Prison reform charity responds to emergency measures
Rob Preece from the Howard League for Penal Reform says new emergency measures allowing defendants to be held in police cells will only “buy the government two or three weeks”. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00We'll buy the government maybe two or three weeks. I think the government recognises this.
00:05They're hopeful that more capacity might be found in a short while because they're bringing in
00:10changes so that people serving some determinate sentences will come out a little earlier. But
00:16even that measure will only buy the government say 18 months. What we're seeing really is the
00:22straw that broke the camel's back. We've seen successive governments for decades now making
00:27sentences longer and longer, allowing the prison population to grow, and resources
00:35are insufficient to meet that demand. And the question needs to be asked now,
00:39why is it that England and Wales locks up more people than any other country in Western Europe?
00:44Wouldn't this money be better spent on hospitals, schools, jobs, things that
00:49stop crime before it happens, rather than trying to solve things afterwards?