Some of London’s most historic jails — including Holloway, Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubs — should be closed and turned into hotels or apartments, according to a leading think tank.
Policy Exchange has proposed that 30 run-down jails in Britain should be replaced with 12 super-prisons, saving £10 billion over 25 years.
The report suggests that in London, Brixton, Feltham, Holloway, Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubs would be replaced with three 2,500-place jails on brownfield sites within the M25. The proposal would enable the old prisons to be sold to property developers, while some could be turned into boutique hotels.
Kevin Lockyer, former governor of Bristol prison and the report’s author, said: “We need to build larger, newer facilities that use the most up-to-date technology to monitor inmates.”
But Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said it would be a “gigantic mistake”, adding that it would be pouring taxpayers’ money down a “super-sized, Big Brother prison building drain”.
