Prison suicides rise to record level in England and Wales because Tories are running them
It doesn’t seem that long since it seemed a good idea to suggest that sick and disabled people whose lives were endangered by the Conservative government’s ‘Work Capability Assessment’ commit a crime and go to prison.
Looking at these figures, I do hope that nobody took up that suggestion. It seems that, under the self-proclaimed ‘party of law and order’, the prison service is not what it should be, either.
The alarming part of it, for This Writer, is that I was not shocked by this announcement; I just registered it with quiet resignation.
What more can we expect from Tories?
A record number of people killed themselves in prisons in England and Wales in 2016, figures show.
The Ministry of Justice said there were 119 self-inflicted deaths – 29 more than the previous year and the highest number since records began in 1978.
It also reported a record high of 37,784 self-harm incidents and 25,049 assault incidents.
Justice Secretary Liz Truss said the figures were “very serious”, but she was dealing with the problem.
She said the government was investing an extra £100m into the prisons estate, as well as hiring 2,500 more officers.
Last year thousands of staff walked out in protest over health and safety concerns, amid claims that the system was “in meltdown”, while a number of serious disturbances erupted in jails.
Source: Prison suicides rise to record level in England and Wales – BBC News
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Tories care nothing for those of us who are not in prison, so unfortunately those who are stand no chance at all. Perhaps they make exceptions for criminals such as Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer.
You didn’t accept the news with quiet resignation: you passed it on.
Then I am more proactive than even I thought I was! Good for me.
It would help if the distinction was made between private and publicly run prisons, my personal experience of talking to prisoners was that they felt unsafe in the private ones, which could of course be more of an incentive to self harm/or kill oneself. Additionally the numbers of mentally ill and what these days is euphamistically named learning difficulties prisoners due to lack of correct facilities to care for them since the (no) care in the community closed down the hospitals and units where they used to get treatment.
The Tories are not running prisons it’s their paymasters in the private sector who are calling the tunes and destroying them.