While Nick Clegg battles on the tuition fee front, another internal conflict breaks out
for the coalition today: prisons. And rather than yellow-on-yellow, this one is strictly blue-on-blue. On one side, you’ve got Ken Clarke, who is controversially proposing a raft of measures for reducing the prison population. On the other, Tory
figures like Michael Howard who insist
that prison works – and that there should be more of it. Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, even told Radio 4 this morning that millions of Conservative voters would be disappointed by
the coalition’s plans.
Clarke’s argument is, as we already know, twofold: i) that we cannot afford to keep detaining more and more prisoners, and ii) that the current justice system is broken, particularly when it comes to rehabilitation, and needs mending from the ground up.
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