Failed prison

MPs want to axe one-year sentences, but this will exacerbate the malaise in society and serve to increase knife crime and serious offending.

The key problem with the penal system has been the privatisation of prisons. The government had to take over Birmingham Prison from g4S after it fell into what was described as ‘a state of crisis’ due to drugs and violent assaults against staff and inmates.

There were 120 staff assaults reported every month in that establishment, where I worked for almost 30 years. In my day, when it was called Winson green, it was a model establishment and there were barely 120 assaults on staff in decades, let alone every month.

Detention centres dealt firmly with juveniles aged 14 to 21 on maximum sentences of 14 to 28 days. In all my years, I never saw a boy or girl return to one of these centres, so effective was the training and discipline. But they were disbanded because they were deemed ‘too tough’.

Privatisation of the penal system has much to answer for, with young, inexperienced staff recruited on an ad hoc, temporary basis instead of career prison officers.

MICHAEL KELLY, Birmingham.