Housing minister says previous government left prison system in state of ‘criminal neglect’ amid warnings over early release plan
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has defended the government’s record on prisons and sentencing in England and Wales after criticism from senior security officials, but said “we can’t build our way out of” prison capacity pressures in the short term.
Earlier today the Times newspaper reported that the heads of the Metropolitan police, MI5 and the National Crime Agency have told the government that plans to release prisoners early could be of “net detriment to public safety.”
What we were handed by the previous government in terms of the state of our prison system was nothing short of criminal neglect. They added just 500 places to the prison estate in their time in office, while at the same time, sentence lengths rose, and as a result, we got the prison population rising by approximately 3,000 people each year.
And we’re heading back to zero capacity. If we run out of capacity, courts will be forced to suspend trials, the police will have to halt arrests, crimes will go unpunished.
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has defended the government’s record on prisons and sentencing in England and Wales after police chiefs warned that sentencing reforms could put pressure on frontline services
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