Even before he started throwing open jail doors across the country this week, Andy Burnham’s attitude to the penal crisis appeared decidedly offhand.
Although he has promised ‘the fastest prison building programme since the Victorian era’, we have seen little more than an unconvincing plan to provide 14,000 extra spaces by reconfiguring laundry rooms, office space and storage areas.
The contrast with the Conservatives’ new blueprint could hardly be starker. According to shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy, the Tories are committed to delivering 50,000 new prison places through a £2billion-a-year programme funded by cuts to foreign aid and Whitehall budgets.
No right-thinking individual
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