Prison Places : Emergency Measures and Long Term Sustainability

 

I’m currently involved in work on a strategy to prevent and combat prison overcrowding. Its themes are familiar enough - keeping people out of prison through more diversion, less pre-trial detention, and better community based sanctions; encouraging shorter and more consistent sentences; and developing opportunities for safe and, where necessary supervised, early release.  

Yes, there’s a strand on developing the prison estate, but much more focus is on reducing demand for prison places than increasing their supply – and on the need for better planning and coordination across the criminal justice system.  

Needless to say the work is not in the UK but in Eastern Europe. But as England and Wales runs out of prison space, the strategy could be useful closer to home once it’s finalised next month.

None of the short- term options for the government here to deal with the crisis they face are palatable. The one announced so far- delaying sentencing people who have been on bail -must look the least bad and should produce an immediate impact on receptions in prison. If that happens, in some cases it might be possible for the Probation service to use the time to fashion a community based sentence that avoids the need for prison altogether.

What else could be done? About a thousand people a month enter prison serving sentences of six months or less. Suspending more short sentences could reduce demand in local prisons. But many short term prisoners have long histories of offending and have, for whatever reason, not responded well to community supervision.

One reason may be the parlous state of probation which, like the prison service to which it is nowadays organisationally yoked, is lacking staff, and performing poorly.  Electronic tagging too has failed to fulfil its potential and has faced some logistical problems.  Despite this, making yet more prisoners eligible for Home Detention Curfew at the end of their sentence could be on the cards.  

Freeing prisoners a few weeks early would certainly create headroom and Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk may have to announce it when he faces MPs on Monday. But he will be reluctant to reintroduce anything too much like Labour’s End of Custody Licence which from 2007-10 gave prisoners serving less than four years a further 18 days off the length of their sentence. The Conservatives said at the time the scheme  “risks public safety, sends the wrong message to criminals and further undermines confidence in sentencing”. But it freed up 1,200 much needed places.

Other countries use a range of measures to reduce prison pressures, most of which one can’t see working here. The Coronation in May would have been the time for an amnesty of some kind but I dare say it didn’t cross anyone’s mind. In 2012 Brazil gave prisoners the chance to cut their sentence by 48 days if they read 12 works of literature. But administering any schemes which directly reward individual prisoners with time off for work, education or rehabilitation can give rise to unfairness and take up staff time.

Norway used to allow certain prisoners to wait at home before starting to serve their sentence- the so called queuing system. Research found it allowed prisoners to prepare for their imprisonment, but they suffered uncertainty and powerlessness. Political pressure to end the queue led to the deal to rent space abroad which Chalk quoted in last week’s surprise announcement of a similar plan here.   

Whatever steps are taken to get through the immediate crisis, a more sustainable approach is surely needed for the future.

Labour’s answer in 2007 was the Sentencing Council which it hoped “would provide a more effective, integrated and transparent planning mechanism that reconciles prison capacity with criminal justice policy.” That role was effectively removed from its mandate, and it has done little to slow the seemingly inexorable process of sentence inflation. It needs to play a much more leading role in doing so.

Greater sustainability could also be achieved through Justice Reinvestment - a more devolved approach to the organisation and funding of prison and probation which incentivises local agencies and organisations to prevent crime and reduce demand for imprisonment.   The House of Commons Justice Select Committee produced an excellent report on it 2009 which argued that “the prison population could be safely capped at current levels and then reduced over a specified period to a safe and manageable level likely to be about two thirds of the current population.”

Whoever forms the next government should dust it off.