Emergency prison measures are welcome – but questions remain about long-term solution
By Mollie Malone, news correspondent
These measures from the justice secretary will be seen among the prison and probation sector as a proper attempt to reset and alleviate the immediate prisons crisis (see previous post).
But it doesn’t solve everything. Far from it.
The justice secretary admits today that the core announcement to lower the automatic release point from 50% to 40% is in itself an emergency measure.
At the moment, we are lurching from one emergency measure to the next.
There are safeguards in place that didn’t exist under the previous controversial scheme launched by the Conservative government in October – allowing eligible offenders to be released up to 70 days before the end of their sentence.
Those safeguards might help offset some fears expressed by victims groups.
But it certainly doesn’t offer a long term solution.
“Although it will be a law, it still does not resolve how we use prison in the long term,” said one prison source.
“If we carry on with court backlogs and send more people to prison, we will be in the same position all over again,” they said.
The government are committing to building more prison places.
But their prisons minister James Timpson fundamentally disagrees with that approach and thinks a third of people that are in prison shouldn’t be there
There are lots of questions yet to answer about what meaningful reform looks like.