She started by saying she could make a political point that Rees could not.
It is shameful that this country in 2025 finds itself in this cycle of crisis. It is shameful that for so long the last Conservative governmen failed to reckon with the reality of a rising prison population.
When Labour was lost in government, we increased prison capacity by 28,000 places. In their 14 years in power, the Conservatives added just 500 additional places, leaving our prisons on the brink of collapse.
Mahmood said the government has committed to creating more prison space.
Last December we published a long-term building strategy setting out our aim to open up 14,000 prison places by 2031. This is the largest expansion of the prison estate since the Victorians.
We have already committed £2.3bn pounds to prison expansion, and since taking office, we have delivered 2,400 new places.
We will now go further. While the spending review is ongoing, I can announce today that the Treasury will fund our prison expansion plans in full across the spending review period. This is a total capital investment of £4.7bn. It allows us to start building three new prisons.
tweeting a link to a briefing paper it produced on prison overcrowding, and why it thinks building more jails is not the answer.texts of the speeches given by Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, and her interim permanent secretary, Amy Rees, at their press conference.
Nigel Farage. Are you willing to be unpopular?
Mahmood said she was “prepared to do whatever it takes to keep this country safe, to make sure that we never run out of prison, places, and that we never see the collapse of either the prison system, or our wider law and order system in this country”.
Mahmood took questions at the briefing.
Q: How many people will affected by the recall changes?
Mahmood said this would create around 1,400 prison places.
She said this would tied the system over from November until the spring, when the impact of new sentencing rules would start to take effect.
Source: theguardian.com
