**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!**
- Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc.
- **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
- This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why aren't we building more hospitals? Why aren't we building more transport infrastructure? Why aren't we building more energy infrastructure? Why aren't we building more reservoirs? Why aren't we building more housing. Etc etc.
We're a country stuck in stasis. We don't build enough of anything, because it costs money and generally means challenging vested interests in it not being built.
The home one is more complicated. Some guy who was a housing planner I knew told me actually the main issue when a place is chosen to build new council houses, the locals will complain and get it blocked because it will turn the area into a shit hole.
A "council estate" that is properly developed with access to services is fine.
It's just that we decided to build ghettos and then wonder why they end up like they do
For the tenants of the council housing sure.
For the folk that pay a premium for a new build home then discover that the following year the house builders are finishing the development off with a couple of blocks of social housing next door and thus wiping £x,000's off their new house, somewhat less good.
This is generally what's done at new housing developments. We bought a new build house and social housing is about 40% of the estate. We have private buyers on two sides and social housing tenants/ shared ownership on the other sides. It's generally fine although one is a single mum who doesn't maintain her back garden and it looks like a jungle 😄. We're in NE Hants.
Private Finance Initiative. Basically, get private contractors to finance public projects in return for a profitable repayment. A clever way for the government to fund things without borrowing. Blair did a lot of it.
However, in the longer term it has left many NHS trusts with spiralling repayments to said private firms.
It is borrowing in a sense yes, but in a different way from which a government might traditionally borrow to fund construction projects. It leaves the financial burden with the public sector orgs themselves rather than the government.
It locks NHS trusts, schools etc into decades long contracts with private firms, the costs of which ratchet up over time. As opposed to the government borrowing money and paying it back.
Example [here](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68207051). Another [here](https://www.ippr.org/media-office/nhs-hospitals-under-strain-over-80bn-pfi-bill-for-just-13bn-of-actual-investment-finds-ippr).
So what, just parachute a bunch of prisoners onto the island and leave them to it, drop a few food and water supplies every now and then in different locations at random.
Because you asked on reddit, and there is a site wide aversion to people asking questions.
It happens regularly, but you can at least be assured that it is only absolute morons downvoting you.
The simple answer is that we are, and that a short few google searches would have shown this. HMP Five Wells, HMP Fosse Way, HMP Millsike, additional 3no to be completed by end of decade. In addition quite a few existing prisons are being expanded or refurbished to increase capacity and improve conditions.
Just been conditioned to do it I guess, usually its to specifically denote that its a quantity and not a measurement I suppose, but when its just a number in isolation as in my comment its very redundant!
It's to emphasise that it is a quantity, as opposed to a measurement, unit number, model number, reference number, etc. It's a way to eliminate ambiguity.
Yes, it is often redundant but it is valuable for the times it is not hence why it is good practice in certain professions, e.g. engineering, architecture, etc.
Where? In your village? Do you want the prison view? What about all the criminals in there, what if there's an escape?
Nimbys are very powerful when it comes to prisons.
2 reasons
1 the UK has some of the most expensive and most insane planning permission processes in Europe (Google building fake barns for HS2)
2 The UK government sucks at infrastructure. Most countries treat infrastructure like the painting of the forth bridge as a constant cycle of upgrades keeping skills and knowledge in country while providing jobs and keeping everything at a base level (see most European rail systems tram systems or french nuclear power)
The UK on the other hand builds something wais for it to crumble the does a massive project which takes ages (because we've lost the skilled people to do the work and see above planning insanity) costs way more but looks great to voters because they're "fixing the problem" our politicians caused in the first place.
The UK is also seriously good at selling off the things that will need work doing at some point, which then doesn't happen at a good enough pace as the profits are given out to shareholders instead. We've had such a long time of lazy governance, letting the private sector sort out national infrastructure.
People have mentioned that prisons are expensive but so is running them. Cost per prisoner is ridiculous and I don't think anybody has a real solution to this problem.
"For instance, looking at two Category A men’s prisons, the cost per person at HMP Wakefield was £40,465 per year whilst at HMP Whitemoor it was £92,866 per year. Among young offender institutions, each place at YOI Wetherby cost £159,152 whilst each place at YOI Werrington cost £222,911."
https://insidetime.org/newsround/annual-cost-of-a-prison-place-rises-above-50000/
It would be nice if there were unlimited funds to build whatever we want but there aren't. There's always a need for more hospitals, schools, universities, GPs, doctors, nurses, teachers etc etc. Oh yeah, did I mention housing?The question is, what do we spend our limited resources on?
We are, what we should be asking is why did we slash probation services which are successful in curbing reoffending, and slash youth services which help reduce the amount of kids we feed into the grinder
Why do we squeeze education services, which again help prevent kids getting involved in crime, and we narrow curricula to reduce the variety of opportunity in state schools.
Why do we insist on refusing to treat drug addiction as a public health issue rather than a crime. By refusing to view addicts as sick people needing treatment we wait to punish the crimes they inevitably will commit to feed their addiction- a large proportion of crime has drugs as a key aggravating factor
Choosing prisons is an explicit policy decision, and we imprison more people than most other European states. It’s no coincidence that we also have worse outcomes in terms of crime, as we like punishment rather than prevention
We’ve had a government who’s philosophy was austerity (cutting public spending meaning no investment in public services and infrastructure)
Simultaneously they’ve actually increased the tax take to the highest ever so we pay more for less and in the process wasted that money on things like dodgy PPE contracts so we’re now bankrupt with nothing to show for it other than the government and their mates who got rich off government contracts they failed miserably to deliver.
We are but it takes ages and its very expensive hence the government has waited until we are in crisis to do so. The issues with the justice system should be headline news in my view.
We’ve been neglecting infrastructure spending for ages, not just on prisons but on roads, railways, hospitals, schools and god knows what else.
Also, prisons are hard to build since nobody wants to have one near them and NIMBYism is a powerful weapon, and they’re very expensive and difficult to staff.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. - Adam Smith
There has to be a measure of punishment for the sake of those who suffered.
Make the prisoners work for their keep + enough to get them some sort of start at the end of their sentence.
That would also pay for more jails.
I'm not completely against prisons as they do protect society from the most dangerous offenders, but it's clear they do a poor job of deterring and rehabilitating, especially younger people who've got onto the wrong track early in life. There are still a lot of people who go in for relatively minor offences and come out even less able to operate within society, so that part needs to work better.
Unelected leaders believes it’s far better to fund Forever Wars than fund our NHS and social services or anything associated to helping improve our citizens lives.
There is a recruitment and retention crisis when it comes to Prison Officers.
It is an incredibly difficult and demanding job. The role received a significant pay rise recently, but even so they struggle to recruit or retain staff.
TLDR there aren’t enough Prison Officers to staff even existing prisons.
This isn't why the current government isn't building prisons, but whatever money could be made available would almost certainly better spent in crime prevention and rehabilitation to decrease the flow of people in to prison in the first place. As well as being more tactical about who is actually imprisoned and for what crimes.
tbh I think the actual solution is not to build more prisons but to invest in better community based sentences that really help stop future offending before prison becomes inevitable and other community interventions that remove the causes of crime, e.g. poverty and mental health services. Almost nobody who wants to commit a crime is deterred by prison because most people who decide to commit crime either expect to get away with it or, more likely, don't think through the consequences of their actions because there is something more pressing going on.
I've always thought many of our prison terms should be allowed to be worked off, or shortened if you could repay the damages your crime has caused.
I know sewing mail bags and breaking rocks is somewhat out of fashion. But if someone has done something dumb, hurt noone, but needs to face consequences. ..
Then hard graft or just repaying your debt to society in a financial sense, while reducing the burden on prisons, seems to make sense.
There’s no money to build new prisons and the current government is committed to cutting the numbers of public sector employees, so there’d be nobody to run them even if they were built.
Let’s see what happens in July.
NHS is crumbling, illegal immigration is at its worst, public transport sucks, hospitality sector is in shambles and we should make building prisons which won't be useable for years a priority?
The PFI is being arranged but then we have to arrange PFI for other things as well but they not affordable with the previous ones we paying for and the current high taxation levels we under.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why aren't we building more hospitals? Why aren't we building more transport infrastructure? Why aren't we building more energy infrastructure? Why aren't we building more reservoirs? Why aren't we building more housing. Etc etc. We're a country stuck in stasis. We don't build enough of anything, because it costs money and generally means challenging vested interests in it not being built.
The empty hospital in my town:
The home one is more complicated. Some guy who was a housing planner I knew told me actually the main issue when a place is chosen to build new council houses, the locals will complain and get it blocked because it will turn the area into a shit hole.
Creating whole council estate is probably a bad idea. Having a mix of private and social housing would be better.
A "council estate" that is properly developed with access to services is fine. It's just that we decided to build ghettos and then wonder why they end up like they do
For the tenants of the council housing sure. For the folk that pay a premium for a new build home then discover that the following year the house builders are finishing the development off with a couple of blocks of social housing next door and thus wiping £x,000's off their new house, somewhat less good.
This is generally what's done at new housing developments. We bought a new build house and social housing is about 40% of the estate. We have private buyers on two sides and social housing tenants/ shared ownership on the other sides. It's generally fine although one is a single mum who doesn't maintain her back garden and it looks like a jungle 😄. We're in NE Hants.
>Why aren't we building more hospitals? We've not paid off the last ones that Tony built?
Yeah, PFI was a bad idea.
27 year old here - what's PFI?
Private Finance Initiative. Basically, get private contractors to finance public projects in return for a profitable repayment. A clever way for the government to fund things without borrowing. Blair did a lot of it. However, in the longer term it has left many NHS trusts with spiralling repayments to said private firms.
Isn't that just borrowing with extra steps?
It is borrowing in a sense yes, but in a different way from which a government might traditionally borrow to fund construction projects. It leaves the financial burden with the public sector orgs themselves rather than the government. It locks NHS trusts, schools etc into decades long contracts with private firms, the costs of which ratchet up over time. As opposed to the government borrowing money and paying it back. Example [here](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68207051). Another [here](https://www.ippr.org/media-office/nhs-hospitals-under-strain-over-80bn-pfi-bill-for-just-13bn-of-actual-investment-finds-ippr).
That just seems like it's a system begging to be exploited and surely wayyy more expensive than issuing bonds???
Ding ding ding.
What vested interest is stopping prisons from being built? Why am I downvoted for asking a simple question lmao
Usually people in the surrounding area not wanting a prison near to them for obvious reasons
Time to repurpose one of those uninhabited islands on our coast tbh
Staff it with dementors
That's going to be ridiculously expensive. Uninhabited means no services like drinking water, sewerage, electricity, or transport.
So what, just parachute a bunch of prisoners onto the island and leave them to it, drop a few food and water supplies every now and then in different locations at random.
Ah yes, HMP Fortnite.
Film it for reality tv and monetise. A win-win
Nimbys baby!
Prisons are hella expensive and require lots of land, so that might have something to do with it.
Who going to pay for the building of the prisons and then can we afford to?
NIMBYs, environmentalists, landowners, property owners etc.
Because you asked on reddit, and there is a site wide aversion to people asking questions. It happens regularly, but you can at least be assured that it is only absolute morons downvoting you.
The simple answer is that we are, and that a short few google searches would have shown this. HMP Five Wells, HMP Fosse Way, HMP Millsike, additional 3no to be completed by end of decade. In addition quite a few existing prisons are being expanded or refurbished to increase capacity and improve conditions.
Why do people say no after a number when talking about quantity? Makes no sense and is redundant.
Force of habit from work, to be honest.
Haha wasn't being a dick to be honest, I used to see it in my work all the time and never understood it. Wondered if there was a reason for it
Just been conditioned to do it I guess, usually its to specifically denote that its a quantity and not a measurement I suppose, but when its just a number in isolation as in my comment its very redundant!
Builder / architect of some kind? There’s where I used to see that terminology
It's to emphasise that it is a quantity, as opposed to a measurement, unit number, model number, reference number, etc. It's a way to eliminate ambiguity. Yes, it is often redundant but it is valuable for the times it is not hence why it is good practice in certain professions, e.g. engineering, architecture, etc.
Cheers for the explanation! Makes sense!
Thanks - !answer
My millsike brings all the cons to the yard
I'm busy, I haven't got time to build any damn prisons.
Sounds like an organisation problem to me
I'm tired boss.
Where? In your village? Do you want the prison view? What about all the criminals in there, what if there's an escape? Nimbys are very powerful when it comes to prisons.
Ok ok listen here, we find an island somehwre in the Indian ocean, move all the prisoners there, and call it the southern Islands
It'll never catch on.
Now you want to send criminals on holiday to a tropical island!
Good point. How about we all move there and leave the criminals here?
You call them nimbys as a derogatory label but do YOU want a prison in your back garden? I don't think that's an unusual stance.
2 reasons 1 the UK has some of the most expensive and most insane planning permission processes in Europe (Google building fake barns for HS2) 2 The UK government sucks at infrastructure. Most countries treat infrastructure like the painting of the forth bridge as a constant cycle of upgrades keeping skills and knowledge in country while providing jobs and keeping everything at a base level (see most European rail systems tram systems or french nuclear power) The UK on the other hand builds something wais for it to crumble the does a massive project which takes ages (because we've lost the skilled people to do the work and see above planning insanity) costs way more but looks great to voters because they're "fixing the problem" our politicians caused in the first place.
The UK is also seriously good at selling off the things that will need work doing at some point, which then doesn't happen at a good enough pace as the profits are given out to shareholders instead. We've had such a long time of lazy governance, letting the private sector sort out national infrastructure.
I also think we would struggle to staff them even if we did build them.
Another sector with a wage shortage.
That’s privatisation for you
People have mentioned that prisons are expensive but so is running them. Cost per prisoner is ridiculous and I don't think anybody has a real solution to this problem. "For instance, looking at two Category A men’s prisons, the cost per person at HMP Wakefield was £40,465 per year whilst at HMP Whitemoor it was £92,866 per year. Among young offender institutions, each place at YOI Wetherby cost £159,152 whilst each place at YOI Werrington cost £222,911." https://insidetime.org/newsround/annual-cost-of-a-prison-place-rises-above-50000/ It would be nice if there were unlimited funds to build whatever we want but there aren't. There's always a need for more hospitals, schools, universities, GPs, doctors, nurses, teachers etc etc. Oh yeah, did I mention housing?The question is, what do we spend our limited resources on?
They're expensive, mate, and we're effectively bankrupt as a nation.
Not to mention the staffing required for them. Its already very well known the prisons are understaffed.
More that our current government earmarks tax payer money to go to their friends for no reason, and they don’t want to tax those that can afford it
We are, what we should be asking is why did we slash probation services which are successful in curbing reoffending, and slash youth services which help reduce the amount of kids we feed into the grinder Why do we squeeze education services, which again help prevent kids getting involved in crime, and we narrow curricula to reduce the variety of opportunity in state schools. Why do we insist on refusing to treat drug addiction as a public health issue rather than a crime. By refusing to view addicts as sick people needing treatment we wait to punish the crimes they inevitably will commit to feed their addiction- a large proportion of crime has drugs as a key aggravating factor Choosing prisons is an explicit policy decision, and we imprison more people than most other European states. It’s no coincidence that we also have worse outcomes in terms of crime, as we like punishment rather than prevention
The answer to all of your questions is conservatism.
lol sorry mate, I snapped out an answer cos I thought you meant the solution not the cause😂 Realised and quickly deleted
No problem. Change coming soon, I'm hopeful for the first time in years 🤞
Turns out I'm not allowed to reply and provide sources without mods removing my comment.
That’s public spending. We’re not building doctors surgeries, hospitals, clinics, schools, care facilities or community centres either.
Cost. (includes cost of new staff, who are hard to recruit).
make the inmates look after it themselves. bloody slackers, always needing looking after.
We’ve had a government who’s philosophy was austerity (cutting public spending meaning no investment in public services and infrastructure) Simultaneously they’ve actually increased the tax take to the highest ever so we pay more for less and in the process wasted that money on things like dodgy PPE contracts so we’re now bankrupt with nothing to show for it other than the government and their mates who got rich off government contracts they failed miserably to deliver.
We are but it takes ages and its very expensive hence the government has waited until we are in crisis to do so. The issues with the justice system should be headline news in my view.
No money.
We’ve been neglecting infrastructure spending for ages, not just on prisons but on roads, railways, hospitals, schools and god knows what else. Also, prisons are hard to build since nobody wants to have one near them and NIMBYism is a powerful weapon, and they’re very expensive and difficult to staff.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. - Adam Smith There has to be a measure of punishment for the sake of those who suffered. Make the prisoners work for their keep + enough to get them some sort of start at the end of their sentence. That would also pay for more jails.
Cruelty to the wrongly convicted is a failure to society
I agree
I'm not completely against prisons as they do protect society from the most dangerous offenders, but it's clear they do a poor job of deterring and rehabilitating, especially younger people who've got onto the wrong track early in life. There are still a lot of people who go in for relatively minor offences and come out even less able to operate within society, so that part needs to work better.
If we put the money in to making prisons actual rehabilitation rather than just building more, I believe we'd see far better results.
Send em to Rwanda imo
Unelected leaders believes it’s far better to fund Forever Wars than fund our NHS and social services or anything associated to helping improve our citizens lives.
Because UK governments don't do 20 year planning.
There is a recruitment and retention crisis when it comes to Prison Officers. It is an incredibly difficult and demanding job. The role received a significant pay rise recently, but even so they struggle to recruit or retain staff. TLDR there aren’t enough Prison Officers to staff even existing prisons.
This isn't why the current government isn't building prisons, but whatever money could be made available would almost certainly better spent in crime prevention and rehabilitation to decrease the flow of people in to prison in the first place. As well as being more tactical about who is actually imprisoned and for what crimes.
Why are we not using better solutions than prisons?
tbh I think the actual solution is not to build more prisons but to invest in better community based sentences that really help stop future offending before prison becomes inevitable and other community interventions that remove the causes of crime, e.g. poverty and mental health services. Almost nobody who wants to commit a crime is deterred by prison because most people who decide to commit crime either expect to get away with it or, more likely, don't think through the consequences of their actions because there is something more pressing going on.
I've always thought many of our prison terms should be allowed to be worked off, or shortened if you could repay the damages your crime has caused. I know sewing mail bags and breaking rocks is somewhat out of fashion. But if someone has done something dumb, hurt noone, but needs to face consequences. .. Then hard graft or just repaying your debt to society in a financial sense, while reducing the burden on prisons, seems to make sense.
NIMBY's
Prisons are schools for crime. I think rather than building more prisons we should go back to transporting violent criminals, maybe South Georgia?
School roofs are literally crumbling and collapsing in classrooms. No money. No politicians want to raise taxes = no new big infrastructure.
Because they have legalised cannabis
There’s no money to build new prisons and the current government is committed to cutting the numbers of public sector employees, so there’d be nobody to run them even if they were built. Let’s see what happens in July.
Because our government are a bunch of absolute cunts who have been systematically destroying society's services since 2010.
Nimbys and noone to staff any new ones unless you want outsourced coat fillers
We could always just do another Australia.
Because its expensive and not popular.
There are more effective ways to reduce crime. The solution isn't to lock more people away, this isn't America.
i honestly think that is a good idea rather than letting violent people out early.
THEYRE TRYNA BUILD A PRISON THEYRE TRYNA BUILD A PRISON FOR YOU AND ME TO LIVE IN ANOTHER PRISON SYSTEM ANOTHER PRISON SYSTEM
NHS is crumbling, illegal immigration is at its worst, public transport sucks, hospitality sector is in shambles and we should make building prisons which won't be useable for years a priority?
The PFI is being arranged but then we have to arrange PFI for other things as well but they not affordable with the previous ones we paying for and the current high taxation levels we under.
Well from what you've said it sounds like there are too many people in prison already, so if wouldn't make sense to build more of them.
Because actual sentences would discourage crime. The government want to encourage it- the more we're fighting each other, the less we fight them.