Why the Punitive (Re)Turn?

Why is the prison population increasing? Latest projections show numbers in custody are likely to increase by 1600 – at least one new prison’s worth – by 2022. The main reason is not that more and more people are being caught and punished for criminal offences. It’s that higher and higher proportions of those who are, nowadays receive custodial sentences. And their prison terms are getting longer. Both trends are confirmed in the latest criminal justice statistics. These show that it’s not only sexual and violent offenders who are facing tougher sanctions in court. Less than a quarter of people convicted for theft in 2010 went to jail but last year it was almost 30%. Average prison terms as a whole have gone up from 13.7 to 16.6 months over the last seven years.

It’s possible that courts are seeing more serious cases or more prolific offenders than before. That’s difficult to know in the absence of detailed research. But the halving of the cautioning rate – the proportion of offenders who were either cautioned or convicted who received a caution- suggest that many more low level cases came to court in 2016 than 2010.

There are other more likely explanations for this new punitive turn. The dismantling of the probation service may have made non-custodial sentences it supervises less attractive to judges and magistrates. Since 2010 the proportion of indictable only crimes- the most serious- dealt with by a community order or suspended sentence fell from a quarter to a fifth. For either way offences, market share for these two disposals fell from 42% to 37%.

Another culprit may be the Sentencing Council. A recent analysis has found that the guideline it produced on burglary offences in 2011 may have inadvertently encouraged courts to deal more severely with all types of breaking and entering. Although the Council did not intend to inflate the going rate, expanding the definition of the loss to the victim in such cases and creating a long list of factors signalling greater culpability by the offender seems to have pushed courts to punish offences more harshly than before.   As I argued in a report for Transform Justice last year, the Council has not only failed to curb the growth in imprisonment-its original purpose. It may have made matters worse.

A poll published this week confirmed what has long been known- that the public is much less punitive than is often supposed. Asked what they believe would be most effective in cutting crime, more police on the streets, better parenting, greater discipline in schools and better rehabilitation all score highest. Just 7% of the public think the answer is more people in prison.  Yet without some bold policy making in the Ministry of Justice, that’s just what we are going to get.

    

Fired Up about Prison Reform

It’s less than 18 months since David Cameron cast prison reform as “a great progressive cause in British politics”. His vision was for “the leadership team of a prison to be highly-motivated, to be entrepreneurial and to be fired up about their work”. The President of the Prison Governors Association is certainly fired up alright but less with enthusiasm than exasperation. I can’t recall such a broadside being delivered by a public servant to her bosses- nor one that is so (almost) wholly justified- as that which was delivered by Andrea Albutt today.

Cameron’s hubristic vision of a modern, more effective, truly 21^st century prison system looks as far away as ever. The levels of violence, drug-taking and self-harm which he thought should shame us all in February 2016 have continued to soar.

So what’s gone wrong? Three things. First was the failure- wilful or otherwise - to see the severity of the impact which budget reductions would make on the stability of prisons.  There was never really a “Golden Years pre austerity” as Andrea Albutt has put it. But all too often, “too great a degree of tolerance of poor standards and of risk” as Robert Francis QC said of Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust. Such a tolerance was one of the reasons why numerous warning signs did not alert the health system to developing problems in Mid Staffs. The same is true of many prisons which were never truly stable enough to withstand the level of cutbacks, particularly when Ken Clarke’s efforts to reduce the population were shelved.   

Second the government applied a formula approach to reform which ignored some of the distinctive challenges of prisons. Cameron promised to "bring the academies model that has revolutionised our schools to the prisons system". It was a mistake. An approach is needed that recognises that individual prisons cannot float free in the same way as schools and their customers have no choice over which establishment they attend. Given the risk averseness of government, whatever ministers may say, innovation is always likely to be closely controlled from the centre. The so called empowerment agenda has, says Andrea Albutt, yet to gain any traction, with governors now accounting both to their headquarters and the Ministry- the result of a ‘perverse’ severance of policy from operations which has so far added cost but little benefit.

Third there has been an optimism bias about the reform agenda. I’m not sure whether Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is still in vogue, but it should have been obvious that without safety and security, loftier ambitions about rehabilitation have no chance of success, however flowery the rhetoric. Too many stakeholders have been taken for a ride. The National Audit Office for example, will presumably look back with some embarrassment on their 2013 assessment that "the strategy for the prison estate is the most coherent and comprehensive for many years, has quickly cut operating costs, and is a significant improvement in value for money on the approaches of the past". Their view that the Ministry of Justice make good use of forecasts of prisoner numbers and have good contingency plans is flatly contradicted by the PGA’s view that the recent rise in the population, unforeseen by the statisticians in MOJ, has left virtually no headroom in prison spaces.

So what to do? First to stabilise the population, create that headroom and make a dent on overcrowding, some kind of early release scheme should be introduced while longer term plans to reduce the population are put in place. There’s no shortage of ways of doing that -only a shortage of political courage to do so. The new Secretary of State for Justice needs to show that. 

Second, some structural changes. Shifting responsibility for juveniles out of the MOJ and prisons into the education ministry; a Youth Justice Board for young adults, a new body to deliver alternative accommodation for elderly prisoners. Devolving financial responsibilities for prisons to local areas.  They won’t produce quick fixes but could help take the pressure off an overburdened prison system in the medium to long term. 

Finally, capable prison governors working in Whitehall should be returned to the front line and experienced staff who have left the service in the last five years lured back into it whatever it takes. Plans to recruit more and better qualified staff are promising but will take time the service has not got.  Some of the capital resources intended to build new prisons should be converted to revenue to pay for staff .There is growing scepticism that the £1.3 billion secured from the Treasury for new prisons can be spent by 2020. Some of it should be used to repair the current arrangements rather than establishing new ones.

In less than three months, the largest annual gathering of international prison professionals takes place in London for a week of discussions about “Innovation in Rehabilitation: Building Better Futures”. Its focus is on improving outcomes for prisoners. But that won’t happen unless they are improved for prisons first.