PRT comment: HM Inspectorate of Prisons’ thematic report on outcomes for young adult prisoners

Commenting on the findings of today’s (20 January) thematic report on outcomes for young adult prisoners by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust said:

“The government is in a complete muddle about how to deal with young people who commit serious crime. On the one hand, it is determined to sentence even more young people—disproportionately young black men—to ever longer periods in prison. But then it fails utterly to make provision which might do anything to allow them to escape the situation which their lack of maturity has created in the first place.

“This is what comes from an overcrowded, under-resourced prison system. Governments are quick to legislate for harsher punishments. But they then condemn these young people at a critical moment in their lives to a system which is dominated by the pressure of simply finding enough spaces for people to be locked up. Strategic planning for the prison estate and for what goes on inside it is repeatedly blown out of the water by political expedience.

“There is no excuse for the situation the Chief Inspector describes. Far from protecting the public through imprisonment, the government is storing up a worse problem for the future. Young and disproportionately black young people are being denied a fair chance of building a decent future and growing out of crime.”