A former prison officer turned MP has launched a scathing attack on the Conservative Party, claiming their policies of austerity have pushed the UK's prison system to a dangerous breaking point.
A System in Crisis
Sally Jameson, the Labour MP for Doncaster Central who spent five years working at HMP & YOI Moorland, stated that while recent accidental releases from prison are unacceptable, they are a direct symptom of a system left to rot by the Tories over more than a decade.
The crisis was highlighted by two high-profile mistaken releases from HMP Wandsworth. Registered sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was wrongly set free last week, and fraudster William 'Billy' Smith was released due to a mix-up in court records just days later. Both men are now back in custody.
The Legacy of Cuts and Broken Promises
Ms Jameson detailed the devastating impact of Conservative governance on the justice system. She revealed that 30% of the Justice budget was cut between 2010 and 2015, leading to a dramatic rise in violence, self-harm, and drug abuse behind bars.
Despite the Tories increasing sentence lengths, they failed to provide adequate prison spaces. Jameson accused them of promising 20,000 new prison places across four consecutive manifestos, a target that was later delayed by five years. In reality, she claims, only 500 new places were added over 14 years.
The human cost of these failures is stark. Official figures show that under the Tory Government, 860 prisoners were released in error. The problem worsened towards the end of their administration, with accidental releases rising from 81 in 2022/23 to 115 in 2023/24.
These errors had tragic consequences. Serial rapist Joseph McCann was wrongly released and went on to carry out 11 attacks in a 15-day rampage. William Fernandez, released while serving time for sexual assault, subsequently raped a 16-year-old.
A Long Road to Recovery
While admitting the recent mistaken releases under the new Labour government are unacceptable, Ms Jameson emphasised that they inherited a system struggling to cope after years of neglect.
She stated that the number of frontline prison officers fell by nearly a third under the Conservatives, leaving the remaining staff overstretched and the estate in crisis.
Jameson vowed that Labour is committed to turning the situation around, acknowledging it will take time. She pointed to the government's landmark sentencing reforms as the beginning of a solution designed to ensure the UK never runs out of prison places again.
