Just read Ben Gummer's maiden speech on penal reform. This really is an important area for the coalition - central to their vision of a 'broken society'. Prisons remain the main repository of family breakdown, educational underachievement and substance abuse in Britain.
With the exception of a small number of high security jails for serious long-term offenders, our prisons should be turned into adult education centres providing both basic reading, writing & arithmatic as well as vocationally-based qualifications allowing all inmates the chance of a future on release.
They must also be drug-free zones in which all detainees know before entry that drugs will not be tolerated and all warders change into prison uniforms on entry.
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