Government attacked over escaped prisoners
The Conservatives have attacked the Government for refusing to say how many escaped prisoners have been returned to their cells.
Shadow Home Affairs Minister Cheryl Gillan asked the Home Office how many escaped prisoners were still at large, but was told that it was too expensive to calculate.
She said the average number of absconders had increased by more than one thousand a year under Labour and that its answer was “unacceptable” and “complacent”.
“It is unacceptable that thousands of prisoners escape every year. It is even worse that the Government will not say how many of these prisoners are recaptured,” she said.
“It is bad enough that Labour’s answer to prison overcrowding is to let prisoners out early. But this complacent approach to absconders is totally unacceptable. Tony Blair’s Government is failing in its obligation to protect the public.”
Ms Gillan raised the issue with the Government via a Parliamentary question. The answer she received from Prisons’ Minister Paul Goggins said the figures for those prisoners who remained unlawfully at large “cannot be obtained other than at disproportionate cost”.
The number of prisoners absconding from open and semi-open prisons fell from 840 in 1999 to 745 in 2001, but has since risen to 1,238 in 2003 and 806 for the first ten months of 2004.
The Home Office said a record of escaped prisoners was held centrally but the information would take a substantial amount of time to collate.
