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JAIL CRISIS SENDS PRISONERS TO LONDON

14-06-2007

The Stirrer has discovered that overcrowded West Midlands jails put up the “No Vacancies” signs this week, with local prisoners having to be ferried to police cells in West London.

Charles Bushell, the General Secretary of the Prison Governors Association has told us that on Monday night, at least eight local inmates - mostly prisoners on remand - had to be taken to the capital because Winson Green and Blakenhurst in Redditch were at bursting point.

He warned that the same thing could happen again tonight when the number of people kept inside, which is already in excess of 80,000 is expected to reach a new record.

In an outspoken attack on government policy, he said: “No society should lock up more people than it is able to hold. It needs to check what’s going on.

“We are running out of space. For a long time now the government has been enacting legislation to lock more and more people up for longer and longer times, but nobody has thought to build the prison spaces to provide for them.

“The stupid thing is that nobody feels any safer than they did a few years ago when we locked up half the number of people.”

The prisoners who were taken from Solihull and the Birmingham area on Monday were held either in police cells or court cells - even though the latter are only designed to keep prisoners for a maximum of one or two hours and lack basic facilities.

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