Member

Ministers pray in aid the Texas earned release progression model; the Minister has spoken about this before. As my right honourable friend Robert Jenrick said in the other place, Texas’s incarceration rate is three times that of the UK. It is the largest state prison system in the United States, with 130,000 people in prison, 70,000 in local county jails. It has an incarceration rate of 751 for every 100,000 people: this is significantly above the United Kingdom’s, according to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. Numbers are increasing in Texas: recidivism rates in the state are still very high. It could be argued that to get better recidivism and rehabilitation results, we should perhaps look elsewhere: to Norway and other Scandinavian countries, and other states in America, such as Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The Minister will know about these examples. In any event, Texas will be over its capacity by 7,000 places within the next year, according to the recent report by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.