JUST GIVE ME THE FACTS
Five key facts to think about
There is a growing consensus that we are sending some people to prison who should
not be there.
Social Exclusion Unit
Report on Reoffending
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We will be caught in the crossfire between those who see any custodial sentences as an affront to human rights and those who want to lock 'em up and throw away the key. But the public are driven crackers with frustration by such futile posturing... David
Blunkett MP, |
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At the beginning of 2003;
over 72,000 people are in prison in the UKThis is the highest prison population ever recorded - the equivalent of locking up the population of mid-Devon or a town the size of Barrow-in-Furness. And it's still rising. We've built twenty-six new prisons in the last decade; twenty of them are already overcrowded. The government think the numbers may reach 110,000 by the year 2010.
we have the highest rate of imprisonment in western EuropeWe lock up more people at a higher rate than every other western European nation - 139 per 100,000 of the population.
the number of women in prison has tripled in the past decadeBetween 1992 and 2002, the number of women prisoners rose from around 1300 to well over 4000. There are now more women in prison than at any time since 1901. An estimated 8,000 children are affected each year as a result of their mother's imprisonment.
it costs £37,500 to keep someone in prison for a yearThis compares with only £3000 for a probation order and £2000 for community service. Since 1995, over 12,000 additional prison places have been provided at an average cost of £100,000 per prison place.
over half of all prisoners are back inside within two years58% of adults discharged from prison are reconvicted within two years of release. Nearly three quarters of young offenders are reconvicted within 2 years.
In other words, we
lock up large numbers of people, at an extremely high cost.
And it doesn't seem to work very well...
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