TITAN PRISONS
- Session: 2007-08
- Date tabled: 21.10.2008
- Primary sponsor:
- Sponsors:
That this House notes that 33 criminal justice organisations, including the Prison Officers' Association, have written to the Secretary of State for Justice calling for titan prisons to be abandoned and that there is opposition to titan prisons from the Prison Governors' Association whose President, Paul Tidball, told the Justice Committee `We are under-whelmed by the case... Our instinct is that smaller is better'; further notes that the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, has stated that titan prison complexes go against evidence that smaller prisons work better offering an environment in which people are known, in which relationships can develop, and where people are often closer to their homes; further notes her warning that in France in 1992, a titan-style prison was built outside Paris to hold 2,800 people which now holds 3,600 people and that France has decided it will never repeat this model; further notes the concern of the Howard League for Penal Reform that communities near titan prisons would suffer as thousands of prisoners pass through without additional help with relocation; and therefore supports the call for titan prisons to be abandoned.