Shadow Home Affairs Minister Edward Garnier MP has accused the Government of “filling prisons at an unsustainable rate” and failing to provide offenders with appropriate education, training and rehabilitation.
Speaking after a visit to Cardiff Prison Mr Garnier, the Conservative Party’s prisons spokesman, accused ministers of lacking strategic vision and of failing to understand how to properly manage the prisons system.
He said ministers appeared to be “in a hurry for a headline” and had “utterly failed” to address issues facing prisons and prisoners across England and Wales.
Mr Garnier, who is also a QC and Crown Court Recorder, accused the Government of a “gross waste of public money” in failing to do more to ensure prisoners do not re-offend once they are released.
Mr Garnier praised the work of the governor and staff at Cardiff Prison, but blamed the Government for a catalogue of failure.
He said: “Prisons form an essential part of our criminal justice system, protecting the public from criminals and their activities whilst they are inside, rehabilitating and reforming offenders whilst inside, and training and educating them so that they can lead useful and law-abiding lives on release.
“Despite the work of so many dedicated prison staff, it is not doing the job it should be doing.
“Far too many people go into prison unable to read or write to a level that would enable them to get, let alone hold down a job.
“Far too many people go to prison addicted to harmful drugs and alcohol and far too many people go to prison with identifiable mental illnesses, either caused by drug use or exacerbated by drug use.
“We spend millions of pounds accommodating prisoners and yet they come back out in exactly the same condition as they went in and then re-offend again and again.
“This is a gross waste of public money and provides no public benefit in terms of security from crime, still less does it do anything useful for the offenders.
“It is increasingly obvious that this Government have utterly failed to apply their collective mind to the issues facing prisons but instead have filled them up at an unsustainable rate.
“The prison estate is overcrowded and is incapable of providing the education, training and rehabilitation courses the public have a right to expect.
“It is also badly managed by ministers in a hurry for a headline and with no strategic vision or understanding of what to do.
“The system needs mending and this Government is incapable of doing that.”