Down with prisons

At a time when prisons are overcrowded and magistrates are being told to impose sentences other than prison terms, it might seem counterintuitive to propose demolishing a dozen of them, but there is merit in the idea.

Many of London’s prisons are antiquated, some dating back to the Victorian era. They are difficult to man, to clean and to service, and modern technology has made it easier for inmates to be supplied with smuggled drugs. The solution is to replace them with new purpose-built prisons. But how might this be afforded?

Many of the sites occupied by some of the London ones could be sold or leased for huge sums of money to have office blocks built on their sites for business, commercial and residential use. This money could be used to fund the building of new prisons in economically-deprived areas such as the North of England,

This would generate thousands of jobs in areas that need them. Firstly to construct them, and then to man, service and supply them. If handled judiciously, they could be financed by the sale of the London sites they will eventually replace.

Of course, government contracts being what they are, the costs could escalate, but then so might the land value of the sites freed up by their replacement.

This would be a big step to the ‘levelling up’ campaign we were promised. The talk is of sending civil servants, BBC personnel and Channel Four to the North, but we should send the prisoners with them.