Posted by Hari on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 with No comments | Labels: Austerity, budget cuts, public sector, taxation, the courts
SOURCE GUARDIAN: Prisons face overcrowding due to policy failure, says watchdog
The chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick, issued a stark warning that cuts had left the system so stretched that more inmates were killing themselves or getting deliberately sent to punishment blocks to escape crowded conditions. The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, rejected the criticisms, insisting the number of assaults and cases of self harm were falling and that 2,000 extra prison places were being built. He conceded the government had been taken surprised by a recent surge in demand for cell space, blaming a spate of historic sex abuse cases. But he defended his decision to order dozens of already full and overcrowded prisons to take 440 extra offenders between them as a sensible precaution to deal with the unanticipated squeeze. Shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, blamed the closure of nearly 20 prisons for the decision to ask private companies to provide an extra 412 places at a cost of millions of pounds. Jeremy Wright, minister for prisons and rehabilitation, declined to disclose the costs of the prison places on the grounds that the information is "commercially sensitive".
SOURCE BBC NEWS:Full jails told to take in more prisoners
Forty prisons in England and Wales have been told to raise their "operational capacity" in the next two months, according to documents seen by the BBC. All but six of these are running at full capacity or are already overcrowded. The order to take in more prisoners is very embarrassing for the Ministry of Justice, which has closed 16 jails in the past four years. The Prison Officers Association described the development as a "fiasco". It said emergency measures were also being put in place to recruit staff after thousands of prison officers took voluntary redundancy. Retired officers and those who have recently left the service are being offered short-term contracts to re-join until the end of the year.
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