UK Justice Secretary Plans Radical Prison Reforms
Radical prison reforms to “shut the revolving door of crime and reoffending” have been outlined by Justice Secretary Ken Clarke. Criticising the growth of the prison population in England and Wales, he said there must be other penalties. News, with analysis, from the BBC.
The new measures will involve paying private firms and voluntary groups according to how many prisoners they rehabilitate. He said locking people up for the sake of it was a waste of public funds.
David Cameron defended the plans during prime minister’s questions and said it was now time for “radical reform” of the prison service.
‘Victorian England’
In his first major speech since taking office, Mr Clarke said prison had too often proved “a costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens”.Speaking in London he said: “More than half of the crime in this country is committed by people who have been through the system. We must now take action and shut off this revolving door of crime and re-offending.
“We need a more constructive approach that tackles this head-on. An intelligent and transparent approach to sentencing that targets the causes of re-offending, so making our communities safer and better places to live. We describe it as a rehabilitation revolution.”
The prime minister said the prison service was “not working properly” at the moment.
He said: “When you’ve got these reoffending rates, when you’ve got the cost of each prison place, when you’ve got the appalling problem of drugs in prisons, we have got to reform.”
He added: “If ever there was part of our public services that needed radical reform to make sure prison does work, then now that’s it.”
In May the prison population in England and Wales reached a record high of 85,201. That is almost twice the figure in 1992, when Mr Clarke was last in charge of prisons as home secretary.
It was an increase he said he would have dismissed as “impossible and ridiculous” if someone had predicted it at the time.
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