|
|
 |
| |
A protest against suicides in Holloway Prison in 2005 |
A way out of our prisons crisis
Lord Ramsbotham warns that we cannot ignore the state of our prisons, as we are all victims of their failures
NO one should take comfort from the fact that our prison system is in crisis. It is easy to say this is because the prisons are overcrowded and that more need to be built, or that not enough money has been made available to the prison service to conduct rehabilitation programmes.
Furthermore, only to tackle those two issues – at best a short-term palliative – would be to ignore the need for an overall long-term look at all aspects of the problem, something that this government has been unwilling to undertake. Uncomfortably, the current crisis is entirely of its own making. There is no one else to blame.
The sheer volume of legislation, regulation, initiatives and instructions that has poured from the Home Office over the past nine years is unmatched in our history. Sadly, the content of these has been far removed from the Prime Minister’s announced intention to be tough on the “causes” of crime. Rather, they have been increasingly tough on the “causers” of crime, not the same thing at all.
The result has been more prisoners serving longer sentences, at the top end, and more held for breach of probation or anti-social behaviour at the bottom. It has also been accompanied by a rise of more than five per cent in the already appalling re-offending rate of 55 per cent, because overcrowded prisons cannot provide programmes for increased numbers. The problem over resources is compounded by the fact that no one knows the cost of imprisonment. By that I do not mean that no one knows how much money is spent by the prison service each year, but that no one knows how much it would cost to provide rehabilitation programmes for every prisoner. There is, in fact, no strategy for the conduct of imprisonment.
To solve the crisis, a number of long-term measures need to be taken. First, the government must drop its ill-researched introduction of a National Offender Management Service, until all the constituent parts are fit for purpose.
Second, it must embark on a serious programme of planning and resourcing community sentences that enjoy the confidence of the public, to provide a credible alternative to custody. Too many people who do not need to lose their liberty as part of their punishment are in prison – women, children, the mentally ill and asylum seekers, for whom appropriate alternative accommodation must be found.
Third, the prison system must be redesigned and organised, along lines proposed by Lord Woolf. It is said that the three things that are most likely to prevent re-offending are a home, a job and a stable relationship, all three of which are put at risk by imprisonment.
He proposed grouping prisons into community – or regional – clusters, with a sufficiency of places to house all types of prisoner from that region, with the exception of high-security prisoners. Every prisoner could then be held close enough to home not to put the three re-offending factors so much at risk. All the facilities of the region – job training, drug treatment, education, housing and the voluntary sector – could be deployed on behalf of its prisoners. There would be more activities for prisoners, because people will help their own.
Fourth, the prison service should devolve what it calls population management – moving prisoners around – to each region, so prisoners are only moved when necessary and not because there happens to be an empty bed in another part of the country. The extra opportunities available should mean that not so many prisoners are kept locked up in their cells all day, doing nothing, allowing a greater degree of overcrowding at night.
Finally, the prison service should be reorganised so that someone is responsible and accountable for each type of prisoner, to ensure the same opportunities are available for each, wherever they happen to be held. What is on offer should not be a lottery according to the governor of whichever prison you are in.
Unless and until this happens, I cannot see the prisons getting out of crisis, as the full effects of government initiatives have yet to be felt. The main lesson is the well-proven and tried one, that you must consider all the implications before introducing an initiative. The government is learning that now. The tragedy is that it is the public that is the victim of its failure.
n David Ramsbotham is a cross bencher in the House of Lords and was chief inspector of prisons from 1995 to 2001.
A protest against suicides in Holloway Prison in 2005 |
 |
|
|
|
