HMP Millsike has opened as the UK’s first ‘green prison,’ creating some 1500 prison places.
The site, described by critics as a ‘megaprison,’ is equipped with solar panels and heat pump technology and is the first prison of this kind in the UK. It is one of Britain’s biggest prisons, and is part of a plan to tackle the serious overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales.
The government have said that the new prison will ‘help put more violent offenders behind bars, make streets safer and ensure the country never runs out of cells again.’
The overcrowding crisis has led to the early release of thousands of inmates, as part of a government plan to open some 14,000 prison places by 2031. HMP Millsike is one of four prisons due to be built as part of this plan.
Some critics have dismissed the building of new prisons as an ineffective means of addressing the overcrowding issue. The Prison Reform Trust, in a statement, said that, while additional capacity is ‘necessary to prevent overcrowding,’ new prisons were not a solution to the crisis.
It stated: ‘Even if the current prison building programme remains on track, without further measures to reduce demand, it is widely anticipated that the prison system will run out of space as early as the beginning of next year.’ It suggested turning away from what it described as ‘sentence inflation’ was necessary to control the prison population in the long term.
Earlier this year, interim findings of the Independent Sentencing Review 2024 to 2025 led by former justice secretary David Gauke suggested the overcrowding crisis was caused by a government that handed out harsh sentencing too liberally in a desire to appear ‘tough on crime.’
Penal Reform International, a non-governmental organisation specialising in criminal justice reform worldwide, rejects building of prisons as an effective long-term solution to the overcrowding issue. It has instead developed a 10-point plan to combat overcrowding in prisons. The plan suggests, amongst other things, diverting minor cases out of the criminal justice system and investing in prevention of crime long-term.
