Tories scrap flagship new prisons plan
Updated on 02 December 2009
The Conservative party abandons its criminal justice policy of creating 5,000 extra prison places, which would have been financed by selling Victorian prisons.
Channel 4 News understands they've now downgraded that cast-iron pledge to an estimate that they will be able to create "several thousand" new places.
In March 2008 David Cameron announced plans to create 5,000 new prison places using £250m from the sale of 30 Victorian jails as a flagship criminal justice policy, in a green paper Prisons with a Purpose.
Channel 4 News understands that the Conservatives have now downgraded this cast-iron pledge to an estimate that they will be able to create "several thousand" new places.
Senior Conservative figures now accept privately that, particularly in the wake of the economic crisis and plummeting property prices, the original plans were "over-optimistic".
Instead, the Tories plan to convert some open jails into category C prisons, and focus much more heavily on rehabilitation so that those leaving prisons do not end up reoffending and returning to jail.
This marks a fundamental rethink of the Tory promise that "prison works". The mantra is now "rehabilitation, not incarceration".
