Pennycook: Labour handling prison reform in responsible way

ODN

Housing Minister Matt Pennycook insists the government are handling prison reform in a “responsible way” just days after the Labour Party announced plans to release prisoners early for good behaviour. Pennycook argues the government “had no choice but to reform sentencing”.      Report by Ajagbef. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00Well, we faced an absolutely dire inheritance from the previous Conservative government when

00:04it comes to prisons. I'd say it was nothing short of criminal neglect, if I'm honest,

00:10a situation where capacity is a breaking point, where if we don't act, and that's why sentencing

00:16reform is so essential, we are heading back to a situation of zero capacity. And if there

00:21is zero capacity in the prison system, that means that courts will have to suspend trials,

00:26police will have to stop making arrests. It is the breakdown of law and order. So we're

00:30building prisons at a far greater pace than the previous government. They only added 500

00:35prison places into the system over their time in office. We've already added 2,400 since

00:41we came to power last July. Of course, we've got to monitor how this reform is implemented

00:46to ensure it achieves what it does. But I suppose the point I would really drive home to your

00:51viewers is, essentially, we had no choice but to reform sentencing. Because if we didn't,

00:57we are heading back to, as a result of the previous government's failure to build enough

01:01prison places while sentence is lengthened, a situation where we're adding 3,000 people

01:05a year into the prison population, we're heading back to zero capacity. And when that means potentially

01:10the collapse of the prison system, and a very real risk posed by that collapse to the public

01:16in terms of allowing the most dangerous offenders to remain on our streets, not in prison where

01:20they should be. We had to act, but we're doing so in a responsible way.

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