as soon as is safe to do so.
Chief Inspector Charlie Taylor said: “Violence, for instance, may have been suppressed by locking people up for almost all of the day, but its underlying causes have not gone away, and continuing severe lock-up cannot be the answer in a post-Covid world.”
Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust said: “The Chief Inspector could not put it any plainer – locking prisoners in their cells all day solves nothing.”
Mr Dawson added: “The future in our prisons must be built on a foundation of good staff building good relationships with the people in their care. That can’t be delivered in an overcrowded, under-resourced system.
“The government’s approach to sentencing, driven by politics not evidence, makes that fundamental problem worse, not better.”
