Brendan Ryan (Labour)

This morning's reports on the study of recidivism, etc., confirms a view I have held since I came to the House, that apart from protecting us from dangerous people, prisons serve no purpose. They do not rehabilitate or deter people, but turn them into criminals. It is an interesting statistic that 85% of people who end up in prison for defaulting on a fine end up in prison again within four years.

Who are we kidding? Building more prisons and employing more prison officers is one of the growth industries here. In 50 or 100 years' time people will look back and wonder how society became so hysterical that it believed locking up more and more people would achieve anything more than locking up ever increasing numbers of people. There is not a scrap of evidence that prisons work or that they deter criminals——