Titanic disaster on the horizon if prison building goes full steam ahead

Titanic disaster on the horizon if prison building goes full steam ahead

"The Government is to build three huge new prisons as part of a package of measures designed to ease over-crowding by creating 10,500 extra places. The so-called "Titan" prisons - which could be built in London, the West Midlands and the North West - will hold 2,500 inmates each, and the first could be up-and-running within five years".

The obvious problem with the government's proposed solution in Lord Carter's Review of Prisons, given that one of the main issues is prison overcrowding, is that the plan is designed to accommodate 96,000 prisoners by 2014, when the Prison Service predicts the prison population will reach 102,000 by 2011. That's a shortfall of 6,000 prison places with 3 years still to run before 2014.

Another problem is that the Prison Service has shown that it is unable to cope with providing enough courses for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves in prisons with a population of 1,000 prisoners, how much worse is the problem going to be in prisons with a population of 2,500 prisoners? On present figures that's 150% worsening of the situation.

It has been suggested that as we build a new prison it should replace one of the old Victorian prisons. These should be replaced. However, it would appear that planning has not taken into account that by replacing the Victorian prisons you also need to provide extra prison places which will result by their removal from the penal estate.

So far, I have only exposed the tip of the iceberg. It's what lies beneath the surface which will sink this Titanic.