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.
Vanessa Frake also warned that criminals “lose their support systems on the outside” when they are sentenced, and risk having no other choice than to “get on that crime ladder” after a short time in prison.
Nigel Farage, Reform UK’s leader, has promised “the most significant event” of his party’s crime campaign later on Monday.
Speaking on Times Radio, Ms Frake said: “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.”
The former prison governor 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.”
Ms Frake, who wrote about her previous work in her book The Governor, also referred to a Government scheme which cut temporarily the proportion of sentences certain inmates must serve behind bars from 50% to 40%.
“In a prison, now they do 40% of a sentence,” she said.
“There’s very little you can do with somebody who is addicted to drugs, alcohol, has mental health issues. There is very little you can do within a prison at that time.
“And when people are sentenced to short sentences, they lose their support systems on the outside.
“They lose their home if they had one, they lose family support and we let them out with nothing so their only alternative is to commit crime and get on that crime ladder, and that needs to be addressed.
“What I would like to see is much better community services, much better community and substance misuse services outside of prisons, and much better management of prisoners on the outside.”
Asked whether she was willing to have a “difficult conversation” with party leader Nigel Farage, Ms Frake replied: “He might have his own views but he will listen far more than any other party has listened in the past.”
