Newly elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Keir Starmer has said he wants to reduce the number of people going to prison through renewed efforts to cut re-offending.
In his first press conference as Prime Minister, Starmer revealed that too many people found themselves back in jail “relatively quickly” after being sent there.
He added that intervening to prevent young people from committing knife crime would be an early priority for his new government.
But he said there would be no “overnight solution” to prison overcrowding, adding: “We’ve got too many prisoners, not enough prisons.”
It comes after he appointed a businessman as his Prison Minister, who has previously said only a third of prisoners should be there.
Labour, which won a landslide general election victory on Thursday, has promised to review sentencing after regaining office for the first time since 2010.
It has also inherited a ballooning crisis in Britain’s jails and has already committed to keeping the previous Conservative government’s early release scheme in place to ease current levels of overcrowding.
Last week, the Prison Governors’ Association, which represents 95% of Prison Governors in England and Wales, warned that jails were due to run out of space within days.
(Editor: Nkoli Omhoudu)
