Gillan hints at policy shift from ‘prison works’ to intervention

The number of people in prisons in England and Wales is
“frightening” and more emphasis should be placed on preventing
crime, shadow home affairs minister Cheryl Gillan told the
conference.

In an apparent move away from the “prison works” approach trumpeted
at previous Conservative party conferences, Gillan said there was a
particularly high cost in imprisoning women because of the effect
on their children.

She argued that intervention should be made at an earlier stage of
people’s lives, saying: “It is breaking the cycle that I’m
concerned with as a politician.”

She also described the way the National Offender Management Service
had been implemented as a bureaucratic nightmare, and claimed it
had been causing panic among prison officers.