news story

5th October 2006

Shadow Home Secretary Visits Northavon

Nick Clegg MP addressing a packed public meeting at St. Mary's Hall, Thornbury

Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Nick Clegg MP has visited two local prisons on a factfinding mission at the invitation of local MP Steve Webb. He then went on on to address a well-attended public meeting in Thornbury to discuss prisons, anti-social behaviour and the criminal justice system. The two MPs visited both Eastwood Park women's prison and Leyhill open prison to see the excellent work being done there but also to hear about the pressures within the prison system. Residents from a wide area then came to St. Mary's Hall in Thornbury to hear Nick Clegg's reactions to his visit and his views about the crisis in the wider prison and criminal justice system.

"The present Government has shown total incompetence in its administration of the criminal justice system," he said, "and our prisons have reached crisis point." Nick Clegg pointed out that chaotic Labour policy has led hugely increased prison overcrowding. . As well as being expensive, overcrowding can turn prisons into "factories of crime" with  very little rehabilitation work being possible. He said that the excellent work being done with inmates in local prisons to prevent them from re-offending becomes much more difficult when prisons are overcrowded and when prisoners are shunted around the country to wherever there is a spare cell.

"Rehabilitation cuts re-offending rates, and that cuts crime," he said. "At present in Britain 70% of male prisoners re-offend within 2 years of release which is nearly the highest rate in the western world."

Nick Clegg criticised the government for just talking tough instead of working with the police, judiciary, probation services, mental health services and local people to find ways to reduce offending. He described imaginative schemes in Chard, Yeovil and Edinburgh which have had dramatic effects on reducing crime. In one, where criminals had to account to victims for their actions, re-offending rates had fallen from 70% to 5%.

He added: "Of course the most severe offenders deserve severe sentences and for the most serious offences a life sentence should mean exactly that," he said. "But there are proven effective ways of reducing reoffending, including tackling basic problems with mental health and also equipping prisoners with basic skills to enable them to cope better in the outside world. It would cost very much less, and we would all be very much safer."

Speaking after the meeting, local MP Steve Webb said:

"I was delighted to show Nick Clegg some of the very positive things that are being done in local prisons to try to put prisoners back onto the straight and narrow. Yet this vital work is being jeopardised if more and more prisoners are crammed into our prisons with little or no time to try to change the behaviour patterns which led to them being convicted in the first place".