Prison Capacity

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

The criminal justice system and imprisonment have a number of different objectives, but what they all have in common is public safety. The single most important thing we can do to make people feel safe as they go about their daily business is to reduce reoffending by people who have already been through the system. One aspect of that is making sure that on release people have access in a timely and efficient way to the services they need to get accommodation, to start looking for a job and to receive medical treatment if needed. That is harder when a lot of people are all released at the same time on a Friday. I know that my hon. Friend has a landmark private Member’s Bill coming to the House on Friday to address this specific question and I wish him well with that.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

The answer to the issue of capacity should never be to soften sentences for people who are not safe to have within our community. However, when I was on the Education Committee, I was very concerned to hear that about 30% of those in prison have learning disabilities. The prison education report we published suggested that every prison should have a special educational needs specialist, and that everyone coming into the prison estate should see an educational psychologist. Will my right hon. Friend find time to meet me to discuss the report and how we can work together to try to ensure that more people with learning disabilities do not end up in the criminal justice system because they get the support and diagnoses that they need?

[Damian Hinds]

It is always a pleasure to meet my hon. Friend and discussing that report would be an admirable reason to do so. There is much more awareness of this issue now than in times past. Whether it is SEN or low prior attainment in English and maths, such characteristics are more represented in the prison population than in the general population. We now have neurodiversity specialists in prisons, and we can do much more with educational materials to recognise SEN and the different ways that people learn. As my hon. Friend suggests, ideally we want to do more of that much earlier in the journey, so that people do not become incarceration cases at all. That is a harder nut to crack, but I would be delighted to talk to him about that.