Here is a template you can use to write to the people who want to be your MP, asking them what they will do about prisons. You can make this about Wandsworth Prison, your local prison or prisons generally.
Who Can I Vote For? is a good website to find out who is standing to be an MP in your area. What will you do about prisons? has some questions you can ask your candidates face to face. Crisis in our prisons: the facts gives you some useful facts and figures about the crisis in our prisons.
Dear [find your candidates here: https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/ ],
My name is [fill]; I write to you today as a potential voter, [and anything else you want to say about yourself; you might also want to explain how you have become aware of conditions in our prisons ].
Wandsworth Prison is infested with pigeons, rats and cockroaches. Inadequate plumbing makes showering a rarity. Men are locked in cells for 22 hours a day without access to activities or meaningful work. They are denied their medication, miss hospital appointments and suffer physical and mental health crises without care. The appalling conditions in Wandsworth Prison have been highlighted by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, but they are not unique. We have the highest per capita prison population in Europe and 60% of our prisons are overcrowded. These conditions are an affront to our collective humanity and do nothing to educate and rehabilitate prisoners and reduce reoffending.
[Expand on a particular issue or story that is meaningful to you, and how you felt when you found out about it]
Leaving prison with a stable home, a job and a support network minimises people's chances of reoffending. But with the sort of conditions men experience in Wandsworth Prison, it’s not surprising that prison doesn’t solve issues like violence, addiction, and poor physical and mental health, but instead makes them even worse. Each prison place costs £50,000 per year. Our prisons are expensive, ineffective and a wasted opportunity to improve lives, reduce reoffending and keep us all safer.
Building new prisons will not deal with the urgent crisis in our prisons. In the longer term, even if all the planned projects are delivered on time, the Government's own projections show that there will still be a shortfall in the number of prison places. We need pragmatic reforms to our criminal justice system to reduce the number of people in our prisons, including policies on sentencing, remand and recall and investment in rehabilitation.
I call on you and your party to prioritise the crisis in HMP Wandsworth [or your local prison or our prisons generally]. Chronic overcrowding means that people are living in conditions which are shameful to all of us, fail to reduce reoffending and are a waste of taxpayers money.
If you are elected, will you commit to raise your concerns with the Minister for Prisons, the Prison Service [and Governor of the prison or your local prison]? Will you press for urgent improvements in our prisons and reforms to our criminal justice system?
Yours sincerely,
[name]
[postcode]