Instead of Titans
The House Magazine
8 June 2009
This Government have not done much, if anything at all, to increase public confidence in the criminal justice system. They have a great deal to answer for and either this year or next they will have to face the public at a general election. They should explain their dreadful record of endless, inept, purposeless criminal justice legislation (over 60 statutes to do with crime have been before Parliament since 1997 and an additional 3,000 offences invented), the constant messing about with the Probation Service, the undermining of the jury system and of the lay magistracy, their squabbling with prison officers, the squalid and counter-productive overcrowding of our prisons, the creation of the National Offender Management Service at vast expense producing little public benefit, the introduction of fixed penalty notices issued by the police in respect of not just parking and minor motoring offences but serious assaults and theft as well, the faltering criminal charging system used by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
That said, just about the only welcome announcement made by this Government in the area of criminal justice has been their U turn on the building of 3 Titan prisons designed, at minimum, to hold 2,500 inmates each. They said they would ease overcrowding and were intended to be designed as cheaply as possible with room to increase the numbers held. In fact they were no more than human warehouses and would have been as volatile as a powder keg next to an oil store. If you need to increase prison capacity, and we do, Titans are not the answer. The Government’s decision is welcome if long overdue. However many will suspect that this sudden conversion on Titans is really just cover to delay or dilute the Government’s pledge to provide the additional 15,000 places we need by 2014. Why, for example, has the Government only announced 2 of the planned 5 sites?
Prisons should be places where offenders can be housed safely and securely and prison officers and other staff can work safely and enjoy professional job satisfaction. Overcrowding is the rock on which the whole system is presently foundering. It is behind the continuing high level of prisoner suicides and self-harm, the increased number of assaults on staff, and the utter failure adequately to rehabilitate offenders. With the reoffending rate at over 60% within 2 years of release and half of all crime committed by those who have already been through the criminal justice system, the status quo is not an option. What’s more, re-offences by ex-prisoners cost the taxpayer at least £12bn per year. That represents a waste of money and a waste of lives that need to be better directed.
In our policy paper, Prisons with a Purpose, written by Nick Herbert and me and published in March 2008, we set out plans for replacing over time and as economic conditions permit the old, inner city prison estate with new facilities and to increase capacity by more than 5,000 places over and above Labour’s plans. The answer is to build more but smaller prisons although we also now need to be on our guard that the Government’s replacement proposal to build 5 prisons that can accommodate 1500 inmates, instead of Titans, does not permit them to create more problems than they will solve.
These places should be in smaller, local and more manageable prisons that will provide safer environments for prison staff, ensure that offenders of both sexes (in separate prisons) and of all ages are held closer to their families, and encourage a focus on the effective rehabilitation of prisoners (as the Criminal Justice Alliance, HM Inspector of Prisons and many others will testify). We will launch ‘a rehabilitation revolution’ inside prisons, engaging with the Prison Service, the probation services and the voluntary and private sectors to ensure prisoners do real work, get off drugs, undergo relevant training and appropriate education. By reducing the numbers of crimes committed we can then see a reduction in the prison estate.
If there is one new factor that is hindering the reform of our prisons beyond overcrowding it is the recession. But whilst our schedule for reform may be extended our determination to mend the prison system is undimmed.
