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22 Oct 2024

‘Our prisons at the moment are creating better criminals – not better citizens’, says justice minister

Social Affairs Editor and Presenter

We spoke to Justice Minister Heidi Alexander and I began by asking her how comfortable she is with the high risk strategy of the early release of prisoners.

Heidi Alexander: It wasn’t a decision that we wanted to take. But if we don’t have space in the prisons, then courts can’t run trials and police can’t make arrests. And so the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

Jackie Long: You’ve had, as I am sure you have seen today in the first set of early releases, you had prisoners popping corks, celebrating outside jails. A prisoner today saying ‘Big up Keir Starmer’. That is not helping a government look like it’s as tough on crime as its predecessor, is it?

Heidi Alexander: So we’re very clear that if you commit a crime in this country, there will be consequences. And we are committed to building 14,000 new prison places. We are committed to that. And we’re clear that for the most dangerous offenders, who get a custodial sentence, that we can never again be in a position where there are questions about whether prison spaces will be available.

Jackie Long: You can look at what the justice secretary today said and feel that it’s not really a very coherent strategy. As you say, you know, you are committed to building more prisons. She said in the Commons today ‘this must begin with building more prisons’, then promptly said, ‘We can’t build our way out of this’. Now we know you’ve got a prisons minister who believes only a third of prisoners should be in jail. There’s an argument that you’re trying to ride both horses here and that this is not a coherent strategy.

Heidi Alexander: I think it is entirely coherent, to be honest, because at the moment, the prison population goes up by 4,500 a year. In order to keep pace with demand, we would have to be building three mega prisons every year. So this was never going to be a long term solution, the early release of prisoners…

Jackie Long: You still intend to fill spaces. You still intend to create 14,000 prison spaces at the same time as arguing we need to be smarter about who we are sending to prison.

Heidi Alexander: I think both of those things can be true at the same time. You have to have the prison spaces available for the demand that is coming into our courts and prison system. But we also need to get better at reducing reoffending.

Jackie Long: But just to be clear, you’re not really very confident about dramatically reducing the prison population if you are in fact committed to creating 14,000 more spaces, I suppose is my point.

Heidi Alexander: So on the current trajectories, we know that we have to build additional prison places and it would be totally irresponsible for any government not to construct those prison places. But we know that will never be enough in and of itself. Hence, we need to be smarter about who we are sending to prison. It’s also the case that we know that when people are given a community sentence that actually the rate of reoffending associated with those community sentences is less than if you’re given a custodial sentence.

Jackie Long: As you say, you’ve talked today about extending home curfew, more use of tagging. Are you worried that the public will just say this is Labour being weak on crime?

Heidi Alexander: No, we’re very clear that the sentences that people are given need to command the confidence of communities and need to have the confidence of victims. I think people in this country are interested in what works. We have the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe and we have re-offending levels that are too high. Eight out of ten offenders are re-offenders. So it’s clear that our prisons at the moment are creating better criminals, not better citizens. And so that’s why we need to look at this issue in the round. And public protection and public safety will always be our top priority.