What a Waste!

 

There’d always been a hope against hope that the new Labour government might change course on penal policy. Up until yesterday's statement and strategy on prison capacity.

To their credit, they’ve commissioned a comprehensive re-evaluation of the sentencing framework designed to make greater use of punishment outside prison.

But just as the Independent Sentencing Review led by David Gauke has started work, the Ministry of Justice has anyway pledged to continue with the last government’s prison building programme. It’s a match made in haste they may well repent at leisure.

While the rate of imprisonment in England and Wales is already twice as high as in Germany and the Netherlands, the government has decided that yet more people should be locked up for longer, regardless of the financial, social and ethical costs.

So much for an administration that promises a test and learn culture to tackle the biggest challenges; or a Finance Ministry that will take an Iron Fist against waste.

Before signing off the spending, has anyone there asked if this is the best way of protecting the public and reducing reoffending? Last month three former Lord Chief Justices told the Howard League that the answer was a resounding no. 

Surely at least some of the money earmarked for new prison places would be better used to make existing ones decent; or better to strengthen alternatives to prison- through more hospital beds, drug treatment or probation hostels.

Or better still to fund properly activities which can prevent serious youth violence - like mentoring and therapy – or those which can deal more constructively with crime- like restorative justice.

Even if Mr Gauke recommends more approaches like this, the government won’t be able to fund them.

Older readers may know Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ 1978 hit “What a Waste.”  I was reminded of the lines

“I could be the catalyst that sparks the revolution,
 I could be an inmate in a long-term institution”.

More of the latter than the former in these disappointing announcements.

 

 

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Health and Safety in Prison : Time for a New Approach?

 

 

 

Given the parlous state of the prisons – evidenced most recently in reports from the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB) and the National Audit Office (NAO), it seems odd how little interest is taken in them by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The HSE is the national regulator for workplace health and safety, dedicated, they say, to protecting people and places, and helping everyone lead safer and healthier lives. According to their website the HSE works to ensure people feel safe where they live, where they work and, in their environment. Presumably this includes people in prison- prisoners, staff and visitors. 

The HSE say that they will not intervene “if another regulator has specific responsibility for that area.” But the Prison Inspectorate, IMB's and the Ombudsman are not regulators. Prisons are subject to the enforcement powers of the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate and the Care Quality Commission, the regulator of health and social care. But there's a gap in the regulation of other aspects of prison environments and processes. 

It's true that the HSE has played a role in investigating the levels of Radon gas in Dartmoor prison, which led to the prisoners and staff being transferred out four months ago.  But this was the culmination of a shambolic sequence of events dating back four years.

The prison’s local IMB has published a troubling timeline in their annual report detailing how fluctuating decisions from the Prison Service and HSE led to “the repeated decanting and recanting of prisoners” after the potentially dangerous substance was first detected in 2020. There is no record of any formal enforcement notice having being served by the HSE at Dartmoor or indeed any other prison.

In fact their register shows only one improvement notice in the prison sector. This relates to the Prison Service’s National Tactical Response Group (NTRG), a group of trained staff deployed to deal with incidents of violence and disorder which cannot be handled locally. 

The HSE notice served in June this year says that the NTRG’s “system of work for Close Control Techniques in Operational (live) Interventions does not reduce the risk of harm so far as reasonably practicable”. 

The Prison Service must comply with the notice by 7^th December 2024. I am not sure what specifically needs attention or what gave rise to the notice. But it may be significant.

NTRG was deployed more than twice a day last year . When the sharply increased figures were announced, the Shadow Justice Secretary said: “These squads are trained to deal with the most serious disorder and violence in the prison estate. The shocking rise in the number of deployments is a damning testament to the failure to manage our prisons and the miserable impact of 14 years of Tory rule on our criminal justice system”.

Now Ms Mahmood is in charge of the system, she will need to ensure that the NTRG has taken any necessary remedial action.

But there is a broader issue. In his relaunch speech, the Prime Minister included regulators in his list of "naysayers" who will no longer have an upper hand, (whatever that means). 

In prisons, they have hardly had a hand at all. They should do more not less.    

Throwing Good Money After Bad

 

The Wellcome Collection exhibition Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights has among an eclectic mix of items on display an elaborate slide rule used to set daily targets for the number of steps on the treadmill each prisoner should take per hour. 

While no doubt useful to standardise the diverse working practices across the mid-19^th century prison estate, I wondered whether any of the administrators who created the device or the Governors who applied it stopped to ask themselves: What is the fundamental point of what we are doing here?

A similar thought struck me reading the National Audit Office Report Increasing the Capacity of the Prison Estate to Meet Demand. Of course there are benefits to charting forensically what turn out to have been woeful and often wasteful attempts by Government to deliver a prison estate fit for purpose.

Failures to maintain existing prisons, unbridled optimism bias about timescales for building new ones and the expensive short term fixes dreamt up to stave off total collapse all provide lessons, I suppose. Whether they will be learned is another matter. The most important of the NAO’s recommendations could have been cut and pasted from their 2020 report on Improving the Prison Estate.

What’s missing though is any engagement with the bigger questions. Why on earth are we spending what’s now £10 billion on more than 20,000 new prison places? And in what universe is this considered good value for money?

The NAO’s job is to tell us if resources have been used economically, efficiently and effectively to achieve intended outcomes. Sure, their role is not to question government policy objectives. But in the case of the Ministry of Justice, their relevant objectives have been protecting the public and reducing reoffending. Should the NAO not have at least raised a question about whether the biggest prison building programme since Victorian times is the best way of meeting those objectives?

Last week three former Lord Chief Justices not only asked the question but answered it with a resounding “no”.   One told the Howard League that the relentless rise in the length of prison terms had led to an “appalling” and unnecessary use of money and the prison population should be about 50,000 not the 85,000 we have today let alone the 100,000 we may end up with. Another described the increasing numbers of people recalled to prison as “completely insane”.

Not the language of auditors perhaps but not normally of judges either.  If leading judicial figures conclude that funds spent on prison would be better used in other ways, the body charged with assessing value for money should at least engage with the argument.  

Had they done so they could have looked at whether at least some of the money earmarked to lock up more people for longer might be better used to strengthen the range and quality of alternatives to prison- through more hospital beds, drug treatment or probation hostels. Or to fund properly activities which can prevent serious youth violence - like mentoring and therapy – or those which can deal more constructively with crime- like restorative justice.

But they didn’t.  Perhaps David Gauke and his colleagues undertaking the sentencing review will do so. We know from the NAO report that there is a need to cut demand for prison places by 12,000 because the MoJ does not have any contingency plans to increase prison capacity beyond the current target “as it views it has limited options left to do this”. Let’s hope Gauke doesn’t simply get a slide rule out but takes the opportunity to fashion a genuinely more effective response to crime and justice.

Confidence and Supply

 

Much of the focus on prison reform in recent months has been on managing burgeoning demand for places. The newly formed JusticeSelect Committee started their examination of Prisons Minister Lord Timpson this week by asking how long the space freed up by the SDS 40 early release scheme might last.

The answer it seems is next Autumn or maybe a bit longer. That’s hoped to be enough time to create longer term sustainability in the system by putting in place whatever legislative changes are recommended by the David Gauke Sentencing Review.

But is that realistic? Even if Gauke manages to report in the Spring, his proposals are likely to be controversial. Getting them on to the statute book and then implemented could easily take another year.

The MoJ handily has a couple of further demand reduction measures up its sleeve- a change to the process of recalling released prisoners to jail in April and extending to a year the period of release on a Home Detention Curfew for eligible prisoners, from June. So they may muddle through.

But what about the supply of new prison places?

MPs heard that the new all electric Millsike Prison in North Yorkshire is on track to open in April, (although like all new prisons will surely need time to reach its full capacity of 1500). A new houseblock at Rye Hill in Warwickshire will also be ready early next year which should add 450 additional places. Timpson also said that HMP Dartmoor - closed in the Summer because of high levels of Radon- will re-open when safe, making more than 600 places available.

Prison Service Chief Amy Rees told the Committee that planning permission had now been granted for 17,000 of the 20,000 proposed new prison places. (The outstanding decision on the one remaining new build prison near Wymott and Garth in Lancashire is due to be made by mid-December).

Planning delays have added between 18 months and 3 years to the original timelines according to Ms Rees. In future, planning for prisons will be treated as Crown development with urgent procedures for reaching decisions and more in the way of permitted development on existing sites.  

On the downside, Timpson revealed that 100 projects in courts and prisons were affected when construction company ISG filed for administration in September. 79 will require re-procurement.

He also acknowledged the significant shortcomings in the physical condition of the existing estate although did not put a financial cost on the backlog of maintenance. It was £1 billion in 2021 and seemed to suggest it has doubled since then.

What we do know is that there are still 23,000 cells which require fire safety upgrades. According to my calculations, the necessary work has been progressing at the rate of about 3,000 cells a year- far too few to meet the commitment to complete the work by 2027.  The latest HMPPS Annual report, published last week but curiously unmentioned in the Select Committee, says reaching the target is “finely balanced in terms of the future headroom position and we are likely to require additional places out of use in future years to achieve this aim.”

More broadly, inspection and monitoring reports have drawn repeated attention to often shocking failings in infrastructure. These aren’t limited to the 25 odd prisons dating from the Victorian era. The HMPPS Annual Report revealed that in May 2024, eight sites were confirmed as containing RAAC.

HMPPS have undertaken a comprehensive survey of conditions in the prisons. I was pleased to hear Ms Rees tell the committee that the report of the survey would be published shortly particularly as the MoJ had refused my FOI request to see it.  

But then according to the HMPPS Annual Report, the Final Report of the Survey was published in June 2024. It wasn’t.  I have asked the Justice Committee to try to clarify the position.

A Secure Future?

 

In 2016, Charlie Taylor’s Review of Youth Justice concluded that “fundamental change is needed to the current youth custody system”. He found children spending too much time in their cells; inadequate education and rehabilitation; and increasing violence both among children and towards staff.

This week Taylor- now Chief Inspector of Prisons-reported that Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) are still “dominated by violence and disorder and weak education”. If anything, eight years on, things are worse.

It’s not surprising that children’s experiences in YOI’s are as dismal as they are given the fundamental unsuitability of prison establishments for their care.

 At Feltham in West London, over the summer two serious incidents of violence led to 34 members of staff being injured.

“Inspectors saw children trying to get to each other through locked gates as they were returning from education.”

But most “simply did not attend enough education to make substantial progress.”

Compare this to a Secure Childrens Home (SCH) in Nottingham where inspectors found a much more positive setting. When children are at risk of hurting themselves or others, staff intervene with physical holds which are used safely, proportionately, and for a short length of time. When children do not get on with each other, appropriate action is taken to prevent potential bullying. Staff work with children to repair relationships whenever possible.  

School attendance is very high. Some children achieve GCSEs in core subjects, others study vocational options in line with their career ambitions.

SCH’s are much smaller facilities than YOIs with better trained staff and a greater ability to choose which children they take. And they cost a lot more.

So while they probably cannot replace YOIs altogether, it’s always puzzled me why Taylor’s Review did not recommend their expansion. They consistently provide high quality care and education, but the numbers of places have reduced substantially in recent years

Instead Taylor arguably overcomplicated matters by inventing a new hybrid institution -the Secure School- which is both a SCH and a 16-19 Academy. After a protracted and expensive development of the old Medway Secure Training Centre, Oasis Restore took its first children in August.

We learned this week that the Secure School’s Principal Director and Responsible Individual, Andrew Willetts will start a new job in January, as Chief Executive Officer at The Orpheus Trust. The Director of Care and Wellbeing left Oasis Restore in June before the first children were even placed there.

I don’t know exactly what lies behind these moves, but it cannot help the stability of any institution if the leader who’s spent three years preparing it to open departs so soon after it does. Despite misgivings about the need for a new model of custody, I hope Oasis Restore proves successful.

In 2016 the government agreed with the Taylor Review’s vision that YOIs and STCs should be replaced in the longer term by smaller secure schools situated in the regions that they serve.  

This week’s bleak inspection reports on youth custody confirm the need for change- but whether by more Secure Schools or Secure Childrens Homes remains open to debate.  

The State of the Estate

 

Inspectors questioning whether cells are safe for human habitation looks like a new low for the prison system. In truth there are many establishments besides Winchester providing what the Prison Governors Association describe as “truly shocking conditions where prisoners are expected to live, and our colleagues work.”

But how many prisons, what kinds of shocking conditions and what will it take to bring them up to acceptable standards? Inspection and Monitoring Reports provide a valuable but only partial picture.  A more comprehensive assessment is surely needed.  

As it happens, last year the Prison Service conducted a survey of conditions in each of the public sector prisons and a sample of the private ones. Earlier this year, the then Prisons Minister told the Justice Committee that the report on the State of the Estate would be completed by the end of that month.  It has not however been made public.

Following a FOI request I made, the MoJ argued that disclosing the survey report would prejudice their commercial interests and impinge on the process of formulating policy. Both seem largely spurious objections which could be met, if necessary, through redaction. But the MoJ have decided the public interest favours withholding the information at this time.  

I had hoped that the new Government might have placed a greater value on transparency and perhaps calculated that - as with Lord Darzi’s report on the NHS- putting the true picture in the public domain would reinforce the difficulty of their inheritance and the need for remedial investment.

The newly formed Justice Committee should press the new Prisons Minister to publish at least a summary of the State of the Estate report not least because the MoJ accept in their FoI response that releasing it “could help inform and further the public debate on this subject matter”.

That’s important because addressing the scale and nature of the problems facing existing prisons should be just as urgent a challenge as the purported need to create future custodial places.   

Food for Thought

 

Complaints about food are “a constant refrain” when Monitors visit HMP Warren Hill in Suffolk according to a Report out today. Prisoners are unhappy with the quality, quantity, choice and food temperature at the small Category C prison in Suffolk. Recent reports on other establishments suggest discontent may be increasingly widespread. They've been published in the months following the hospitalisation of six people at Lewes prison with food poisoning.

Yesterday, His Majesty’s Prison Inspectorate(HMIP)  reported that just 18% of prisoners at HMP Erlestoke said that they got enough to eat, down from 35% at the time of the last inspection.  The small size of the portions was a key- but not a priority -concern for HMIP.  At Belmarsh only a quarter of prisoners said that the food was good and that they got enough to eat. Lunch was served to the prisoner’s door as early as 10.30 in the morning.  

Earlier this year, in a survey conducted by the IMB at HMP Oakwood, more than nine out of ten of the 280 respondents found the overall food quality to be bad or very bad.  68% found they did not have enough to eat at mealtimes, with only 27% feeling they had enough some of the time. This is the prison that the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor has described as the best in the country.

Oddly Taylor’s latest Annual Report fails to mention food, other than to criticise a filthy food trolley. It’s an omission.

I’m not sure how psychologists view Maslow these days but his argument that survival needs must be satisfied before anyone can address matters higher up the hierarchy still rings true. In prisons, the challenges of offering safety and security, a sense of connection and of individuality will often act as further barriers to reaching self-actualisation. If Maslow’s right, if you’re hungry, you’ll struggle to reach let alone overcome them.

An academic review last year concluded “the potential of food to enhance the prison environment and support improvements in prisoner health and wellbeing is limited when the nutritional content is inadequate and/or where food is served and eaten impacts negatively on human dignity. Prison policy which provides opportunities for cooking and sharing food that better reflects familial and cultural identity has the potential to improve relationships, increase self-esteem, build and maintain life skills needed for reintegration”.

There is great work going on to influence policy and practice in this direction. Charity Food Behind Bars is working to transform the food served in British prisons and researchers at Surrey University have called for an increase in the food budget -as well as publishing a recipe book prepared by women in prison.  £2.70 per prisoner per day was spent on food in 2023–2024, a 25% increase from the previous year's budget of £2.16. I cant find a figure for this financial year.

But the latest glut of reports suggest creating improvements will be an uphill struggle. Communal dining and opportunities to prepare food other than in a microwave seem very much the exception rather than the rule.

With the planned expansion of capacity at several prisons, there’s a risk that pressure on kitchens will increase. At Warren Hill, food is prepared at neighbouring Hollesley Bay a mile away. Unreliable transport results in food going cold and even being tampered with. Monitors hope that a planned expansion of the prison will bring with it a new kitchen. 

Planning permission has recently been obtained for 93 rapid deployment cells, and a servery. But no kitchen that I can see.  I hope I am wrong.