The UK’s prison estate is crumbling fast and after terrorist Hashem Abedi’s violent attack on prison officers at ‘supermax’ jail HMP Frankland (don’t worry, his knife and fork have now been replaced with a spork), tensions are high. Never fear, Shabana Mahmood is in charge…
The Justice Secretary raised eyebrows last year when she conceded that even her own government’s prison expansion plan – to add 14,000 more places by 2031 – may not be adequate. Back then, she told the BBC: “building alone is not enough”. Yesterday, prisons minister Lord Timpson – the famous shoe repairer – went further: “We’ve got around 500 spare places in prison today, in the male estate. You can’t run any organisation when you’re that close to running out of space. We know that the prison population is increasing by about 100 people a week — you can’t carry on doing that.” All of which is code for more early release…
Labour has already released thousands of lags at the 40% mark through their sentences. Their self-appointed spokesman was one Daniel Dowling-Brooks, a 29-year-old sentenced to seven years for kidnap and GBH. He was filmed shouting “big up Keir Starmer” while celebrating his early release in front of a Bentley and Mercedes G-Wagon. Another, Djaber Benallaoua, 20, said the decision to institute early release was a “very good” policy and said he was “going to get lit” after being freed from HMP Isis. He said the move had made him “a lifelong Labour voter”…
It later emerged that dozens of the wrong prisoners had been freed by mistake, including those on domestic abuse convictions. Not to mention one early release prisoner who killed a man later on the same day he was freed under Starmer’s scheme. Labour’s hellscape…
Sarah Pochin at Reform Scotland’s manifesto launch event: “I really wanted to come on in a Reform tartan burka, but apparently I wasn’t allowed… One day let’s do one of these events not live-streamed. We’ll do all the naughty stuff…”