Prisons a ‘sweetshop for drugs’ with the system ‘on the edge of disaster’ new minister admits

8 October 2024, 11:21

The prison system is “on the edge of disaster”, the new minister in charge has said in his first major speech since entering government.

Lord Timpson addressed the annual conference of prison governors in Nottingham as he promised reform in the next three to five years.

“Every challenge is amplified,” he told the governors, “because our prisons are full to bursting.”

Lord Timpson said: “It’s right that dangerous people are taken off our streets – and that people who destroy lives and wreck our communities face the consequences.

“But if we cut to the core of it, prison should also be about reducing offending… it’s something we haven’t always been very good at in this country.”

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Until recently, the minister was the CEO of the Timpson key cutting business, which prided itself on hiring prison leavers - something he said he wanted to see more of, to reduce reoffending.

He said 80% of offending is committed by people who have been convicted of crimes in the past, admitting that things need to change to give offenders a purpose.

He said: “​​Staff shortages and a lack of experienced staff stretch your ability to run the kind of regimes you want to run.

“So many of your prisons are dilapidated, in desperate need of repair and I know it hasn’t been easy, trying to rehabilitate offenders in a system teetering on the edge of disaster.”

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The prison governors were told the planned reforms from the new government include steps to get on top of addiction behind bars, as Lord Timpson described jails as a “sweetshop for drugs”.

And as part of an imminent review of sentencing, he hinted at a desire to shift away from prison sentences being given to people with addiction issues, instead favouring treatment requirements as part of a community sentence.

The overcrowding crisis facing the prison estate is high on the agenda at the conference of governors in Nottingham, just weeks after around 1,700 inmates were released early under emergency measures.

Lord Timpson described that move as a “rescue effort,” adding, “if we hadn’t acted, the justice system would have ground to a halt.”

But the government has come under criticism for the shift in policy after it was revealed dozens of inmates, who’d been locked up for breaching a restraining order, were released by mistake.

Others have been recalled already, having breached their licence conditions.

The president of the Prison Governors Association Tom Wheatley used his speech at the conference to praise the work of his members.

He said: “Some of you are working in an almost superhuman fashion, not to achieve great success but to simply slow or halt impending disaster.”

Mr Wheatley also pointed to the issue of long sentences and suicide rates behind bars, as he said, “for prison to be successful, it has to be survivable… it’s a real matter of life and death.”