Prison overcrowding 'harms rehabilitation' / Britain / Home - Morning Star

Prison overcrowding 'harms rehabilitation' / Britain / Home - Morning Star

"The skyrocketing prison population is undermining inmates' rehabilitation and harming programmess set up to cut reoffending rates, criminal justice campaigners warned yesterday.

The Criminal Justice Alliance, a coalition of more than 60 organisations, has called for urgent action following evidence of what it described as "the corrosive impact" of overcrowding on the work of charities and organisations which provide rehabilitation in custody and services on release.

In its latest report, the alliance said that longer waiting lists for courses aimed at cutting reoffending, sudden transfers to other prisons, more prison lockdowns, greater levels of distress among vulnerable prisoners and widespread doubling in cells designed for one person were having a devastating effect.

The continued use of custodial sentences for parents of children who are truant from school, fine defaulters and people with mental health problems was exacerbating the problem and a waste of scarce resources, the alliance argued.

Criminal Justice Alliance director Vicki Helyar-Cardwell said: "Overcrowding has all too often become an accepted part of life in prison, but while the system is just about coping, it struggles to meet the challenges of unexpected surge, such as those that followed the riots last year.

"Our members report that overcrowding extracts a heavy price from prisoners, prison staff and voluntary sector working to cut reoffending and ultimately harms communities to which ex-prisoners will return."

Building new jails would not solve the problem, she said.

"Instead more should be done to divert minor and non-violent offenders out of prison into measures which enable them to make amends for their wrongdoing and better address the problems which lie behind their offending."

Former chief inspector of prisons and crossbench peer Lord Ramsbotham said: "Prisons have the same role in the criminal justice system as hospitals in the NHS - they are the acute part to which people should not be sent unless they need the treatment that only they can provide."