The Ministry of Justice’s (MOJ) resolution to close old victorian prisons and to build larger ‘Titan’ prisons that could hold more than 2,000 prisoners is up for debate. Justice Secretary Chris Grayling argues for Titan prisons and believes it’s lower-priced to have inmates in a new modern facility than it is to have them in “old and uneconomic” prisons. He believes in ‘modernising’ the estate. It’s supposed to save £63m a year in running super prisons (BBC, 2013).
To further understand the role of super prisons, Grayling explores the idea that building them wasn’t just about imprisoning or “incarcerating” all inmates in one location. Grayling asserted super prisons will have “superb training facilities: teaching construction skills; teaching
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1,177 staff at the smaller prisons will be provided with the choice of “re-deployment and voluntary redundancy” (BBC, 2013).
However, another angle on this debate suggests that this isn’t a sensible idea. Roma Hooper argues that Grayling is contradicting himself with the decision of super prisons because it is going against rehabilitation. Inmates are sent away from families, their children and support structures and therefore super prisons don’t focus on the community. Hooper believed this was a bad idea (BBC, 2013).
An alternative way Hooper looked at this was illustrating that to save money new prisons shouldn’t be being built (BBC, 2013). The Howard League for Penal Reform said suggestions for a Titan prison were "a titanic waste of money that will do nothing to cut crime”. Frances Crook argued Grayling was prioritising “sounding tough” over “giving taxpayers value for money or protecting public safety.” (BBC, 2013). Juliet Lyon agreed, she claimed this would be “pouring taxpayers’ money down the prison building drain”. She added that this investment should be put into preventing crime and health care instead. She also said smaller local prisons are safer and better at reducing recidivism rates. Joe Simpson agreed and said the MoJ are choosing to overcrowd prisons to cut costs, over focusing on