Four abscond from Leyhill - as warned

A pager message from a local newspaper this morning to tell me that four inmates had walked out of Leyhill Open Prison in my constituency. Whilst Leyhill houses many people who have committed very serious offences but who are coming near the end of their sentence, these four all appear to have committed relatively minor offences. Which raises the question - what were they doing at Leyhill in the first place?

The idea of an open prison is a very good one. Prisoners serving long-term sentences become institutionalised, and some have serious offending behaviour that needs to be addressed. An open prison can, over a period of months or years, gradually reacclimatise someone so that when they are finally released they are equipped to survive on the outside and reintegrate into society.

But this valuable work is undermined when open prisons are used as a 'dumping ground' for prisoners for whom no other bed can be found elsewhere in the prison system. Questions I tabled in Parliament found that by Autumn of last year every two or three days prisoners were being sent to Leyhill from other prisons because there was simply not enough space. I do not believe that these were being thoroughly 'risk assessed' for open prison conditions, and today's absconds lend weight to that concern.

There are far too many people in prison system serving largely pointless short-term sentences, where there is no scope for rehabilitation, but sending them to open conditions adds insult to injury. Just another symptom of a prison system at breaking point.