7. 7. Plaid Cymru Debate: Superprisons

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:53 pm on 20 September 2017.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 5:53, 20 September 2017

No, I won’t. You ought to intervene on your party, actually, Leanne. You’ve worked in the probation service, and you’re allowing members of your party to talk about importing prisoners as if they’re some kind of toxic English commodity. I think it’s disgraceful. You have been absolutely right to criticise how careless tongues have dehumanised refugees and asylum seekers, yet I see no intervention from you on the casual way that you’ve allowed prisoners to be dehumanised in this debate on the new prison.

Our Victorian prisons also dehumanise people. In Swansea prison, the staff have tried very, very hard to mitigate pretty grim conditions, but the space just does not lend itself to rehabilitation. The facilities for prisoners’ families are better than they were, not least because of the work of FFOPS, which I mentioned earlier, but I suspect that most of us here would recognise that it’s far from ideal. This new facility—and there are three others to be built in England—is not a wicked alternative to prison reform—