Kemi Badenoch has pledged to build 50,000 new prison places to end the 'scandal' of early prisoner release. The plan, described as the biggest boost to prison spaces since Queen Victoria's reign, will cost £2 billion a year to build and run new jails.
The Conservative Party's announcement, which will be funded by cuts to areas such as the foreign aid budget, comes days after the first wave of Labour's early-release prisoners were let out.
Badenoch criticises Labour's sentencing approach
Speaking on the eve of her Party's conference in Birmingham, Mrs Badenoch said: “A violent criminal doesn’t become less dangerous just because the Government has run out of prison cells.
“Labour cancelled our plans to rent spaces abroad and now they are stuck. Their answer is to let dangerous offenders out even earlier instead of building the prison spaces we need. And before we forced them to back down and reverse their reckless policy, they had planned to grant early release to rapists and serious child sex offenders, including grooming gang leaders.
“If someone keeps burgling homes, assaulting people, stealing or offending again and again, they should have to face the consequences for doing so in prison.”
She added: “It is astonishing Labour came into Government with no plan to build prison places.”
Prison population and early releases
Mrs Badenoch, whose Party branded early release of thugs a “scandal”, acknowledged that the fewer than 500 new spaces created during the Tories’ 14 years in power “were nowhere near enough”.
The number of prisoners behind bars in England and Wales has jumped by more than 1,700 in the past three months. Nearly 5,000 prisoners are set to be freed in stages over the next year as the Sentencing Act 2026 comes into force.
Government defends release conditions
A minister yesterday (FRI) said restrictions placed on prisoners who have been released early from jail are sufficient. Transport minister Keir Mather said the Government’s responsibility is to “protect the public” as he emphasised the conditions placed on people being released are robust. He also denied the early release scheme would be indefinite.
Mr Mather said: “What we’re trying to do at the moment is build a system where we respond to the shortage of prison places on the prison estate, whilst making sure that when these people are released they do not have their freedom.
“There are very robust processes to ensure that once these prisoners are released they are tagged, work closely with victims and their families to consult them directly to draw exclusion zones, there are restrictions on where prisoners who are released can go.”
He was challenged over how many released prisoners had been tagged, in light of a report by the probation inspectorate last week which found only 55% of GPS and radio tags were fitted on time. On Wednesday former Home Office minister Jess Phillips said she was not confident the measures would keep the public safe. But Mr Mather said: “Our responsibility is to do our utmost to protect the public.”
