Thought for the Week: Prisons Week
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, reflects on the prison system
As we approach Prisons Week (16 to 22 November) it is worth remembering that the public do have a critical role to play in improving the outcomes of the criminal justice system and without their informed involvement and support any progress will be limited.
The facts and figures about the deteriorating state of our prisons and the poor state of people in them present a stark and disturbing picture. Strip away the political rhetoric, public relations gloss and popular media misrepresentation. Discount the vested interest of those who profit from growing a market in incarceration. And you are left with a public prison service cut by £263 million in three years, struggling to cope with the loss of more than 12,500 (twenty-eight per cent) of its staff since 2010 and an ever-rising prison population.
Warning signs reveal a prison system under unprecedented strain. There has been a sharp drop in individual prison performance and a marked increase in staff sickness levels. Detailed reports by HM chief inspector of prisons chart a decline in standards and much reduced opportunities for rehabilitation and resettlement. Serious assaults, prisoner on prisoner and prisoner on officer, have risen in adult male establishments along with concerted indiscipline. Saddest of all, for the first time in over five years, the number of deaths by suicide has risen drastically.
People in prison are particularly vulnerable. Compared to the general population, where six per cent have attempted suicide, twenty-one per cent of men and forty-six per cent of women in prison have tried to kill themselves at some point in their lives. No one wants to see the painstaking gains made by safer custody staff and prisoners working as Samaritan listeners, improved support, training, first night arrangements, better assessment and management of risk, all swept away by reduced staffing levels, harsher regimes and increased uncertainty and hopelessness.
The scale and driving pace of change in the justice system mean that people in prison are enduring worsening conditions, less time out of cell, reduced contact with staff, new mean and petty restrictions and unjustified curbs on release on temporary license. Overcrowding means that people awaiting trial are mixed in with sentenced prisoners regardless of their innocent until proven guilty status, and young people are held with adults notwithstanding their developmental stage. One young man told the Prison Reform Trust’s advice and information service that ‘he is hearing voices and they are scaring him. He says he phones his mum sometimes when the voices are scaring him, but can’t always get to phone when she’s around’.
Prisons are less safe and less decent than they were even a year ago. An incoming government in May 2015 must not accept this deterioration in prison standards and conditions as the new normal. It should rebuild confidence in a vital public service and acknowledge painstaking gains made by staff and the responsible prisoners who manage to effect reform from within. It must turn its attention to the new demographic and changing needs of a rapidly ageing prison population. It must re-establish the defining principle that people are sent to prison as a punishment rather than for punishment. And from the wreckage it must create a just, fair and effective penal system.
Meanwhile, those outside the system can make a difference by advocating for change and by offering support. Launching our guide What Can I Do?, baroness Julia Neuberger said: ‘From helping with education and basic skills, to befriending, to giving comfort, to alleviating fear and to looking after visitors to prisons and families and friends in the court system, volunteers can make the difference between panic, friendlessness and loneliness and a sense, however awful things seem, that people are being treated as human beings and their needs and fears are being addressed.’
Further information: What can I do? published by the Prison Reform Trust and Pact, is a guide to getting involved in the criminal justice system through volunteering and pressing for reform.
Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile Autumn 2014 is available by post or download www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk
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