Davis and Herbert attack Labour for prisons crisis

New Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Nick Herbert has linked the sharp increase in the number of prison suicides to the problem of prison overcrowding:

"These are deeply troubling figures and there must be a real fear that the increase in suicides is linked to overcrowding.  The Government's failure to plan for sufficient prison capacity doesn't just compromise public safety - it also has a human cost."

The "public safety" consequences of the failure to build more prison places has been highlighted in another statement from CCHQ - but from Shadow Home Secretary David Davis:

“The Government need to realise that not building extra places is a false economy. Non-custodial sentences simply fail to punish or rehabilitate. The Government’s flagship ISSP programme has a youth re-offending rate of 91 per cent. As for tagging - which was extensively rolled out by Jack Straw when he was Home Secretary - the IT has a 15 per cent failure rate, offenders can breach curfews for 3 years without penalty and perverse targets mean breaches are ignored. In fact six murders and 1,000 violent crimes have been committed by those on tags.
 
Lack of custodial places not only means that offenders who should be in jail are not in jail. It also means that prisoners are released early or constantly moved around and not allowed to settle. Either way they do not receive effective and sustained rehabilitation and re-offending continues to increase under Labour. If you don’t address overcrowding you won’t improve rehabilitation rates. If you don’t improve rehabilitation, you won’t cut re-offending which makes up half of all crime. After ten years the government and Gordon Brown still don’t get this.”

'Crime and security' is set to be one of the Tories top four election issues - alongside the family, the NHS and the environment.  On crime it is vital that Brown's failure to fund prison building is blamed for the overcrowding and associated endangering of the public.

Comments

[Simon Denis]

Bravo, David Davis! The scandalous lack of prison places has been used as a fig leaf by the lib/left establishment to excuse their non-custodial sentencing policy. I recall hearing Lord Woolf in a debate on prisons complacently explaining that there simply wasn't the space for these wretched burglars. It didn't seem to occur to him that the answer was to make more space. His real attitude was revealed later in the discussion when he queried the benefits of incarceration per se. Of course, if detention is to take place in an overcrowded, make-shift, Hogarthian madhouse then it will be of little long term use. What we need are proper gaols, competently managed and disciplined. They are a vital necessity in any normal society. Even the non-custodial sentences - asbos and the like - would gain in credibility if imprisonment were a genuine possibility. As it is widely known among the criminal fraternity that it is not, they treat such sanctions with utter disdain.

[George Hinton]

I understand that Jack Straw has a solution, all hail the justice minister.

All that is needed, is not to be nasty to criminals and reduce the number of people sent to jail, which will, eureka, reduce overcrowding, sic transit gloria et al etc,.

Why do i get the feeling that i'm living in a dream world or is it a real life nightmare?. With a justice system in complete chaos, with those in charge, bumbling around regurgitating the old leftie mantra's that society is at fault, why do i despair? Because the next step is an adoption of vigilantism and anarchy, as people take their own measures to protect assts and self and family.

One doesn't want to get too paranoid, but is this a master plan, our society implodes, so that our government can call upon Brussels and cast away our independence in a spiteful and petulat act of betrayal?

Will someone please get a grip.

[Conservative Homer]

Rather than just talking about more prison places, couldnt the debate be widened to change the whole notion about how prisons are funded. I dont know how much it costs compared to other european countries, but IIRC its knocking on £40k per annum per place here, i know the state prisons system in america, much derided though it is, is far cheaper, some states getting the cost down to $5000-10000 a year (ok, they live in tents, but still, it just disgusts me we spend more on prisoners than we do on pensioners)
Prisons are one of the few areas the majority of the population would have no qualms about cutting expenditure. We should imo be working towards a financially self sustaining prisons system, where inmates work to pay for their program of treatment and rehabilitation.

While we undeniably need more prison places, the financial cost of incarceration is surely something most conservatives must baulk at?

[TomTom]

Time to return the powers to the public - delegating them to the Police was unwise in terms of outcomes. Time to restore the right to self-defence to the public and the right to hold weapons as in The Bill of Rights 1689.

They should start by declaring convicts released early "outlaws" - and by having Bail Bondsmen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail_bond

to make sure they show in court or face the bounty hunter

[Patsy Sergeant]

George Hinton @ 15.39 - Under this government if any vigilantism or anarchy directed at known criminals did start to take place, you could bet that prison places would very readily be found for those vigilantes, just as prison places are readily found now for elderly people who refuse their council tax - they are of course hardened criminals!!