Arrests and Prison Capacity

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much for her remarks, which I very much appreciate. Obviously, much of the debate around sentencing involved a Bill that we may or may not see—we probably will not—so I will talk a bit about what we have done on prison building. We have delivered the largest prison-building programme since the Victorian era, with 10,000 of the 20,000 additional places to be delivered by the end of 2025. We have already delivered about 5,900 of the 20,000 places. Last October, a series of measures was announced that will help to ease the pressure further. I mentioned the Sentencing Bill and we will also further the 20,000 portfolio. In October last year, we announced an investment of £30 million to acquire the land we need to build more prison places, and we are intent on delivering an additional 460 RDCs across the estate. There is a considerable amount of work going on. I accept of course that there are short-term capacity problems, but that is the point of having contingency planning.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to short-term capacity problems, but we have a long-term situation, extending over decades across many different Governments, of very high numbers of people in prison in the UK. The current rate of imprisonment in England and Wales is 146 people per 100,000 of population. By comparison, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordic states all have a rate of imprisonment of less than 90 prisoners per 100,000 of population. Surely, the Government being forced to request chief constables to pause non-priority arrests and operations is a reflection of the fact that we have just kept shoving people into jail, without giving the jails the capacity to rehabilitate. That is causing damaging impacts on communities, prisoners’ families and prison workers, as well as on the prisoners, who will nearly all be released back into the community eventually. Is it not time to look again at the continual push to lock up more people, when, as the noble Baroness on the Lib Dem Benches said, there is so much evidence that that is not working?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Baroness raised some very interesting points, which I will address in a second. To be clear, we have not asked police chiefs to stop arresting people, as I have already said. On the impact on communities, I suspect that criminals roaming free probably has a lot more impact on local communities than having them inside. On the international comparisons, I am not sure how we achieve them or draw any meaningful conclusions from them. The fact is that we make our own laws, which is what we are elected to do. Perhaps it will be a Green Party policy that we should let criminals out—good luck.