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Director's Blog
28 July 2006
4pm
Another huge increase in the numbers of prisoners today, up 244 on last week. That is equal to a medium size prison in one week. There are 78,739 men, women and children in prison in England and Wales today.
I remember when I first started at the Howard League, watching the figures with dread for the day when the numbers reached 50,000. I never thought that a Labour government would allow, never mind encourage, such a huge increase in the use of prison.
The last few weeks must have been hell for prisoners and staff alike. The "safer cells" without bars mean that there is virtually no ventilation in the cells. People held in local prisons spend almost all their time locked in their cells, forced into sharing the space with a stranger who may be someone different the next day.
We treat people like caged rats and expect them to transform magically into model citizens. This is not just crazy, it is in itself criminal, as it puts us all at increased risk.
The policy is morally abhorrent and counter-productive in practice.
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