𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Reform UK’s new justice adviser has called for bolstered prisoner “rehabilitation”, as she accused previous governments of having “failed and failed miserably” on crime and punishment.

Former prison governor and author Vanessa Frake told Times Radio: “I read every week negative press about our prison service and drugs, mobiles, violence, suicide, self-harm, etcetera, etcetera.

“And you know, the time is now for somebody to do something about it. Successive governments have failed and failed miserably and, you know, that’s why our prison service now is on its knees.”

She said: “I’m not naive in the fact that people don’t want to spend money on prisons – they’d rather it went to the NHS, to education – I’m not naive at all about that.

“But actually, if you think about the whole picture, at the moment we’re warehousing prisoners and we’re turning out better criminals into our society.

“I’d like to see it where we actually do some rehabilitation and make our society safer for our children, and that is going to cost money but at least somebody is listening to others.”