Decarceration is the key to better prisons

“Clearly, OUR prisons are not working.” At one level David Gauke, a former Conservative justice secretary, who on October 22nd was appointed by Britain’s to run a sentencing review, was stating the obvious. . Staff have suffered almost 10,000 assaults in the past year. Unsurprisingly, retaining them is difficult; only half have more than five years’ experience. Instead, teenage officers are being deployed alone on prison wings. Most new recruits do not last even two years.