Dartmoor prison facing closure as ministers announce shakeup of jails
Prisons are important public sector employers. Dartmoor is an iconic institution. Helping to demonstrate the dependency of rural economies on the public sector this article highlights that the first tranche of prisons identified for closure are mainly in rural areas.
The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, has sounded the death knell for Dartmoor prison, one of Britain’s oldest and most famous jails, and ordered the immediate closure of four others, including the historic Reading jail, where Oscar Wilde was incarcerated.
In a major shakeup of prisons in England and Wales, Grayling has also ordered a feasibility study into building a second “superjail” in west London and confirmed that the first new £230m 2,000-place facility will be built in Wrexham, north Wales.
Justice ministry officials said discussions would begin to end the lease on the 200-year-old Dartmoor prison, which opened in 1809 to hold Napoleonic prisoners of war. It was recently described by a chief inspector of prisons as the “prison that time forgot”.
A final closure decision is some way off as the Duchy of Cornwall lease has a 10-year notice period. But Grayling signalled Dartmoor’s demise, saying its age and limitations meant “it does not have a long-term future in a modern, cost-effective prison system”.
The four prisons listed for immediate closure include Blundeston, a male category-C prison in Suffolk; Dorchester, a category-B jail that holds young adults in west Dorset; Northallerton, a male category-C prison in North Yorkshire and which dates back to 1783, and Reading, Berkshire, which was immortalised by Wilde in The Ballad of Reading Gaol