Given the government’s approach to sentencing, and its prison building programme, it appears that it is effectively Conservative policy to significantly increase the numbers of those incarcerated in England and Wales – despite no credible evidence of the link between such policies and reducing crime or harms. In this context, the planned use of police cells to act as overspill sites of detention for prisoners – under the name Operation Safeguard – is a crass, ad hoc and dangerous turn (MoJ requests urgent use of 400 police cells for male prisoners, 30 November).
The prison estate has long been in crisis – prisons are sites of violence, despair and systemic harm. That said, prisons are, in theory, designed – even if they consistently fail – to provide humane conditions in which, at least, the health, safety and welfare of prisoners and prison officers can be secured. Police cells, by contrast, are designed for short stays of days rather than months and weeks.
