Thursday, January 11, 2007

Joining up the dots in Prison Policy

Prisons minister Gerry Sutcliffe has said prisoners will abscond, in a debate in Parliament, when question by Nick Herbert Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs, in whose constituency Ford open Prison is.

Well, it is true, having made deliveries to both Lewis Prison and Ford Open Prison, I can tell you that you can simply walk out of Ford with no problem at all.

In principle this is not a huge problem, these people are supposedly low risk. However in the case of Ford Open Prison, they only discovered a prisoner was missing when the police dropped him back off. A tad embarrassing I would have thought.

You can read the BBC's article on the story here.

Then I read this in the BBC, about two murders absconding from an open prison, you have to wonder how exactly the risk assessment is done.

Open prisons have a place, but increasingly it seems to be somewhere to put prisoners because they have run out of space.

Mind you, if you want to look at some of the problems at some open prisons you can read this article from the BBC about two prisoners who escaped from Leyhill Open Prison and trekked their way back to Gloucester Prison and asked to be taken back in. You just could not make that story up!

Update 00:53

The prison from which two prisoners have just absconded is Sudberry Open Prison, which now has a total of 5 killers on the run. You will remember the scandal of Derbyshire Police not wanting to release photos of two escaped killers on "human rights grounds" which was rightly rubbished by Lord "Cheerful Chappie" Falconer as a load of tosh. You can of course release pictures of escaped convicts if you are looking for them.

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