Conservatives slam Noms as bureaucratic nightmare

The number of people in prisons in England and Wales is
“frightening” and more emphasis should be spent on
preventive crime, shadow home affairs secretary Cheryl Gillan told
the Conservative conference today, writes Simeon Brody
from Blackpool.

In an apparent move away from the “prison works”
approach trumpeted at previous party conferences, Gillan told a
fringe meeting on antisocial behaviour there was a particular high
cost to imprisoning women due to 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 concern with as a politician.”

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