LONDON: Britain’s government announced plans on Wednesday to build four new prisons by 2031 to ease the overcrowding crisis, which has led to the early release of hundreds of inmates this year.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood set out a 10-year plan to ensure “there is always room in our prisons for dangerous offenders”, with prison populations in England and Wales growing in recent years.
The measures include finding 14,000 additional prison places over the next seven years, including 6,500 places through four new prisons.
It is part of a program launched by the previous Conservative government to create 20,000 new prison spaces — a scheme now estimated to cost £10.1 billion ($12.8 billion), well below the original budget. is twice as
Mahmood said prisons would be classified as sites of “national importance” to speed up the building process, but warned the measures would not be “enough”.
“We will build but the sad situation here is that we cannot build enough to keep up with the pace of demand which is growing very fast,” Mahmood told Times Radio.
He blamed the previous Conservative administration for indecisiveness, accusing them of completing less than a third of the 20,000 prison places they had planned to build.
As of Monday, there were 86,089 inmates in prisons in England and Wales with space for 88,822, according to official figures.
Just days after taking office in July, Mahmud announced emergency measures to release prisoners early to prevent the “collapse” of the prison system after it was discovered that only 700 places were left in men’s prisons. are
However, he said the government would try to avoid any such move in future.
“I don’t want to be in a position where we ever make the kind of emergency releases that we have to,” Mehmood told Sky News.
Mahmood added that “there are other operational measures that we may have to take to try to stabilize the prison system”, such as expanding detention provisions.