Today justice secretary Chris Grayling completes this week’s hatrick of wrong-headed decisions that will set back the justice system for years. First he announced that the MoJ was beginning feasibility work on building a new prison that would hold more than 2,000 prisoners. Jack Straw had the same idea in 2009, but rapidly dropped it when it was criticised for uncontrollable cost, safety risks, control issues, difficulties of focusing on rehabilitation, and evidence from abroad that large prisons were not effective.
Now Grayling is reviving the idea, though none of the objections voiced so strongly in 2009, including by Cameron and his then justice secretary, have any less force today than they did then. Depressingly, it seems that Grayling is falling in behind Michael Howard’s discredited idea that ‘prison works’.
