HMP Leyhill: Offender Abscondments Debate
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Sarah Pochin
Main Page: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby)Department Debates - View all Sarah Pochin's debates with the Ministry of Justice
HMP Leyhill: Offender Abscondments
Sarah Pochin Excerpts(3 days, 20 hours ago)
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Alex Davies-Jones
I totally agree with my hon. Friend. This is just another symptom of the crisis we inherited in our criminal justice system. Whether prisons, courts or probation, every single aspect of the system was at breaking point following 14 years of underfunding and mismanagement by the Conservative party. We are working as quickly as we can to bring back to justice the two prisoners who absconded. My thoughts are with the victims. We have made contact with two of the victims and their families via the victim contact scheme. I encourage the public to get behind the police’s public appeal to bring those prisoners to justice.
Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)
What steps are being taken to ensure that prisons are adequately staffed with properly trained and equipped guards, and that IT systems receive long-overdue updates, to ensure that there are no further escapes across the whole prison network?
Alex Davies-Jones
The hon. Lady is correct. We are investing in the IT systems in our prisons, which are needed to reduce releases in error, and in the brilliant and brave men and women who serve on the frontline as prison officers, day in, day out in very difficult conditions. They have been chronically underfunded for the past 14 years. They are brilliant servicepeople and they deserve our praise—I pay tribute to them. They are working in difficult conditions, but we are investing in them and in the technology that will help them in their everyday job.