‘Just build some more!’ Barrister fumes at ‘open prisons’ idea: ‘It is just silly!’

A leading barrister has dismissed calls for more open prisons in the UK as “complete gibberish”, describing it as outdated “nineties thinking”.

Stephen Barrett criticised the notion that prison reform and rehabilitation would create a better society.

Speaking to GB News, Barrett said: “It’s the latest iteration of what I call 90s thinking, which we are still trapped in.

“Basically, we all agreed in the nineties that we should reform prisons and reduce the population and rehabilitate criminals, and that would make society jolly and lovely.

“Nobody’s truly bad, everybody underneath has got a heart of gold. You just need the state to find it and bring it out.

“It’s complete gibberish. And we’re finding this out because society is in the state it’s in, which is not a good state. We’re not really policing.

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“So our prisons are not full because we’re catching all the criminals. Our prisons are full because we don’t have enough prisons.”

GB News host Dawn Neesom replied: “Only six per cent of UK prisoners go to open prisons. It’s 25 per cent in Spain and a third in Norway, and the absconding rates are very low. So if it works in those countries, why wouldn’t it work here?”

Barrett responded: “Well, we need to look at the population differences. I mean, who is committing the crimes?”

“The Home Office keeps hiding the facts or not telling us the nationalities who’s committing all of these crimes. And we need to know. We’re not being told because of fears over racism, which is just silly.”

Former Justice Secretary David Gauke has urged greater use of open prisons following visits to Spanish facilities.

“We don’t make as much use of open prisons as we might do,” said Gauke, who is leading the Government’s sentencing review.

He also highlighted how inmates could “spend part of your day out of a prison working, and then return to sleep at night”, arguing this helps establish working routines.

Gauke, who served under Theresa May from 2018 to 2019, warned that UK prisons have “run out of space”.

“I think there is an increasing recognition that we have gone down the route of increasing sentences to an extent that it’s doing nothing to reduce crime but it is causing significant costs,” he told The Times.

He insisted his proposals were “not about being soft on crime, it is about more effectively reducing crime”.

Barrett strongly criticised the Home Office’s approach to crime statistics in the debate.

“The Home Office keeps hiding the facts or not telling us the nationalities who’s committing all of these crimes,” he added.