Lynne Featherstone

I co-host a talk by American Author Michael Jacobson on downsizing prisons, who has a new book out. He has run jails in the US and argues that the costs of expanding prisons to take ever more prisoners takes money away from services such as education and health – and so causes more crime rather than cutting it.

I listen to my co-hosts (Labour and Tory) ramble on about how they believe in education, training, rehabilitation and how prison and punishment are not the way forward.

As someone said to me afterwards – how I restrained myself from having a go at them was a miracle! Having just emerged from an election with the most outrageous attacks on me/us for being soft on crime because we believe you need to do more than just lock people up – how they had the balls to pretend they believed in all of the stuff Lib Dems believe in was extraordinary. Both Tory and Labour did nothing but bang the authoritarian drum on this during the election. But conveniently left their drums at home for this event!