With the resignation of Dominic Raab on 21 April, Alex Chalk becomes the sixth Secretary of State for Justice in the last five years (Raab held the position twice). For those five years, the 119 prisons in England and Wales have remained in the grip of a crisis that shows no sign of ending. The vision of the UK government for prisons remains unimaginative, narrow and repressive, focussed as it is on population expansion and wasteful practices at public expense.
There are now 85,000 people in prison facing the consequences of this crisis. In the long view, this represents a doubling of the prison population in the last 25 years. England and Wales together now have the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe. Numbers fell 6% during the pandemic, reaching a low of 77,000 in April 2021, largely due to delays in sentencing caused by court closures. In the meantime, those in prison endured stringent lockdown regimes which were only definitively lifted in May of last year. [1]
Since then, the prison population has begun rising dramatically once again. The Ministry of Justice projects a population of 97,500 in 2025. It is likely that 100,000 people will be imprisoned by the end of the decade. These numbers, growing year on year, tell one important part of the story. Expansion is at the heart of the Government's stated strategy and yet it remains difficult to see how expansion should be understood as a strategic aim.
Expansion means increased pressure on a system already overloaded and unfit for purpose. In November 2022, the government was forced to request the temporary use of 400 police cells to provide 'the immediate additional capacity [needed] in the coming weeks to ensure the smooth running of the prison estate'. [2]
This extraordinary request in itself suggests how the 'smooth running' of the system is continually thrown into chaos by a drive towards expansion. To give just one example, staff under excessive pressure in an overloaded system are more likely to be 'risk-averse and therefore more likely to recall offenders to prison' - a point raised at the time of the Government's request by MP Liz Roberts. A properly resourced probation service would represent a more long-sighted and effective solution to a lack of capacity than the temporary use of police cells.
As an end in itself, expansion speaks to a failure to think seriously and responsibly about what justice might mean in the twenty-first century. Successive governments and ministers have routinely failed to heed expert recommendations that call for a reduction in population, the abolition of short custodial sentences and major investment in education and training schemes which would give prisoners a real chance of rehabilitation, whilst cutting re-offending costs, which are estimated at £15 billion per year. [3]
The human cost of this lack of strategy is clear. The HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales Annual Report for 2021-22 noted rising rates of violence in half of the prisons inspected, with 20% of survey respondents saying they felt unsafe in current conditions. The Report's comments on mental health are worth quoting in full:
Throughout the year prisoners told us that their mental health was suffering, with 51% of men and 76% of women saying they had mental health difficulties. We do not yet know what the longer-term effect of lockdowns will be on prisoners, but there is no doubt that there will be a price to pay for the loss of family visits, the limited chance to socialise with other prisoners, the lack of education, training or work, the curtailing of rehabilitative programmes, the cancellation of group therapy and the dearth of opportunities for release on temporary licence (ROTL). In the last year, more prisoners than ever before will have left custody after spending almost their entire sentence locked in their cells – blank inactivity indeed. [4]
The crisis does not only impact on the wellbeing of prisoners. Perhaps the most glaring indicator of systemic failing is the lack of retention of prison and probation staff. As the prisoner population has increased, successive cuts have reduced relative staff numbers. The consequent pressures on staff has caused many to leave, triggering a knock-on effect that demoralises and further stresses those who remain. [5]
Frequent changes in ministers are bound to cause changes in priorities that prevent the sustained implementation of an overarching strategic approach to prisons policy. But one element of the government's strategy has remained clear throughout: the expansion of the prison estate. It is, of course, much easier politically to point towards the blunt fact of more prisoners, more prisons, more sentences as some measure of success.
But this does not mean that such figures amount to a strategy, or that such a strategy would be serious about reducing reoffending and reintegrating offenders into communities. Rising prison figures instead seem simply to be a sign that the Government’s crime reduction strategies are also failing.
A real vision for justice would go far beyond the mere expansion of a system that is already at breaking point. It would ask, instead, what is that system for? And is it fulfilling this purpose?
[1] Institute for Government, Performance Tracker 2022/23: Spring update - Prisons, 23 February 2023
[2] Hansard, UK Parliament, Debate: Prison Capacity, 30 November 2022
[3] UK Parliament, 'Prisons crisis: Government's current approach inefficient, ineffective and unsustainable', 3 April 2019
[4] HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, Annual Report 2021–22, 13 July 2022
[5] Danny Shaw, 'The crisis in our prisons: they can't get the staff', 7 October 2022
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