\n<\/p>\n
The Prison Governors\u2019 Association is right to warn about \u201cnothing-to-lose\u201d prisoners attacking notorious inmates such as Ian Huntley (Governors warn of increasing violence of \u2018nothing-to-lose\u2019 inmates attacking notorious prisoners, 13 March). But the warning barely scratches the surface.<\/p>\n
The deeper problem is that the system itself contains many people with little to lose, either inside or outside prison. Thousands arrive already trapped in cycles of addiction, trauma, homelessness and untreated mental illness, with little stake in life beyond the prison walls. Prison rarely repairs this damage; more often it compounds it. Rehabilitation has increasingly given way to containment and idleness, and regimes that in practice resemble solitary confinement.<\/p>\n
Release often changes little. Former prisoners are at best monitored, but rarely supported into stable housing, employment, education or treatment. Unsurprisingly, many return to custody even more embittered and\u00a0dysfunctional.<\/p>\n
Until ministers confront these wider social and institutional failures \u2013 and hold the leadership of the prison and probation services properly accountable \u2013 the crisis in our penal system will deepen and serious violence will become increasingly endemic. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Prison Governors\u2019 Association is right to warn about \u201cnothing-to-lose\u201d prisoners attacking notorious inmates such as Ian Huntley (Governors warn of increasing violence of \u2018nothing-to-lose\u2019 inmates attacking notorious prisoners, 13 March). But the warning barely scratches the surface. The deeper problem is that the system itself contains many people with little to lose, either inside<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1066,1235,7903,2413,2414],"class_list":{"0":"post-47063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-danger","9":"tag-lose","10":"tag-prisoners","11":"tag-prisons","12":"tag-probation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
John Podmore<\/strong>
Former governor, HMPs Belmarsh, Brixton and Swaleside; and former prisons inspector<\/em><\/p>\n