Prisons: New Prisons

Lord Patel of Bradford Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

If we can get a secure, stable estate and a prison population that is not overcrowded, certainly. A lot of attention is given by prison management to locating prisoners close to families. As my noble friend will appreciate, there are other matters that have to be taken into consideration in ensuring that each prison is stable and well managed.

[Lord Patel of Bradford]

My Lords, with an ever increasing prison population—there are more than 84,500 men, women and young people in our estate—and with 46% of adult prisoners having 15 previous convictions or cautions, it is clear that prison is not working. Rather than building new prisons, what action are the Government taking to divert people from the prison estate in the first place?

[Lord McNally]

Indeed. I have drawn attention before to the very high number of people in prison. While we are building new prisons, we are also closing old prisons. Our older prisons are ill equipped for rehabilitation. I hope that the proposals that we will be bringing forward on the rehabilitation and management of offenders will address some of those issues. I could not agree more that there are better ways of spending taxpayers’ money than on circulating repeat offenders through our prison system.