Sadiq Khan: Labour should have focused more on reoffending

The shadow justice secretary will give a speech this evening on prison reform:

“I feel it was a mistake to not focus more on the issue of reducing offending. We became hesitant in talking about rehabilitation and the merits of bringing down reoffending rates.

“A focus on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending was seen as being soft on crime, when in fact it is effective in reducing crime.

“We did send more people to prison and for longer. While we successfully reduced crime, we did not manage to reduce the prison population.”