In the past 30 years, prison numbers in England and Wales have doubled to almost 90,000, the biggest per head of the population in western Europe, largely as a result of successive governments claiming that longer sentences will reduce crime. That the current regime is now planning to invest a further £4bn in yet more prison places suggests that the anticipated reduction hasn’t materialised. Yet we will continue to spend roughly £40,000 a year per head on keeping people locked up when, within a year of release, about 50% of them will reoffend.
In any good prison system there has to be a balance between punishment and rehabilitation. That ours is so out-of-kilter should be another national scandal. Instead, the new expansion plans – with details to date few and far between – were clearly intended by the Conservatives as a vote-winner. Locking more and more people up, even if it doesn’t prevent crime, is another addiction Britain has caught from the US.
