We need healthier justice

We need healthier justice

The number of sick people being recycled around an impoverished prison system is shaming. Reform is needed now

By Juliet Lyon



Weight of evidence, local public resistance and lack of cash may have put paid to the government's grandiose plans to build five gigantic jails, but the obsession with increasing prison capacity remains, and is apparently shared by justice ministers, their Tory shadows and private contractors alike. In the face of swingeing public service cuts and a forthcoming election, prison building continues, relentlessly filling every space and crevice within the existing estate. Accommodation blocks are being thrown up across the country without, in most instances, accompanying provision for constructive activity. Massive development on the Belmarsh site in south-east London will result in three units holding 900 men in both Belmarsh and Belmarsh West, and 624 in the separate HMP Isis.