Old, New, Borrowed, Blue

 

As someone said about Russian novels, today’s Prisons Strategy White Paper is something of a loose baggy monster.  It contains the usual mix of broad assertions - “having an effective prison system is central to the Government’s mission to level up the country” and detailed info (594 staff, 154 drugs dogs and over 200 archway and handheld metal detectors are involved in enhanced gate security).

The strategy covers action over the next two years and a longer-term ten-year vision. Despite its range, there are some curious omissions: nothing on youth custody (something of a mess at the moment), and very little on countering violent extremism. Nor is there much I can see on tackling racial disparity. On the plus side, comments are invited by February on a set of questions. The Ministry of Justice seem happier to consult on how people are managed in custody than on how long they should stay there.

Reading through the White Paper provides a fair bit of déjà vu.

There’s yet another outing for prison league tables, proposed back in 2016 “to show which prisons are making real progress in getting offenders off drugs and developing the education and skills they need to get work”. And a further plan to empower governors, more than five years after PM David Cameron vowed to give them “unprecedented operational and financial autonomy” trusting them to get on and run their jail in the way they see fit. Will these old chestnuts come any closer to implementation than last time round? The plans seem a bit more granular than before – (yes, the strategy includes that ghastly term) - but no mention is made of why earlier efforts didn’t get off the ground.

There is something new in terms of ideas (or perhaps just labels) – Resettlement Passports which sensibly collate the documents prisoners need on release; a Prisoner Education Service to try yet again to breathe life into a poorly structured and long under performing part of the system; and an innovation task force to identify and pilot new ways of reducing violence and self-harm. There are promising suggestions of more IT access for prisoners and staff which is way overdue.

By contrast, an ambition of the purported new approach to women’s prisons, should surely not be to introduce “smaller, trauma responsive custodial environments for women on short sentences” but to develop the necessary measures in the community to keep these women out of prison altogether.

It’s encouraging that the strategy borrows from the women’s estate the idea of providing trauma informed training for staff in men’s prisons and a welcome acknowledgement of  the scale of neurodiversity.  It's still jarring to read that "around half the prison population have suffered a traumatic brain injury." 

Borrowing the idea of employment advisers and hubs in prisons could help make a difference to job prospects on release.

It’s less clear whether fast track adjudications – for which the strategy prays in aid the concept of procedural justice- will in fact be perceived as fair by prisoners who find “their case diverted straight to the punishment phase more quickly". It will also be worth watching closely how prisons apply the lessons of lockdown. It may be true that “mass unstructured social time can make some prisoners feel unsafe and can inhibit the ability of staff to manage risks of violence and bullying”. But this shouldn’t mean more time behind the cell door becoming a norm.

What’s blue? Depressing certainly is the £4 billion investment in 20,000 new prison places. Yes, six new prisons will serve to modernise the estate. But there is no mention of "new for old". These are additional to not replacements for a crumbling set of buildings, needed because of a policy choice to lock up more people for longer. 

Back in 2016, Cameron thought “politicians from all sides of the political spectrum are starting to realise the diminishing returns from ever higher levels of incarceration”. On that, sadly, he was wrong. Where he was right was to pose the question: "wouldn’t we be better to focus our scarce resources on preventing crime in the first place and by breaking the cycle of re-offending"? 

That’s not answered here, nor even properly asked.