No money for prison places

The Home Office is facing a fresh financial crisis after it emerged it has failed to secure funding to run 8,000 new prison places, including two jails in Liverpool and London.

The expansion of prison capacity has been touted by John Reid as his greatest success since taking over as home secretary, but senior officials have told the Guardian that, while money will be made available to underwrite the building of the prisons, the Treasury has refused to foot the bill to run them.

With annual costs per prisoner standing at £44,000 the deficit will reach £350m a year when the prison building programme is completed.

What a surprise. They never do anything that they have promised. The question is why won’t the Treasury give them the money? The answer is because Gordon Brown is in charge of the Treasury and John Reid is in charge of the Home Office. Both are probably going to run for Labour leadership and Brown wants Reid to look bad so Brown will win.

It seems that the price of a prisoner keeps changing. About 3 week ago it was £39,000 per year and now it is £44,000. Whatever the price is it would be cheaper to pay foreign countries to take them.