Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has said that some rape gang survivors have received letters telling them that their attackers will be out in a few weeks’ time under the early release scheme for prisoners.
Questioned on the Tories’ record on prison building, he told The Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: “This is all going back a very long time. We’re obviously under new leadership and have a new approach. And you’ll be hearing a lot more from us in the coming months about prison places.
“What we should certainly be doing is building a lot more prison places. I visited a prison a while ago and saw rapid deployment cells. These are prefabricated cells that you can put inside the secure perimeter very very quickly.
“The Labour government should be reaching for those kind of solutions, not letting rapists out early, and you know even even perpetrators of the grooming gangs, the rape gang scandal, are being let out early. Some of the rape gang victims or survivors have received letters in recent weeks saying that their perpetrator will be released as soon as September.
“Just four or five weeks’ time, back onto the streets where they still live, the victims still live, and they are terrified.”
He declined to back releasing women early from prison first to free up places: “first of all, women only make up about 3% roughly, of the prison population.
“You’ve got to be a little bit careful, I think, before you generalise in this way. The courts are very reluctant to jail women in the first place. The women who are in prison, the very small number who are in prison, are often there for quite good reasons.
“So I’d be a little bit careful about making a blanket assertion. Obviously, that’s an area that could be considered, but I wouldn’t do it on a blanket basis. That could be that could lead to all kinds of perverse results. I think deporting all foreign criminals is something we should definitely be doing.
“Building more prison places, we should definitely be doing what the Labour government is completely wrong to do: is let out rapists early. And we warned about this. We opposed this in Parliament, the Conservatives. The Labour government ignored us, and now they’re in this awful mess.
“This scheme, by the way, starts on the second of September and Parliament comes back that day or the day before that. The government has pretty much no time to change the law.”
Philp said that Southport killer Axel Rudakubana belongs in Belmarsh: “On the wider point, these dangerous criminals, like Axel Rudakubana and Valdo Calocane, in my view, belong in prison.
“Axel Rudakubana, in my view, belongs in Belmarsh, where he was incarcerated. He should not be moved to Broadmoor, which is a hospital, not a prison.
“It’s a much softer regime and more expensive. And as the families have said, and actually the Prison Officers Association has said, Axel Rudakubana has been manipulating the system.”
