Old Victorian prisons in Britain that are near city centers and in desirable locations, are to be broken down to make way for the construction of 3000 homes.
"Many of our jails are relics from Victorian times on prime real estate in our inner cities," finance minister George Osborne said. "We will close old, outdated prisons in city centres, and sell the sites to build thousands of much-needed new homes."
The selling of prison lands is the response of the government to the growing need to build hundreds of thousands of homes due to the fast growing population of the area.
According to the Financial Times, the officials are planning to build nine new prisons that are "facilities fit for the modern world" to relocate 10,000 prisoners from the "ageing and ineffective" crumbling red-brick prisons, as part of the big modernization plan.
"This investment will mean we can replace ageing and ineffective Victorian prisons with new facilities fit for the modern world," Justice Secretary Michael Gove said. "We will be able to design out the dark corners which too often facilitate violence and drug-taking."
The modernization project of prisons in Britain is being criticized by Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, who says that closing old prisons and building new ones will not solve the endemic overcrowding that is being faced by prison inmates today.
"It's not prison buildings that make a difference; it's what happens inside," Crook said.
According to Yahoo News, the first Victorian prison to be sold is the famous Reading prison, which had held Oscar Wilde for charges of "gross indecency." Wilde was imprisoned in 1895 and was released in 1897. He wrote a poem about his experience behind bars entitled "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," two years after his release.
Although there has been no other announcement on which Victorian prison will be sold next, the Brixton prison in London that once held Mick Jagger and the Kray Twins, is being eyed as a potential redevelopment target.
