Politicians are to blame for prison crisis

Placing Michael Spurr on notice of dismissal (‘Exemplary’ prisons chief told to quit amid jail crisis, 21 September) smacks of spite unprecedented since Michael Howard’s sacking of a progressive, humanitarian governor Richard Marriot and harrying of the then HMP director general Derek Rayner in the 90s but with this difference.Spurr’s laudable leadership is thwarted by a decade of top-slicing of Ministry of Justice budgets, with staff reductions and contraction of prisone