Surge in prison population shows that urgent reform is needed | Letters

‘The current prison policy needs reversing to one which sees smaller prisons and “localism” being the main drivers for the future,’ says Howard Thomas.The most terrible fact to emerge from Phil Wheatley’s attempt to sound the alarm over the appalling state of our prisons (Unforeseen rise in prison population adds to pressure on system ‘in crisis’, 31 August) is that the rise in the prison population is due to “the courts’, particularly the cr