Government acts decisively to tackle prison crisis

In a move which has delighted penal reformers, faced with a prison system in crisis – inhumane overcrowding, rising violence and self harm, union unrest – the Government has at long last decided to implement an ambitious and radical strategy for prison reform to address the fundamental problems of the prison system, defying criticisms from the Right-wing press that it is 'soft on crime'.

The programme comprises:

• construction of 15, 000 new places
• reform of sentencing law, to ban short prison sentences and replace them  with sentences be served in the community
  
• development of new community sentencing options
• additional resources to underpin community sentences and re-integration of prisoners into the community, particular 1,800 new posts to undertake this work
• a further programme to cut numbers on remand, by substituting electronic tagging and by presenting the court with better information in order to 'personalise' the sentences in each case.

These reforms were announced by the new  Minister of Justice in recent weeks.


Note:
This article is about France. Come on, whatever did you think?

---