Linsey Farnsworth MP interview

Torrin Wilkins: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series in conversation. My name is Torrin Wilkins, the Director of Centre Think Tank. Today, we will be discussing the justice system, prison rehabilitation, and overcrowding within the system. With me today to explore these issues further, I am delighted to be joined by Linsey Farnsworth.

Linsey has a wide range of experience, including over 20 years working at the Crown Prosecution Service. She was then elected as a Member of Parliament for Amber Valley in 2024. Alongside this, she is the National Mission Champion for Safer Streets and a member of the Justice Select Committee.

She has seen firsthand the issues we will be speaking about today, and she has a wide range of experience in the justice system. So thank you so much for being with me today, Linsey.

Linsey Farnsworth: Thank you for having me on. I am delighted to be here.

Torrin Wilkins: So my first question is, the government recently introduced the early release scheme, something which I would probably describe as controversial. The media has certainly seen it as such, but it is also probably necessary with the overcrowding situation we have at the moment. How do we ensure that this does not occur again?

Linsey Farnsworth: I agree with you entirely. It is something that we do not want to happen again, and it was an emergency measure. We inherited a huge crisis with fewer than 100 prison places available nationwide at one point, which is horrifying to me, having been on the front line in the Crown Court and seeing the impact that that would have on our criminal justice system. 

So you are right, we do need to ensure that that is not a measure that is necessary again. In the long term, we do need to be building more prisons and expanding and refurbishing the existing prisons that we have. Much of the prison estate is Victorian, and we need to improve it. 

The previous Conservative government added only 500 prison places during their 14 years in power. We need to make sure that we do not repeat that mistake because this is something that does need to be sorted out. I think building prisons alone is not going to be enough.

 We need to look at how we break the cycle of offending. So when I was a Crown Prosecutor, I saw time and time again the same defendants back in court, receiving a short prison sentence and coming back out to a life of crime again. We need to look at how we approach sentencing.  I was pleased that the government announced the sentencing review that David Gauke, a former Conservative Member of Parliament, is going to undertake.

It is right that dangerous criminals and serious criminals need to be put in jail. I do not think anybody disagrees with that. I think we also need to look at how we can encourage offenders not to go back into a life of crime once they are in the criminal justice system. Which needs to be considered in the sentencing process.

We also have an opportunity, with new technology, to find an expanded range of punishments. For example, tagging technology has improved massively over the years, as has our use of home detention curfews as part of that, which is still a punishment, but does not take up a prison place. So there is a lot that can be done there.

I think we also need to look at fixing the foundations of the criminal justice system. Such as tackling the court backlog because thousands of people are in prison on remand, having not yet been convicted of an offence. The backlog means that they are in prison for longer and longer, waiting for their trial to happen. In the early 2000s, I think we had about a thousand people in prison on remand, and now we have around 12,000. We should look at the court backlogs and sort that out to reduce that big blockage in the system.

I am excited that we are taking a more holistic approach to how we tackle this. So the Ministry of Justice is working with the Home Office and the Attorney General’s Office to look at how we can change things for the better.

Torrin Wilkins: Something we have focused on here in Centre Think Tank is giving people in prison the ability to pick up skills and get a good quality of education. How do we give people in prison the opportunities that they may have lacked in the last few years, simply because of issues like under-resourcing?

Linsey Farnsworth:  Skills and education are a huge part of what we need to offer people in prison. So that they can turn their lives around and change things when they get out, and they can do so. At the moment, the crisis that we have in prisons, the lack of staff, means that in February last year, 42% of prisoners were locked in their cells for 22 hours a day. They cannot be learning, they cannot be doing skills training if they are locked in their cells for that long. The reason they are locked in their cells for that long is that there is a huge staffing issue within our prison estate. We have to fix those foundations so we can drive up standards in our prisons and offer meaningful education and training opportunities.

It is about getting the staff in place and ensuring prisoners have opportunities to take part in education and training. The Justice Select Committee had an evidence session yesterday on this very point, how we rehabilitate and resettle offenders. Involving talking to voluntary organisations like the Prison Reform Trust, which came to give evidence, and others.

What they were telling us was that there had been slight confusion within prisons about the accreditation of education opportunities and what they can offer. Although more worryingly, these organisations were struggling to gain access to prisons to deliver the education and training opportunities that they are so keen to provide and that are funded by charities. Yesterday, I heard evidence that one organisation had to return funds to its charity because they were not able to get into the prison to deliver the education that they wanted.

So there are a lot of things that we need to look at to unblock some of those challenges, because that is a real opportunity that could underpin everything we do in prisons by working with the voluntary sector. It can also benefit the voluntary sector itself.

Torrin Wilkins: Building on that point, there is a lot about improving prisoners’ ability to prepare for work in prison and getting them back into work once they leave prison, which we know is important for reoffending rates.  Are there any good schemes operating in the United Kingdom, practical examples that the government can learn from?

Linsey Farnsworth: Yes, the research shows that a prisoner being released and finding work within a year of release is nine per cent less likely to reoffend.

Work is good for the whole system generally and, importantly, for these prisoners on release and the communities that they are released into. As part of the Justice Select Committee, we visited HMP Buckley Hall, and they have some really good schemes in place. So in their kitchen, they have prisoners working under supervision from a trained chef to produce the food that all the prisoners eat, but also all the visitors eat. They were not only learning those skills, but also working towards a recognised qualification. This can then be used when they are released to show that they have got those skills, they have got the knowledge, and they are ready to go and ready to work. That is a particularly successful one that struck me as a really good scheme, and I would like to see more of that.

They also have various workshops at that prison, and one that I found interesting was the tailoring workshop, which had a large number of sewing machines. Not always popular with the male prison population, but the instructor running it said some participants had been there for two years and were really enjoying it. They are becoming experts in clothing manufacture.

I would like to see some more businesses and industries, maybe linking in with prisons. So that is going to be something that I am hoping to look at going forward, how industry and businesses can support those sorts of schemes, and hopefully create some job opportunities after release.

Torrin Wilkins: It is quite interesting, as you mentioned the 9 % figure, which I always find a really interesting, just how much rehabilitation plays into it. Why do you think we have not adopted that approach? Is it a cultural issue where we are afraid of the idea of rehabilitation, or is it due to spending? What do you think has caused us to be in this situation where we are struggling so much with rehabilitation?

Linsey Farnsworth: If I am honest, the last government lost control of the situation and lacked a clear direction on it. That is why when we came into government, we had to start fighting fires with the prison places. I think there has been a culture with the last government of harder, longer sentences because maybe it makes good headlines. The real hard work is fixing the foundations of our prisons, the criminal justice system, and the probation service. It all needs to fit in together, and that is really hard work, but we are a new government. We are excited to have this opportunity to make things better for the country and get us back to where we need to be. So there is a lot of cross-governmental work on this as well, which is great to see.

I think that a new approach is necessary and is welcome, which will hopefully be welcomed by the communities that will see less crime, safer streets and everything that we have promised as a new government that we are going to deliver.

Torrin Wilkins: I find it interesting, this idea of over the long term having to make these changes. If you look at a lot of policies, it is very much a case that they do not get seen for 10 years in some cases. Is there this worry that it might even be that you do a lot of these changes over a term or two terms, and then the benefits are seen years down the line? Would that still be worth it? Do you think that would still be worth the political effort? Is it a case that there is also an element of trying to get some smaller changes that people see more quickly? 

Linsey Farnsworth: I think that is always the temptation for a party in power to do the quick headline-grabbing things. That is why we are in the mess that we are in as a country. It is time for long-term policies that are going to make a difference to the whole country and the society that we live in. That is why we are a mission-led government, because we are looking at where we are now, and where we need to be, and that will take time. We do need to start delivering; that is why we have the Plan for Change. This measures success by whether people feel safer on their streets, and if they do at the end of the five-year term, then the idea is that people will trust us for another five years, so we can build on the work we started.

I hope the country is with me, that they are tired of these sticking plaster policies. We need serious, long-term policies that will genuinely benefit the country.

Torrin Wilkins: Another issue is overcrowding in prisons. Which has become a serious issue, as we talked about before; everything from the early release policy to education in prisons has an impact on the prison environment and makes it stable for people. This is a long-term project, but how do we increase the number of prison cells and space for those in prison?

Linsey Farnsworth: Yes, we do need to build prisons; we do need more prison places, and that is the long-term strategy. Recently, we have just announced the 10-year prison capacity strategy, so building new prisons, new house blocks for existing prisons, rapid deployment cells, which can be set up quickly and will serve us well for several years, and also refurbishing the Victorian estate.

So we do need to do all of that, but I have talked about mission-led government and cross-departmental working, and I think that is important as well. That is why, as part of my role as a mission delivery champion, I am working with the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General’s Office, and other departments as well, where it is appropriate to do so.

For example, the Home Office is looking at the removal of foreign national offenders because we have 10,000 foreign national offenders in our prisons at the moment. So if we can work more effectively at returning those foreign national offenders to their countries of origin, that is going to free up some prison space as well.

I have talked about being remanded in custody for long periods and alternatives to that, and also home detention curfews. There are short-term things that we can do to build capacity in our prisons whilst we are working on the longer-term strategy of building the prisons and getting the places that we need. 

Torrin Wilkins:  For my final question, I want to talk a bit about drug policy and how that impacts prisons. A statistic I saw recently, which I think is quite revealing, that 11,739 people are in prison because of drug offences. It is the third biggest reason for people being in prison. How do we reduce that number? Is it to do with drug treatment, diversion, and what is the prison sentence side of that as well?

Linsey Farnsworth: Yes, it is a shockingly high figure when you consider the number of people in prison. But it does not shock me, having worked on the front line and the Crown Prosecution Service for over two decades, that acquisitive crimes are almost always linked to drug use or addiction.

So I think we do need to look at the root causes of offending and look at intervention. We need to ask whether drug treatment is a better option than sending someone to prison. Short prison sentences are far less effective than community penalties, especially when those penalties include a drug treatment requirement, which makes rehabilitation more likely.

We are behind on this. In the early 2000s, when I was a prosecutor, I went over to Brooklyn in New York and looked at the Red Hook Community Justice Center there. Even back then, they had specialist drug treatment courts where it was identified that somebody had a drug problem and that was what was causing their criminality. So they were put on drug treatments, and the court was closely monitoring them, so we have some catching up to do.

I am hoping that the sentencing review will drill down into the causes of crime and provide those opportunities to support people to rehabilitate themselves. I think within prisons, there is an opportunity as well. I have been to HMP Brixton and Buckley Hall Prison, and we heard horrifying stories about prisoners who entered prison with no history of drug use or addiction. However,  they left with one, after being locked in their cells for 22 hours a day. It is no surprise that, with so little to occupy their time, they end up with a drug problem.

Both Brixton and Buckley Hall prisons have special units where they are helped to get off drugs. It is a nicer part of the prison to live in, but they are regularly drug-tested and incentivised to stop using drugs. So I think we need to see more of that as well.

Where short sentences are concerned, it is really difficult to do that because they are not there long enough. So I think going back to the root causes of drug use, I think that is where community penalties can be useful.

Torrin Wilkins:  Thank you so much for that answer and for joining me today. It has been a great time discussing everything from prisons, rehabilitation, and the justice system.  Thank you so much for coming on.

Linsey Farnsworth: Thank you for having me.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.