All new prisons could have “airport-style” safety and each inmate can be assessed for dependancy beneath plans to maintain medicine out of jails.
Drug canines and hand-held scanner wands can be deployed at jail gates in addition to X-ray physique scanners and biometric identification for guests beneath the federal government’s proposal to cease harmful substances getting into prisons, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) mentioned.
The federal government has outlined its plans in a Prisons Technique White Paper, which can be revealed in full within the Home of Commons later.
“New measures will clamp down on the move of harmful substances behind bars that wreak havoc on jail landings and scupper the work of frontline workers in reforming offenders,” the MoJ mentioned.
Below the plan, ministers can even think about using scanners to go looking workers “who could also be inclined to corruption” to cease frontline jail officers from being blackmailed into bringing unlawful objects into prisons.
Additionally they need each prisoner to be assessed for drug and alcohol dependancy after they arrive and impose new “stringent” targets to carry jail governors to account for maintaining medicine out of their jails and maintaining prisoners off them for good.
Prisons must meet drug testing targets and for the primary time be accountable for drug rehabilitation, the MoJ mentioned.
The outcomes, which might be printed in nationwide league tables, would cowl a jail’s success in getting criminals off medicine and alcohol and into employment or schooling on launch.
The white paper additionally says a spread of therapies, together with abstinence remedy, would assist to scale back “over-reliance on opiate substitutes like methadone”.
HMP 5 Wells, resulting from open in early 2022, would be the first new jail to get the airport-style safety
X-ray physique scanners have already been put in at each closed male jail to permit workers to determine whether or not prisoners are smuggling contraband inside their our bodies.
Since summer time 2020, the scanners have prevented greater than 10,000 makes an attempt to get medicine, telephones and weapons into prisons the place they get into the fingers of gangs, the MoJ mentioned.
The “airport-style” measures can be put in in all new prisons, together with HMP 5 Wells in Wellingborough, opening in early 2022, the brand new jail in Glen Parva in Leicestershire, the brand new jail subsequent to HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire, and three others but to be confirmed.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson mentioned: “This authorities is delivering harder sentences and 20,000 extra jail locations to maintain essentially the most harmful criminals off our streets for longer, however prisons additionally must play their half in reducing crime and stopping future victims.”
Sniffer canines can be used at jail gates to cease new prisoners and guests smuggling in contraband
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab added that further jail locations are being constructed so severe offenders can be incarcerated for longer and the brand new plan will “enhance the safety of our jails”.
However Labour’s shadow justice secretary, Steve Reed, claimed Mr Johnson’s authorities couldn’t be trusted to “clear up the mess” within the jail system.
He accused the Conservatives of getting “mismanaged” prisons so they’re “awash with medicine, violence and dysfunction”.