Overseas prisons will be disastrous for British inmates

Our prisons are overcrowded, dangerous and out of control. The prison population is rising faster than we can build new cells. Prisoners spend far too much time in their cells, developing mental health problems instead of skills. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Justice announced that it has the answer.

Perhaps surprisingly they didn’t announce more new prisons, or a recruitment drive or to a new scheme to release non-violent prisoners earlier on home detention curfew or ‘tag’. In fact, the new policy is to send prisoners overseas. No, I didn’t have ‘bringing back Transportation’ on my Conference bingo card either. The press release states that the government will look to partner with other European countries in order to rent their prison space.

It’s hard to understand how we’ve reached this point. The MoJ is right that the ‘average prison sentence has increased by 57 per cent since 2010’ and this is driving our prison population up.