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.

Sentencing Reform - A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action Please

 

 The Howard League deserve credit for persuading five retired senior Judges to argue publicly that the sentence inflation which has brought the prison system to its knees must be brought under control and for a reversal in the trend of keeping people in prison for longer simply to punish them more severely. If implemented, their recommendations would help chart a more sustainable future for prisons and a more effective approach to reducing re-offending.

For me, their warning that without urgent remedial action, “this country will soon experience US-style mass incarceration” is a bit overblown. America’s 1.9 million prisoners represents a rate of imprisonment (531 per 100,000) which is 3.5 higher than ours (146).  

But the four former Chief Justices and one lead judge on criminal justice are surely right to urge a return to more modest proportionate sentences across the board to bring England and Wales into line with Western European norms.

A question nagged away as I read the paper though. While in their various senior roles in the judiciary, could and should the authors not have done more themselves to curb the trends they now decry? Is this not another frustrating example of Post Retirement Enlightenment Syndrome – the phrase originally coined to describe the experience of having politicians “come out” in favour of drug policy reform only after ceasing to occupy positions in which they might have actually carried it out.

The paper lays the blame for sentence inflation firmly at the door of government and the legislature. But can it really be the case that the rise since 2010 in the rate of custodial sentencing from a quarter of the more serious cases to a third; and the increase in the average length of prison terms from 14 to 20 months is down to new laws or the will of parliament?

It’s possible that harsher sentencing reflects more serious offending, or offenders with more previous convictions. But an inconvenient truth may be that the independent judges and magistrates who impose criminal sentences themselves have played a significant role in sentence inflation, whether deliberate or inadvertent.  It may be that it's guideline judgments of the Court of Appeal, rulings on unduly lenient sentences and in particular sentencing guidelines which have served to push up the going rate of punishment- an increase in sentence lengths which means that the people released early from prison this week after serving 40% of their sentence will have on average served two weeks longer in prison than those who served 50% of their sentence in 2014. 

Take the guidelines which are produced by the Sentencing Council, which is fundamentally a judicial body. The sitting Chief Justice is the President of the Council and Lord Justice Leveson, one of the authors of the critique its first Chair. A review of its work in 2017 found that two of its first major guidelines resulted in unexpected increases in sentence severity.

In their Howard League critique, the Judges say the Sentencing Council’s role is to ensure a proportionate structure for sentencing, meaning that the increase in minimum sentences for one crime will necessarily have a knock-on effect across the board. But why should longer sentences for homicide or sexual offences require a harsher approach to theft or burglary?

In fact most sentencing guidelines have sought to maintain the existing practice of the courts rather than toughen it up but the increase in sentence severity for most categories of crime since 2010 suggest that they have in large part failed, too often acting as an accelerator rather than brake on the use of prison. 

I’d like to see current sentencing levels recalibrated downwards on the basis of effectiveness and cost - one of the factors the Council must consider. So too it seems do the retired Judges. But the Council has been unwilling to do it.

Indeed, after a consultation, in 2021 the Council concluded that it was not its role to reverse any observed trends in the prison population. They argued that “were it to seek, artificially and unilaterally, to raise or lower sentence levels without good cause – whether in general or for specific offences – it would rapidly lose the confidence of sentencers, a broad range of public opinion, and no doubt a significant body of opinion within Parliament.” Surely the Judges’ critique lays out a very good cause.

The retired Judges call for “an honest conversation about what custodial sentences can and cannot achieve and their human and financial costs,” mirroring a call by the Justice Committee in the last Parliament who concluded that “public debate on sentencing is stuck in a dysfunctional and reactive cycle”.  In his latest Annual Report, the Chief Inspector of Prisons argued "there is a pressing need for a much bigger conversation about who we are sending to prison, for how long."

This is another area where the Sentencing Council has been found wanting. In 2011, Lord Justice Leveson wrote in its first Annual Report that it had a significant opportunity to contribute … to wider public understanding of issues of sentencing.” He and his co-authors now recognise that 14 years on “the public has a poor understanding of sentencing, receiving most of their information from media reports on individual catastrophic cases”.

A better level of debate is of course needed – and to my mind one that is more adult than simply distinguishing between people we are cross with and those we are scared of, as a former Lord Chancellor frames it.  

But ensuring a constructive and viable way forward requires action, not just words.

 

The Fire Next Time?

 

As wide-ranging collective failures to prioritise fire safety are laid bare in the report into the Grenfell Tower tragedy, what’s being done in a high risk area where central government has sole responsibility- prisons? 

As the Prison Service’s Instruction to its staff makes clear “a  fire occurring anywhere within custodial premises could have serious consequences in terms of life, safety, business continuity and security”.

And many do occur. Latest Home Office data show that in the last financial year, Fire and Rescue Services attended 1,892 incidents in prisons and young offender units in England-an 82% increase on 2022-3.

Trends are broadly consistent with figures released by the Justice Ministry showing that including prisons in Wales, the number of fires in cells rose from 1,410 in 2022 to 2,287 in 2023- up 62%.

While there were only three fire related fatalities in prisons between 2016-17 and 2022-3 (the latest period for which data is available), there were 887 non-fatal casualties over the seven year period. This category comprises a range of cases needing precautionary checks as well as hospital admissions.

Of concern is the fact that the Home Office data show that in more than four out of five incidents attended by Fire Services last year, there was no safety system in place- such as sprinklers or misting.

The Prison Service has embarked on a much needed Fire Safety Improvement Programme to increase detection and fire suppression measures in its establishments. The aim is to bring all prison accommodation up to modern fire safety standards by the end of 2027, a commitment made to the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate (CPFSI) who enforce the standards in government buildings.

The last HMPPS annual report said 4,000 places were brought up to par in 2022-3, leaving 26,000 to work on. In March this year, 23,500 still lacked automatic fire detection suggesting only 2,500 cells were upgraded in 2023-4.  At that rate of progress, HMPPS will struggle to complete the work by 2030 let alone 2027.

Troublingly, the latest HMPPS annual report also said that “prison capacity pressures have restricted our ability to take places out of use for refurbishment and compliance works”. Pressed by MPs on the Justice Committee, then Prisons Minister Ed Argar denied in March this year that any essential works necessary to address critical risks to life had been paused. But there has been slippage.

The Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Leicester said in their report on the year to January 2024 that “the project to complete the fire safety and other alarm systems has been further delayed and is still not complete after three and a half years”.  The delays may not of course have been to prevent loss of capacity. At HMP Lewes, there were problems relating to “the age of the building and the state of the electrical system, with cost and compatibility issues.” But its not inconceivable that the desperate need for cell space has led to some improvement work being postponed.

So what should the new government do to manage fire risks in prison more effectively?

First and most important is to ensure that the funds are available to maintain the programme of fire safety work to meet the 2027 deadline if at all possible.

Second, they should take a look at the adequacy of the CPFSI, which has a staff of 15 to enforce standards in 16,000 government buildings. The fact that it has only just published its annual report for 2022-23  suggests it may be struggling.

Third, given that prisons pose by far the highest risk among public buildings, should HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) look at fire safety issues during their visits to places of detention?. Their report on HMP Chelmsford published in May 2024 fails to mention that the prison was subject to an enforcement notice which was in force at the time of their inspection visit in February, according to the CPFSI register at least.

Three other public prisons and two private ones also had notices in force in February 2024 when the register was last updated. 

Fire safety is something which Ofsted look at in their inspections of Secure Childrens Homes, criticising the obstruction of a fire exit route in one. Why shouldn’t HMIP?

There are practical steps which the prison service and individual prisons should take to reduce risks. Argar promised before the election that an ignition-free Safer Vape Pen will replace the existing product, which is apparently the source of approximately 80 per cent of fires set in prisons. 

But there are structural measures needed as well. The Grenfell report recommends the government bring responsibility for the functions relating to fire safety currently exercised by the Housing Department, the Home Office and the Department for Business and Trade into one department under a single Secretary of State.

Clearer lines of accountability and scrutiny are needed to promote fire safety in prison too.

Capacity Crisis hits Women’s Prisons

 

While the capacity crisis has been most acute in men’s prisons, it’s having a negative impact on women too. The local watchdog at Downview, a closed prison for sentenced women in Surrey report today that while numbers there dipped below 200 during the pandemic, in the year to May 2024 at times they reached the full capacity of 356. The prison has seen increases in assaults, self-harm and use of force, expected with more prisoners but troubling none the less.      

National pressures have reduced the prison’s discretion about who to accept on transfer from other jails creating “a frequently complex mix of women” with significant mental health needs, drug-related issues and problems associating with other prisoners.

Some women arrived with very short sentences left to serve and family based far away. They commented that transferring is as bad as being punished, as they usually lose work or education and, therefore, income, for several weeks.  

Others were acutely mentally unwell and placed in the Segregation Unit where, “staff faced severe aggression and repeated assaults; flooding and destruction of cells and furniture; bodily fluids thrown at them; unrelenting screaming and shouting (including racial abuse aimed at staff and other prisoners); and refusal to eat or wear clothes.”  Some were transferred from prisons that had 24-hour healthcare and a larger mental health team than Downview.

Many of these women should clearly be in a healthcare setting rather than prison. Others do not need to be in prison at all. The IMB report on one woman transferred to Downview on recall for just 12 weeks. The recall was for a failure to attend her probation appointment 20 years ago. She had not committed any further offences in that time and was now a mother, with school-age children and secure employment. What on earth was going on here?

Fire Alarm

 

One of the most troubling findings in today’s Independent Monitoring Report (IMB) on HMP Lowdham Grange is the huge increase in cell fires started by prisoners. In the 12 months to February 2024, 162 were recorded, compared to just 21 in the preceding 12 months.

As the local watchdog says

In-cell fires put the prisoner, staff and other prisoners at significant risk of harm, and cause damage to cells, which is expensive to repair. The Board understands that each fire requires the Fire Service to attend as an emergency, and this increase has placed considerable pressure on local resources.

The report notes that on one occasion last summer, “25 prisoners refused to lock up to allow fire officers to enter the wing where a fire had been set”. This was symptomatic of a loss of control at the Category B Nottinghamshire prison where in September prisoners returned to their cells only after the ‘Riot Act’ was read to them on two successive nights.

Rising violence, self- harm and drug use – by the end of the year more than half of mandatory drug tests were positive- have reflected in part changes in the management of the prison. Sodexo took over the running of the prison from Serco in February 2023 but were unable to do so safely. The public prison service (HMPPS) stepped in in December and has been running it since.

The Prison Inspectorate  found early evidence in January that “actions taken since step-in had begun to improve safety and reduce protesting behaviour”. When HMPPS took over, they found the largest number of weapons ever recorded in one lock down search.

As for fires, although there were none recorded in December 2023, today’s report notes that in January 2024 – the month after the step in- there were 21.

Data released in May shows that Lowdham Grange had the most fires of all the prisons in England and Wales in the last calendar year.  Across the prison estate, 2,287 fires were recorded in 2023, 62% more than in 2022.

Then Prison Minister Ed Argar wrote that  

the overwhelming majority of the cell fires in prisons are classified as small and are quickly dealt with by staff. All prisons have an Arson Reduction Strategy which includes measures for managing prisoners who are known to present a risk of fire setting: these measures include strategic cell location, and control of access to ignition sources and combustible materials.

Current pressures on prison capacity are likely to impact the opportunities of strategic cell location. As for combustible materials , the IMB in another prison, Hindley, whose annual report was published this week, expressed concern that:

whilst the misting/sprinkler system deployed in the cell has been successful to date, it is only effective if the volume of combustible items within the cell are controlled. The Board have been aware of examples this year where prohibited items such as extra mattresses, electrical items (i.e. microwave and a heater) have been found in cells. In addition, some cells have a build-up of litter and other combustible materials deposited in the window grills. Much of this is plastic which if ignited will potentially produce dangerous gases with associated risk outcomes.

Argar promised in May that during this financial year the prison service will introduce an ignition-free Safer Vape Pen to replace the existing product, which is the source of approximately 80 per cent of fires set. While his successor James Timpson has a lot on his plate, he should ensure that this is done as a priority. Both the Inspectorate of Prisons and the IMB’s should also routinely scrutinise the data on fires in the prisons they monitor along with the measures in place to reduce and respond to them.

Intermediate Treatment

 

Not surprisingly, we’re seeing a plethora of proposals for new Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood about how to solve the prison crisis. If I was in her job, I’d be particularly attracted to the Howard League’s idea of returning responsibility for prisons and probation to the Home Office. But I think that’s unlikely and undesirable. Peter Hennessey rightly described the Home Office as the graveyard of liberal thinking since the days of Lord Sidmouth.

Most of the suggestions being floated by think tanks, charities and experts focus on reducing demand for prison places in the short term through early release. Implicit in many proposals is the notion that when the 20,000 new prison places are up and running in a few years’ time, some sort of equilibrium will be restored between supply and demand.

I’ve argued that a new way of developing policy about  who should go to prison and for how long, distanced from party political competition, might reverse the sharp rises in the custodial sentencing rate and length of prison terms we’ve seen in the last 14 years.

In addition we need to diversify the range of options that can be used as alternatives to prison.

Some of these are institutional alternatives. Many people in prison should be in hospital but thresholds for transfer and waiting times are both too high. The Justice Select Committee asked then Prisons minister Ed Argar about the number of available secure hospital beds for prisoners but doesn’t seem to have received a reply. There are simply not enough. 

Other prisoners could potentially be transferred to residential treatment facilities which are being expanded as part of the 10 year Drug Strategy.   

Other options include hostels and other supervised accommodation. From 2019 to 2023 the Approved Premise Expansion Programme delivered 169 additional beds, including opening 4 new Independent Approved Premises (83 beds) and 51 additional beds in dedicated premises for women.  But there’s a case for a much more ambitious increase in half way houses. It could be paid for by paring back the prison building plans to say 15,000.

Back in 2001, the sentencing review carried out by senior Civil Servant John Halliday recommended that the Home Office- they were responsible back then- should

“establish a review of the existing “intermediate estate” for accommodating and managing offenders in the community, with the aim of developing a strategic plan for its future use, staffing, management and development. The review should embrace all types of accommodation, whether owned by the prison or probation services, or the independent and voluntary sectors, and whether used for prisoners on temporary release; prisoners on conditional release; offenders serving community sentences; or ex-offenders receiving support voluntarily”.

I am not sure such a review was ever done – but it’s certainly needed now.

Three years after Halliday’s review, then Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that “satellite tracking technology could provide the basis for a 'prison without bars', potentially cutting prison overcrowding, and expensive accommodation”.  

Progress with electronic monitoring has been chequered during the intervening years. But the review should look at whether the role its currently playing is optimal or whether it can serve to manage security risks for people placed in non-secure accommodation- what Halliday called “containment in the community”.

 As well as the where of alternatives to prison, there’s a need to look at the how.

Back in 1979, I started work as a volunteer in IT- not computers (there weren’t many back then) -but Intermediate Treatment. With mixed results, I spent most of the next ten years trying to keep young people out of residential care homes, detention centres, Borstals and their institutional successors.

A generous description of the approach might be “eclectic”- camping trips, sports and drama sessions as much as counselling and groupwork. One troubled young man was placed on a ship in the Caribbean for several months, and an IT officer in a neighbouring area allegedly entered a crew into the Henley Regatta.

Quirky some of it might have been, but with relatively small caseloads, we were able to fashion a wide-ranging  package of therapeutic and constructive activities for each individual which would help give them the best chance of staying at home, at school or work and out of trouble. 

Of course there are resonances with the best of the approach in youth justice and even parts of probation today.  Theres a growing recognition that relationship based practice is a key to successful supervision and desistance from crime.

Practitioners need to have the opportunity and training to put that into practice so that more offenders can serve their sentences in the community and those that leave prison don’t go back. By enabling that to happen alongside a wider range of treatment and accommodation options, Ms Mahmood may be able not only to find a solution to the immediate crisis but chart a more positive long-term course.   She will need to work with her colleagues responsible for health and local government to make it happen.  Let's hope she does.  

Taking the Politics Out of Punishment

 

If the new government’s most urgent task on prisons is to navigate an immediate way through the current population crisis, they should also be considering ways to avoid a repetition in the future.

When last in power, Labour ministers reviewed how to improve the balance between the supply of prison places and demand for them.  Despite the 2007 recommendation for an effective, integrated and transparent planning mechanism that reconciles penal capacity with criminal justice policy, the institution which emerged after three years of wrangling – the Sentencing Council - has not been willing or able to fulfil that role.

Since then, Parliament and the courts have been busy willing the ends of more and longer prison sentences but not the means of enforcing them. Hence the recent flurry of measures to release prisoners early which Labour accepts it will have to keep in place in the short term if they form an administration. 

In the long term they should consider two options. First, the modest idea recommended by Parliament’s Justice Committee that policy proposals on sentencing should be subject to independent evaluation, so that the resourcing implications are recognised before they are enacted.  

When it’s introduced, most but not all criminal legislation is already accompanied by an impact assessment which estimates any need for additional prison or probation resources to implement it. The future prison population is projected annually.  So legislators know what’s coming. But knowledge of impending pressures in prisons have not stopped governments adding to them, rendering them unmanageable over the last year.

So something more is needed.  

Ten years ago, the British Academy argued that penal policy needs to be insulated from the short-term political and media pressures which so often prioritise populist initiatives over a principled and sustainable approach.  A Presumption against Imprisonment  recommended the creation of a Penal Policy Committee (PPC), accountable to Parliament, comprising wide representation and expertise. Distanced from party political competition, the PPC would develop and formulate the approach to who should go to prison and for how long.

Such an approach would take full account of the financial, social and ethical costs of prison as well as its practical availability.  The British Academy suggested that the Sentencing Council, working to a revised remit, would then be able to implement the policies on sentencing outlined by the PPC.

The Sentencing Council currently takes the view that “absent an explicit statutory remit” were it to seek, artificially and unilaterally, to raise or lower sentence levels without good cause it would rapidly lose the confidence of sentencers, the public and MPs.   Arguably within its current remit, the lack of prison places provides a good enough cause to lower sentence levels. But a new mandate would certainly be helpful    

Is this an idea whose time has come?

Within a week of winning the 1997 election, new Chancellor Gordon Brown announced the transfer of the task of setting interest rates to an independent body of experts in the Bank of England. Few now question the role of the Monetary Policy Committee. If such a body can determine fiscal policy, why not something similar in criminal justice? It should certainly be explored in Labour’s promised sentencing review.