Prisons are an overflowing, squalid, absurd waste of money. So why do the public want more of them? | Polly Toynbee

We know longer sentences do more harm than good. Let’s focus our resources on threadbare public services instead

Prisons in England and Wales are overflowing, again. Police cells are being requisitioned, again. Over the years, prison numbers go up and up – even though the Sentencing Council itself finds scant evidence that more time in jail does any good. Prisons are bursting at the seams because of ever-lengthening sentences. Damian Hinds, the minister for prisons, is eager to blame the barristers’ strike for this crisis. That’s outrageous: barristers’ strikes have merely highlighted the existing prison logjam.

Here’s the real cause: the public’s appetite for locking people up seems insatiable. Nothing is ever enough. The more politicians implement tougher sentences, the greater the public taste for even stiffer penalties. Fact-free, tabloid-stoked impulses for vengeance merge with politicians’ desire to out-tough each other on crime.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/OZmuig1