Crunch time for expanding prisons
In a bid to please the red-top press, prisons have become dumping grounds for people with problems. It is time to take stock
In case you haven't noticed, our prisons are in crisis. The jail population soared to an all-time high of almost 84,000 in 2008 – more than doubling since 1992 – and overcrowding continues to reach record levels. We lock up a greater proportion of our population than the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Turks, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians and just about every other European nation – even though British society is no more criminogenic than the continent.
Why should we worry? Because penal expansionism is corrosive to society. Prisons are not tools to be deployed lightly. In England and Wales they have become a surrogate for a health and welfare system that fails the most vulnerable. Prisons are becoming little more than warehouses for dumping people with problems society has failed to deal with – those with mental health needs, with histories of neglect and abuse, with drug and alcohol addictions.
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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