United Kingdom

On the back of this evidence, the German court sought reassurances on two occasions from the UK authorities about prison conditions there.

The court said guarantees from the UK of compliance with minimum standards in accordance with the European convention on human rights were required. In addition, the court asked the British authorities to specify which prisons the Albanian man was going to be detained in and what his conditions of detention would be in those prisons.

A police station in Manchester replied to the court’s first request on the final day of the deadline for a response, saying 20,000 extra prison places were being built to deal with the problem of overcrowding. The second request for reassurance about UK prison conditions received no response from the UK.

"Just hand it over to us right now. It's overcrowded, but there will be new places soon (tm). Also, we won't tell you what prison."

So sloppy and unprofessional. I didn't think the state of UK prisons was so bad.

Brexit means brexit.

And if the UK withdraws from the ECHR, which the tories keep going on about, it'll become even harder to extradite known criminals.

Which means everyone can visit the UK, go on a crime spree safe in the knowledge the police are underfunded, then take the eurostar and enjoy your ill gotten gains without worrying about ever having to serve jail time.

Related reading:

Prison Privatisation: A Failure of the British Penal System

During the early 1990s, the British government began to rely on the private sector to provide extra prison places to deal with overcrowding and help spread the costs of interning offenders. Currently in England and Wales, there are 14 prisons run by private companies such as G4S Justice Services, Serco Custodial Services and Sodexo Justice Services.

A 2019 analysis of official UK prison data found that private prisons tend to generally be more dangerous than public prisons.

For the past 17 years, privately-run prisons have been more likely to have overcrowded conditions than public sector prisons.

The three companies that run the UK’s private prisons have faced accusations of violating prisoners’ human rights.

https://www.standrewslawreview.com/post/prison-privatisation-a-failure-of-the-british-penal-system

After a decade of austerity, urgent changes are needed to improve prison services

The UK government’s austerity measures, implemented in English prisons by the 2012 Benchmarking Programme, have led to a sharp reduction in the prison workforce and a cut in budgets. This has left English prisons unable to provide safe environments for rising prison populations.

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/policybristol/policy-briefings/prison-funding-austerity/

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A German court has refused to extradite to the UK a man accused of drug trafficking because of concerns about prison conditions in Britain, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind.

Westminster magistrates court issued an international arrest warrant, also known as an Interpol red notice, asking for him to be returned to the UK.

A police station in Manchester replied to the court’s first request on the final day of the deadline for a response, saying 20,000 extra prison places were being built to deal with the problem of overcrowding.

Failing to receive the assurances it sought about UK prison conditions, the German court determined the extradition of the Albanian as “currently inadmissible”.

The trade and cooperation agreement concluded between the EU and Britain in 2020 states that an arrest warrant can be subject to certain conditions, and “if there are reasonable grounds for believing that there is a real threat to the protection of the fundamental rights of the requested person, the executing judicial authority may, where appropriate, require additional guarantees”.

There have been similar court decisions before under the European arrest warrant framework, but in relation to member states whose records on prisons and human rights the UK would not wish to compare itself with.”

The original article contains 621 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Peak Britain 👌

There was a story recently about all the sexual abuse by guards at HMP Berwyn. I don't have a source to hand but I think there have been 6 suicides and a murder just this year at HMP Bristol. So it doesn't surprise me that much.

Meanwhile what are the Conservative's priorities? Making offenders attend sentencing. And making possession of laughing gas illegal - so we can waste more police time and send more people to prison over something that doesn't matter at all.

I mean, this is one way to ensure a known drug trafficker can continue to be free, away from the UK and not cost UK tax payers money, right? Silver linings and all that /s