{"id":188080,"date":"2024-12-04T09:44:04","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T09:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/04\/prisons-plan-will-fall-short-by-2027-watchdog-warns\/"},"modified":"2024-12-04T09:44:04","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T09:44:04","slug":"prisons-plan-will-fall-short-by-2027-watchdog-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/04\/prisons-plan-will-fall-short-by-2027-watchdog-warns\/","title":{"rendered":"Prisons plan will fall short by 2027, watchdog warns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Prisons<\/div>


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Government plans to tackle the prisons crisis will fall short of thousands of cells and be \u00a34bn over-budget in two years’ time, a watchdog has warned.<\/p>\n

A critical National Audit Office (NAO) report flags that current expansion plans are “insufficient to meet projected future demand”, with a projected shortage of 12,400 prison places by the end of 2027.<\/p>\n

The government has already released 5,500 prisoners early in an emergency plan<\/a> to free up cells and stop the justice system collapsing, and has also announced a sentencing review aimed at providing more non-custodial sentences.<\/p>\n

The NAO report said the crisis was a “consequence of previous governments’ failure” to properly fund prisons at the same time as increasing the length of prison sentences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The watchdog also said Boris Johnson’s government’s pledge to create an extra 20,000 cells spaces is now not expected to be met until 2031 – about five years later than promised. <\/p>\n

Only a third, 6,518, of the promised spaces were available as of September and the scheme is also running at least \u00a34.2bn over-budget, the report says. <\/p>\n

Prisons are still expected to reach critical capacity again by July, with fresh prison population projections due to be published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The NAO also warned the government department “does not have any contingency plans to increase prison capacity as it views it has limited options left to do this”.<\/p>\n

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee which scrutinises government spending, said prisons were “already at the brink” and it was “unacceptable” that plans would not meet future demand.<\/p>\n

“The MoJ has been in firefighting mode, prioritising short-term solutions to the crisis,” he said.<\/p>\n

“These are not only expensive but also increase risks to prisoner, staff and public safety.<\/p>\n

“The government must pull together a coherent and viable long-term plan for a prison estate that meets demand and delivers value for taxpayers’ money.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government plans to tackle the prisons crisis will fall short of thousands of cells and be \u00a34bn over-budget in two years’ time, a watchdog has warned. A critical National Audit Office (NAO) report flags that current expansion plans are “insufficient to meet projected future demand”, with a projected shortage of 12,400 prison places by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/021e\/live\/2c13e8c0-b21e-11ef-a60f-2583ac5097f7.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[727,736,17775,10170,5219,7240],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188082,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188080\/revisions\/188082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}