Reaping what we’ve sown

I SPENT my whole career at Winson Green prison, now called Birmingham prison, as a senior manager. Handing prisons over to the private sector has been a disaster.

In the Seventies and Eighties, a small s cadre of officers ran an exemplary e prison, so much so that delegations from other countries visited to see just how an institution should be run. Now inexperienced, young officers are left without support in an out-of-control jail.

Prisons need to have discipline and organisation. Category B, C and D inmates are mostly not recidivists and just want to serve their sentences and get back safely into society.

But prisons are now a dangerous environmente for staff and those they are supposed to protect and keep safe. What has happened to the detention centres for young prisoners? A short, sharp shock of 14 or 28 days meant very few wanted to repeat the experience.

Thanks to politically correct, liberal nonsense, we are reaping what we have sown.

MICHAEL KELLY, Birmingham.