PRISON reformers staged an event at a university campus on Wednesday to demonstrate the inactivity experienced by inmates.

The Howard League for Penal Reform got lecturers and students to lie on beds in the middle of Middlesex University's Hendon campus.

Iraklis Grigoriadis, president of the university's branch, said: “We are trying to illustrate the inactivity that exists in prisons and show how incapable the current system is in addressing the underlying causes of crime.

“The main purpose of the event was to promote community sentences.”

The group believes that more prisoners should be given community sentences rather than prison terms, which they say would help offenders to take responsibility for their actions and live a law-abiding life.

The protest comes after shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan said that Labour had sent too many people to jail during its time in power.

In a speech to a Prison Reform Trust supporters, Mr Khan said: “A focus on rehabilitation and reducing re-offending was seen as being soft on crime, when in fact it is effective in reducing crime.

“We did send more people to prison and for longer. While we successfully reduced crime, we did not manage to reduce the prison population.”

The Howard League, which is the oldest penal reform charity in the UK, is named after John Howard, a prominent prison reformer who founded the group in 1866.