News

Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, has announced a two-year freeze on all public service expenditure except health and education should the Conservatives win the next general election. Among the many questions this provokes is one that Labour also needs to address, a week after the prison population reached an all-time high with 75,543 locked up.

If we have a Tory freeze and a Labour squeeze on budgets, how is either party going to pay for all the extra prisons this country is going to need, since it is determined to maintain its abysmal reputation as a leader of the "lock 'em up" league of nations?


Justice and compassion are not deemed sufficient reasons for politicians to overhaul penal policy. But perhaps, on remand at least, change will come because there will be no alternative. On some projections, the prison population could reach 87,200 in 2006 - 9,500 more than the number of places expected to be available at that time. A sharp reduction in remand prisoners would help to ease the pressure - and could provide an opportunity to make a constructive difference to individual lives.

Six out of 10 women on remand are given non-custodial sentences or acquitted. Eight out of 10 are charged with non-violent offences. On average, they will spend 37 days in jail, often in conditions worse than those experienced by a convicted prisoner. Many have children. A remand prisoner commits suicide nearly every 10 days.

Surely, in the 21st century, an affluent society such as this can devise a network of small bail hostels and enough detoxification and psychiatric units to keep women and men out of jail?


The Prison Reform Trust, on its excellent website, is asking the public to write to MPs to lobby for change in the remand system. Fifty thousand people were locked up on remand last year, innocent until proven guilty. Some have to stay inside to stop them committing crime or harming others. Still, a well designed system should enable most to be let out on bail with a minimal chance of re-offending or disappearing before a court appearance - while offering a genuine opportunity to turn a life around.

Instead, the penal system is colonising vast areas of social policy.

However well intentioned some prison officers are, they are not psychiatrists, doctors, social workers or detox specialists. Jails should be a last resort for the guilty - not homes for those whom circumstances have left a little flawed.