On 1st September, Lord Chancellor Alex Norris announced the largest prison building programme since the Victorian era, to be accelerated through a £110m investment.
The cash will go towards speeding up the construction of hundreds of prison places, as part of Government plans to create 14,000 extra spaces by 2031. As reported, it will see existing space within prisons converted into cells – including through unused office space, laundry rooms and storage areas.
In response, Andrea Coomber, Chief Executive of The Howard League for Penal Reform, commented:
“The search for extra prison spaces has become so desperate that it involves looking high and low for office space, laundry rooms and storage areas – any nook or cranny that could help to inch the criminal justice system away from the brink. This is a chaotic way to run a country, but it is the inevitable result of decades of buck-passing as successive governments have made prison sentences longer and longer without any thought for the consequences.
In 2024, Shabana Mahmood, the then Lord Chancellor and now the Home Secretary, told the House of Commons that we cannot build our way out of this crisis. Two years later, Andy Burnham’s new government seems to be trying to do just that. It will cost billions and it won’t work. To cut crime and protect the public, the government should invest in what it knows will work – properly funding our communities, investing in probation, in education, mental health and drugs support, and building the economy.”
To read The Howard League for Penal Reform’s response in full, click here.