Here’s my latest column for the Ham & High on the failure of our criminal justice system after thirteen years of the Tories.  Read online here or in the print edition, on sale now.

“When I visited Wandsworth Prison earlier this year I met some incredible prison officers working in exceptionally tough conditions.  Overcrowded, under resourced and with 75% of prisoners in their care still awaiting sentencing, it was a stressful and violent workplace letting down prison officers and prisoners alike.

Since my visit, we’ve seen a terror suspect escape from Wandsworth and now the Justice Minister come to Parliament, without a hint of an apology, to admit that under the Conservatives’ watch we’ve run out of prison places completely.  It is a damning indictment of this Government’s collective ineptitude, that they are failing the first duty of Government, which is to keep our citizens safe.

Their answer to the crisis they caused is to delay sentencing even more.  What message does that send the victims of rape and serious sexual assault, who already face an average two year wait for a court date?  And how does that help the severely overcrowded prisons, like Wandsworth, where most of the prisoners are already awaiting sentencing because the courts backlog is so high?

When I visited the women’s prison HMP Bronzefield last summer many of the vulnerable women, including those with young babies, had themselves been victims of domestic violence.  There are legitimate discussions to be had about the most effective way of rehabilitating offenders and the role community-sentencing can play in place of short, ineffective prison sentences.  But this important work requires experienced probation staff, properly resourced, with genuine rehabilitation initiatives.  What we have instead is a probation service at breaking point, with probation unions warning of catastrophic breakdown as staff juggle too many cases to complete meaningful work.

This Government has sat back and watched the criminal justice system collapse and the prison population skyrocket whilst doing nothing to improve the rehabilitation that, if effective, can drive down reoffending or strengthen the community sentences that can reduce reoffending at source.  Vital prison education services are “chaotic, disjointed” and too often low-quality according to a select committee report.

There’s nothing safe about 10 Conservative Justice Secretaries in 10 years filling our prisons to bursting whilst victims wait ever longer for justice, prison staff burn out, and prisoners are released only to reoffend again.  With the cost of reoffending now at £18 billion, it is you who is paying the price of Conservative failure.”