Building prisons in England and Wales the bigger the better?

7 Building prisons in England and Wales: the bigger, the better?
Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform, though,
suggested that the plan might prove to be unworkable, especially if the
old prisons remained full and the MoJ still needed their capacity:
I do not think this will work, not least because we have been here
before. The Conservatives looked at this in some detail before the
2010 election and it was fraught with problems. Some of the
prisons are not owned by the Ministry of Justice but by the Queen
or rich landlords. So the Ministry may not get the profit from any
sale. The cart and horse argument is pretty tricky too, as you have
to build the new prison to house people before you flog off the
old one. New prisons get filled up immediately so you end up with
the full new one and the full old one – one reason why the prison
estate has steadily expanded over the years. 8
2.2 A prison building revolution?
In November 2015, with the Chancellor, George Osborne, Michael Gove
announced a “prison building revolution”, in which £1.3 billion would
be spent on building 10,000 new prison places – many of them in nine
new prisons – and reforming prison infrastructure. Outdated prisons in
city centres would (they said) be closed. 9
The statement promised that five of these new prisons would be
opened by the end of this Parliament, but no announcement has yet
been made about where they might be. Officials at NOMS have
indicated that any such public statement is probably some way off. 10
Further discussion of
the Government’s
plans for prison
reform can be found
in House of Lords In
Focus, HM
Government’s
proposals for prison
reform, LIF 2016/002,
18 January 2016
In the meantime, junior minister for prisons, probation and
rehabilitation, Andrew Selous, has again given a broad indication of
what the MoJ hopes to achieve through the prison building programme,
by improving prison design and opportunities for rehabilitation and
realising money through the sale of no longer wanted estate:
On 9 November the Chancellor and Secretary of State announced
their intention to build a prison estate which allows prisoners to
be rehabilitated, thereby enabling them to turn away from a life
of crime. This will involve building nine new prisons and closing
old and inefficient prisons which do not support the aims of a
redesigned estate. No decisions have yet been made on where
new prisons will be built.
We are currently considering which of our old and inefficient
prisons will close. We will engage with stakeholders during the
process of sale including valuation experts and potential
developers in order to maximise the value achieved. 11
More recently, in January 2016, he reiterated that new prisons would
provide better facilities and enable prison governors to tackle persistent
problems such as bullying and violence:
It is excellent news that the Chancellor committed to invest £1.3
billion to build nine new prisons in addition to the new prison that
we are building in north Wales, which has not had a prison for
well over 100 years. We will design out the features of the new
8
Frances Crook, Michael Gove and prisons, 17 July 2015
9
HM Treasury and MoJ, Prison building revolution announced by Chancellor and
Justice Secretary, 9 November 2015
10
Personal communication, 2 February 2016
11
PQ 16112 of 23 November 2015