Quaker calls for action on prisons

'Comments by Tom Shakespeare followed an ‘urgent notification’ about conditions in HMP Wandsworth issued the week before by Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons.'

by Rebecca Hardy 31st May 2024

The Quaker writer and broadcaster Tom Shakespeare has called for new thinking to fix the current crisis in UK prisons. Against a backdrop of overcrowding, violence and high rates of reoffending, the former Swarthmore Lecturer said we need a clearer vision of what prisons are really for.  ‘We want them to do lots of rather different things: punish people who have broken our laws; protect the public from violent criminals; rehabilitate offenders and teach them useful employment skills. Yet we are guilty of stigmatising people who have spent some time in prison,’ he said, on the BBC programme A Point of View on 19 May.