3 hours activity a day in prisons

Edward Garnier MP tabled a Parliamentary Question about purposeful activity inside prisons recently. Some of the prisons providing the least activity are holding youngsters. Deerbolt offers less than 3 hours a day to its teenage boys. Lancaster Farms, where 15 year old Liam McManus hanged himself a few days ago, manages just over 3 hours 40 minutes a day. Feltham is highest with just over 4 hours. This means these kids are lying on their beds for 20 hours a day, or at best mooching about.

It is no surprise that the open prisons provide for the most, but of course they dont really, as their prisoners go out to work for employers in the community. So no prison really provides a decent number of hours of purposeful activity.

Of course, the other issue is how accurate are these claims. The Chief Inspector of Prisons has pointed out several times that prisons have over-inflated their claims to provide activities.

I make no comment. It speaks for itself.