Robert Jenrick has rubbished the government’s announcement of 14,000 new prison places, and said the Conservative Party would deport foreign national offenders to free up space.
The shadow justice secretary said that “no new prisons are being built” under the government’s plans. “All [justice secretary Shabana Mahmood] is doing is finishing up the prisons already being built by the last government”, he said.
Speaking to Sky News, Jenrick noted justice secretary Shabana Mahmood’s admission that there may still not be enough prison spaces despite the new announcements. He said that meant “dangerous people who should be in jail will be on the streets of our country”.
The comments come after the government announced it will build four new prisons within the next seven years in a bid to grip the overcrowding crisis. The Ministry of Justice promised to find a total of 14,000 cell spaces in jails by 2031.
Mahmood has said that the prisons estate is facing a “sad situation” in which “we cannot build enough to keep up with the pace of demand”.
The justice secretary told Times Radio: “We have already committed record sums of money, but it still ultimately won’t be enough. We are going to have to do something slightly differently.”
She added: “We will build, but the sad situation here is we cannot build enough to keep up with the pace of demand which is rising very, very quickly.”
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Pointing to the emergency release of prisoners in the last few months to ease overcrowding, Jenrick said: “If I was justice secretary, I would not have released those prisoners.
“Over my dead body would dangerous people, who should be in jail, be out on the streets posing a risk to members of the public.”
He added: “The justice secretary had to go to parliament, cap in hand, last week, and change her own law, because it riddled with loopholes on things like murder and stalking, really dangerous offences.”
Labour has said no dangerous prisoners were released early, but Jenrick argues some could have been freed in error.
Asked for the Conservative Party’s solution to the problem of overcrowding, he called for the deportation of 10,500 foreign national offenders, saying he would “use every lever of the British state to put pressure on those other countries to take back their own criminals”.
“Do things like stop issuing visas. Don’t give foreign aid to those countries. If they won’t take back their criminals, we wouldn’t be supporting them.
“I would suggest that Keir Starmer and Shabana Mahmood, for ideological reasons, are happy to release these people in a way that I certainly never would be.”
But pushed on the Conservative Party’s record during their fourteen years in power, Jenrick told Sky News that they only delivered a net gain of 6,000 new prison places, despite having promised 20,000.
“I accept that we as a country are not good enough at delivering infrastructure, roads, railways, houses, prisons”, he said. “We need to be better at that.”
He also welcomed changes to the planning system, adding he would build a new prison on the green belt.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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