System needs an overhaul

THERE is an endless cycle of criminal behaviour which prison should be the right place to address.

Drugs lead to crime which pays for more drugs which leads to more crime.

Seven in ten offenders go to prison with drink or drug problems. Thirty-five per cent are addicts. And six in a hundred will become hooked while inside.

It means more addicts come OUT of prison than go IN. That is unforgivable. Prison should rehabilitate not debilitate.

They are places where experts are on hand to treat addiction successfully. And where addicts have time on their hands to be successfully treated.

But that will work only if prisons are a secure and safe environment for such treatment to take place.

Essential

Yet as our shocking revelations on these pages show, they are not. A prisoner films himself on a mobile phone which he should not have, and posts on social media he should not use.

A prisoner deals drugs which should not be there while waving a knife he should not possess.

That is such a catalogue of offences he might as well be in a jail called HMP Anarchy.

Overcrowding means too many prisoners monitored by too few staff – and a prison system failing public and prisoners alike.

That is what Michael Gove has got to get to grips with.

Reforms announced in last week’s Queen’s Speech, such as enabling some prisoners to spend only weekends behind bars, are welcome.

But they put the cart before the source of the more urgent problem. And that is prisons not fit for purpose.

Before letting inmates out, Mr Gove must redesign the prison system so drugs and weapons cannot get in.

Only then can the delicate but essential task of rehabilitation really begin.