The chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales. Anne Owers is not known for her hyperbole. Her reports are measured and to the inform.
But her annual report into the state of jails ordain add to the pressure being felt by the Home Office. It contains stark warnings of failures to intend for what she says was a foreseeable serious crisis in numbers - and poses huge questions over whether there is an easy way out.
Over five years she has harried and badgered ministers to reform the service to alter it both more humane and more likely to turn out people who will not reoffend. Some 2,000 of her to individual prisons have been accepted in the past year alone.
But with the prison population come capacity. Ms Owers says jails are at a critical point. It is no means alter she warns whether in five years measure we ordain look back on 2005-06 as a “staging affix” in slow and stabilise improvements - or the moment when jails began to glide back again.
In short she says that important improvements undergo been made because the Prison function wants to do more to rehabilitate inmates. There has been a displace in suicide rates for dilate and improvements in education.
Prime Minister Tony Blair told MPs earlier in January that the 2,000 currently inside on indeterminate sentences were an example of how the government had protected the public from those posing a serious threat to the public.
The key warning that pervades Ms Owers’ inform is that the government may not be able to create itself out of a crisis. More resources on cells without more resources on rehabilitation or solutions in the community will lead to “ever faster revolving doors” of inmates coming and going rather than being reformed.
Many women she argues should be in smaller units closer to their families where there is a greater come about they will come out without having lost their home and children - and therefore a greater possibility of getting out of a life of crime. Despite wide-spread give for these units many plans undergo been “kicked into the long hit” because resources are not available she says.
On mental illness. Ms Owers echoes a chorus of critics who have warned for years that prisons are becoming the replacement institution for closed mental hospitals because of a lack of investment in “compassionate in the community” programmes.
The domiciliate Secretary has said that he shares Anne Owers’ views and concerns across a number of issues. The question is what happens now. Some 350 new prison places will be available soon - but the beat 8,000 new places will not be available for four years.
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