Sir Alan Beith: 'We need to get away from arguments about which party is hard or soft on crime.'
In a major report published today, the Justice Committee concludes that levels of prison safety have reduced when measured against all criteria. The Committee supports the Government’s rationale of running prisons more efficiently and reducing expenditure through benchmarking and through replacing old prisons, but believes that it is of crucial importance that in doing so safety, decency, security and programmes of rehabilitation are maintained. (PDF here)
The report of a year-long inquiry into the impact of the Government’s programme of reforms and efficiency savings across the prison estate concludes that the combination of estate modernisation and re-configuration, efficiency savings and changes in operational policy, including to the Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme, have made a significant contribution to the deterioration in safety. The Committee says increases in assaults on both staff and prisoners, together with the increase in suicides in prisons, are matters of grave concern.
