Shabana Mahmood comments on the IMB annual report criticising the Tories' prison population crisis

Shabana Mahmood MP, Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary, commenting on the Independent Monitoring Board's annual report that the prison population crisis is adversely impacting all aspects of prison life, said:

“The Tories' mismanagement of jails is a growing catalogue of abject failure. Yet Rishi Sunak's only answer to a crisis of his government's own making appears to be releasing dangerous offenders onto our streets and hiding it from the public. 

“This is the latest report that shows offender rehabilitation efforts have gone backwards. This risks prisoners being released back into communities as more hardened criminals than when they went in. 

“Labour will turn the page on 14 years of Conservative failure. We'll build the new prisons needed to lock up dangerous offenders and deliver on our mission to raise confidence in the criminal justice system to its highest level within a decade.”