The new justice secretary, Liz Truss, is to press ahead “at pace” with her predecessor Michael Gove’s radical prison reform programme despite a fresh warning from the chief inspector of prisons that a surge in jail violence is putting it at risk.
Truss, responding to the warning from Peter Clarke, said it demonstrated why prison reform is so important. “I want to see radical reform and I am under no illusions about the scale of the challenge we face or how long reform takes … I will set out the next steps for this agenda in coming weeks, but I am clear that the vital work of prison reform will continue at pace,” she said.
Her statement will dispel fears among penal reformers that Truss was ready to ditch Gove’s plan, as she had co-written a 2011 book calling for prisons to be made “tough, unpleasant and uncomfortable” places of punishment.
[Read the full article from The Guardian]