Shadowing Practice: Rory Stewart MP | Good Morning Britain Interview - Learn English Speaking with Video

Welcome back to Good Morning Britain.

The government's announced £10 million to drive out phones and drugs

and improve security in 10 of the most challenging prisons across the country.

So there are 121 prisons in England and Wales with the prison population of just under 83,000.

Of those, the most overcrowded, like Leeds and Wandsworth, are running at 153% capacity,

with Durham and Preston running at 152% capacity.

Yeah, attacks in prisons hit a record of over 31,000 in the year to March 2018, up 16% from the year before.

And within that figure, there were a record over 9,000 attacks on prison staff, up 26% on the year before.

Well, Prisons Minister Rory Stewart says the money will help deal with the pressing threats to prison safety.

He joins us from Perth in Scotland.

Good morning to you.

So £10 million for governors at each prison will be provided with new scanners capable of detecting packages inside bodies,

and the sniffer dogs will search out for drugs.

But what most people are concerned about is that re-offending rates are 30%, so one in three prisoners who come out of prison re-offend.

What's this £10 million going to do for that?

Well, as you say, the reoffending rate is far too high, and this ultimately is about protecting the public.

So, in order to turn around a prisoner's life and make sure that they come back, hopefully with a house, hopefully with a job,

and certainly not reoffending, we need to have safe prisons

and to have a safe prison in order to get someone into education you need to tackle the drugs

and you need to tackle the violence in order to provide those programs.

So everything we're doing on drugs and violence directly relates to protecting the public.

It's interesting when you say sort of

because there's already been I think 30 million announced earlier on in the year by the Justice Secretary

and of course another 10 million today.

We're in the summer holidays, there are lots of children, lots of fears that there are children who don't have more than one warm meal a day.

Lots of parents are going to have to be fundraising in September just for the basics in classrooms.

I do wonder whether there are lots of parents who just think, hang on a minute, you've got 10 million pounds for prisons, but there are probably 200 schools,

primary schools, who could do with 50 grand themselves.

How can you justify where the government decides to spend a sum like 10 million on prisons and not in schools.

Well, you're right.

Government has to make difficult choices, but this is a really important thing ultimately for protecting the public.

If criminals go into prison and come out the other end, either re-offending or even worse, having made new criminal associates,

that's imposing untold misery on the British population.

Cost of crime in Britain totals billions of pounds a year.

So we need to make sure that we really tackle crime.

That means bringing the criminals into prison

and it means working with them in prison to make sure they come out the other end

and they don't commit crime again.

So every pound spent turning around a prisoner's life ultimately is a pound protecting the public.

But, you know, the Howard League for Penal Reform's reaction to your announcement today is

that barbed wire and a bucket of paint isn't really the answer.

Where is the money for the real sort of emotional support

for people who may have mental health problems as we hear quite often that is part of the problem in prison?

You have to start with the fundamentals you have to start with the basics.

Too many of our prisons as you've heard today are a are awash with drugs and are challenged by violence.

Unless we can create calm, orderly, disciplined spaces, you can't do all those things that the Howard League is talking about.

You can't get the prisoners into education.

You can't get them into work.

But when a prisoner is running, it's 152%.

So I'm afraid that the barbed wire and the buckets of paint, yeah.

But when you've got overcrowding, like the, when we've got overcrowding in the way you're talking, we've heard the statistics this morning.

And surely what Sean was saying about the reoffending, I mean, dealing with the fact that there are more people going in,

surely is the way to help the situation from the root cause.

Well, there are many things that you need to do in prison.

And you're right, managing population is an important part.

And as the Howard League was saying, and as you just quoted them, also what you do on education is important.

But fundamentally, what we're going to be demonstrating through these ten prisons is that we can turn these prisons around.

Too many of these places that we've seen in recent inspection reports are not reaching the standards we want.

And what we're seeing in somewhere like Leeds is the way that, by putting some money, relatively modest amount of money, behind a dynamic governor, we can turn around the drugs,

we can turn around the violence and we can turn around these prisoners' lives.

So yes, you're right, it's very complicated running a prison.

But this investment, and above all the investment in the prison officers, those people who are out there day in, day out, outside the cell doors,

giving them the training, giving them the support, is going to be the key to anything that we can achieve.

Mr. Stewart, you say there are too many drugs and phones in prisons.

We've known that for years you all you need to do is pick up a paper every

so often and you will read

that where have you been that's what people will be saying why hasn't this been done earlier

so the answer partly to this is that technology changes all the time

so there'd be new threats for example drones

which have been bringing them in we've had absolutely i'm talking about the ways in

which these things the ways in which these things get into the prisons

so there have been new threats the ways they get in, they've been carried in by drones, and we've had to tackle that electronically.

We've now putting up netting in order to deal with thrown overs, but this is also new technology to find things inside people's bodies.

Too many prisoners we've found have been bringing things in by swallowing them, and that actually includes putting mobile telephones, miniature mobile telephones, inside their bodies.

So these are the highest grade new airport-style scanners in order to pick up this.

But you're right, it's a continual fight with criminals

but we must make these places safe

and stable in order to turn around lives and as I said in order to protect the public.

Okay Rory Stewart thank you for joining us from Scotland this

morning let's talk more about this then with Carl Catamull who is a former prisoner and author.

Carl what do you make of what you've just heard there from Rory Stewart?

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Shadowing Practice: Rory Stewart MP | Good Morning Britain Interview - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?