The Prison System is Facing a Perfect Storm as Incarceration Numbers Continue to Rise. By Adam Colclough

 

The Prison Reform Trust has warned that there is an impending ‘perfect storm’ created by rising numbers of inmates and a staffing crisis as the government’s consultation on updating the prison system closes.

Director Peter Dawson said, “A perfect storm is coming, and ministers must not think they can ride it out by cramming more prisoners into dilapidated prisons regularly condemned by the Chief Inspector of prisons”.

Adding “Too many prisoners and too few staff led to an explosion in deaths, self-harm and violence in the last decade—there can be no excuse for not understanding the consequences of doing the same again”.

The prison population in England and Wales has risen by 70% over the past thirty years, figures published by the Ministry of Justice predict that by 2026 it will have increased by a further 19,000 inmates to 98,500.

In their Prisons Strategy white paper, public consultation on which came to an end earlier this month, the government set out a ten-year vision for managing the prison system.

The plan aims to crate a more ‘resilient’ system capable of meeting the demands of the twenty-first century that is ‘safe, fit-for-purpose and secure for prisoners, staff and the wider community’.

This will see £4billion invested in measures including creating 20,000 extra prison places, the recruitment of 5,000 extra prison staff and improvements to support for people leaving prison.

In their response to the white paper the Prison Reform Trust say that even with the proposed increase in capacity prisoners will still be forced to live in conditions that are overcrowded and to spend much of the day locked in their cells.

In their response to the consultation they write that overcrowded prison conditions require‘people to live alongside other people in conditions of deep indignity and mutual fear, of a kind that are uncivilised and shaming’. Adding that this ‘feeds violence’ and during the pandemic has exacerbated the risk of infection faced by prisoners and staff.

They also point out that there is an ongoing crisis in retaining existing prison officers with 2587 officers leaving the service in the year to September 2021, many after less than three years in their post.

In their response to the consultation, they write that the government “faces a dramatic fall in the number of people applying to become a prison officer at a time when one in nine prison officers are leaving the profession every year. And it will do so after repeatedly denying prison officers a pay rise recommended by an independent pay review body.”

The concerns expressed by the Prison Reform Trust in relation to the government’s white paper echo ones they expressed in December at the time of the publication of their report on how the prison estate can emerge from eighteen months of lockdown due to the pandemic. 

 

 

‘It Doesn’t Have to be Like This’, co authored by Dr Lucy Wainwright, Paula Harriot, Soruche Saajedi, Marc Conway, and Femi Laryea-Adekimi is the latest publication from their Prisoner Policy Network and draws on interviews with 650 prisoners across fifty prisons in England and Wales.

The findings show that the past eighteen months have been extremely difficult for people living in prison, with many saying they had lost hope and felt there was no viable future for them in the outside world.

Peter Dawson said at the time of the report’s release that it came at a “critical moment for prisons, and there are big decisions to make about the principles that will determine the future of our prisons”. Adding that a “safe and purposeful prison community is built on the relationships between those who work in prisons and those who have to live there”.

This will not, he went on to say, happen through a return to how things were before the pandemic, or through perpetuating the “isolation and repression of the last 18 months.”

It requires instead a series of wide-ranging changes to how prisons are run, among the recommendations made by the Prison Reform Trust was that the prison community to mirror as far as possible that outside its walls, with more opportunities for prisoners to engage in education and meaningful work.

They also called for the prison workforce to be more diverse and for more emphasis to be placed on building relationships with the community to give people a lesser risk of reoffending on their release.

The overall message was that prisons should, as they emerge from the pandemic along with the rest of society, become places of purpose and rehabilitation, not just of punishment.