On 21 October 2014, the Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick published his annual report into prisons in England and Wales for the period 2013-14. The report is a damning indictment of an unsafe, overcrowded system, in which the level of self-inflicted death is the highest for ten years. NICKI JAMESON reports.
Punishment on the cheap
In the February/March 2013 issue of FRFI we reported on the plans of Justice Minister and Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling, who in September 2012 had replaced the more liberal Ken Clarke. While Clarke had intended to cut costs by cutting prison places, Grayling’s aim was ‘to have more adult male prison capacity available than we had in 2010 but at a much lower unit and overall cost…’ (‘Delivering punishment on the cheap’, FRFI 231).
In line with this agenda, having already made massive cuts to the prison budget, 2013-14 saw further cuts of £274m. Much of this has been achieved by closing smaller, older prisons and warehousing vast numbers of prisoners in new, mainly privately-run prisons, such as Oakwood (run by G4S – capacity 1,605) and Thameside (Serco – 900). There are now 29 prisons which each hold more than 1,000 male prisoners.
Overcrowded
On 10 October 2014, the prison population in England and Wales was 84,485. The imprisonment rate of England and Wales is 149 per 100,000 of the population; in Scotland it is 147 per 100,000. This does not include those held in police stations, immigration detention centres or secure mental hospitals. Twenty years ago, the average prison population was 48,621; while the current ConDem government and previous Tory administrations bear some responsibility, the main culprit for the near-doubling of the numbers of people incarcerated is the 1997-2010 Labour government, which created 3,600 new criminal offences and introduced the invidious system of ‘indefinite sentences for public protection’.
At the end of September 2014, 80 of the 118 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded. In 2013-14 an average of 19,383 prisoners were held in overcrowded accommodation, accounting for 23% of the total prison population. On average throughout the year 18,515 prisoners (22% of the total prison population) were sharing cells designed for one occupant. (Figures from Prison Reform Trust Bromley Briefing, Autumn 2014.)
The inspectorate report describes overcrowded conditions reminiscent of those of the 1980s, which in part led to the 1990 uprising at Strangeways and other prisons:
‘Two-thirds of the prisons we reported on during the year as a whole were overcrowded. At its worst, overcrowding meant two prisoners sharing a six foot by 10 foot cell designed for one, with bunks along one wall, a table and chair for one, some shelves, a small TV, an unscreened toilet at the foot of the bunks, little ventilation and a sheet as a makeshift curtain. A few prisoners might spend 23 hours a day in such a cell – 20 hours was relatively common in a local prison. Prisoners would eat most of their meals in their cell.’
The most overcrowded prison visited by the inspectorate during the year was Wandsworth, where 1,223 prisoners were held in cells designed to accommodate 712. Swansea prison in Wales, which was not inspected during 2013-14, is even more overcrowded, in September 2014 holding 449 prisoners in accommodation designed to hold 242.
As the report states: ‘Overcrowding is not simply an issue of prisoners being doubled-up in cells designed for one but means that the purposeful activities, rehabilitation programmes and other services and facilities are insufficient for the size of the population.’
Unsafe and inhumane
Since the publication of its 1999 report ‘Suicide is everyone’s concern’, the inspectorate has marked prisons against a series of criteria to determine whether they can be described as a ‘healthy prison’. While all prisons are generally unhealthy places, it is clear that the current situation is deteriorating:
‘The safety outcomes we reported on in 2013–14 declined significantly from the previous year. Safety outcomes were worst in adult male local prisons and not good enough in a third of all the prisons inspected… Critical risk assessments for new prisoners, at their most vulnerable time in custody, had gaps. Too many prisoners in crisis were held in segregation in poor conditions and without the exceptional circumstances required to justify this.’
‘At Bronzefield…we found one woman who had been held in segregation for over five years in poor conditions and without adequate daily activity – we judged this to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. At Drake Hall, we criticised the use of a gated cell in the segregation unit for women in self-harm crisis.’
‘In some prisons, we also found prisoners too frightened to leave their cells due to real or perceived threats of violence, often with little contact with any staff and feelings of abandonment.’
The number of suicides rose by 69% from 52 in 2012–13 to 88 in 2013–14, the highest figure in 10 years. Incidents of self-harm have also increased, particularly among male prisoners, and the number of assaults involving adult male prisoners increased by 14% on the year before and was the highest for any year for which data exists. There was a 38% rise in the number of serious assaults.’
‘Increases in self-inflicted deaths, self-harm and violence cannot be attributed to a single cause…Nevertheless…it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the conjunction of resource, population and policy pressures… was a very significant factor in the rapid deterioration in safety and other outcomes we found as the year progressed… The rise in the number of self-inflicted deaths was the most unacceptable feature of this. It is important that the bald statistics do not disguise the dreadful nature of each incident and the distress caused to the prisoner’s family, other prisoners and staff. It is a terrible toll.’
Desperate
While major disturbances in prisons are usually reported in the news, there is little or no coverage of the very frequent small or individual acts of, sometimes desperate, protest which take place. Presumably in order to avoid using terms such as ‘protest’ the Prison Service describes these as ‘incidents at height’. The inspectorate report records that:
‘The number of incidents at height in adult male prisons increased dramatically in the year…There are many reasons for this but we find they often involve prisoners clambering onto the netting or railings attached to wing landings in the hope they will be taken to segregation and then “shipped out” of the prison to somewhere they feel safer, where the conditions appear better or where they will be closer to home. Some appear to be protests about the IEP [Incentives and Earned Privileges] scheme.’
Young people in prison
Unlike the prison population as a whole, the number of imprisoned children and young people (under 21) has decreased in recent years, falling from 3,451 in 2002-03 to 1,708 in 2012-13 and 1,334 in 2013-14. However, the conditions within young offender institutions (YOIs) have not improved, and if anything, have deteriorated, with the climate throughout the prisons holding young men being one of all-round violence, in which warring prisoners are confronted by thuggish staff:
‘In all establishments, there were fights and assaults almost every day. At the boys’ site at Feltham we watched CCTV of very violent group attacks on individuals… At Warren Hill there were 137 assaults on young people, 48 assaults on staff and 112 fights in the six months before the inspection.
‘We were also particularly concerned by the unprecedented frequency of the drawing of batons against young adults at Feltham. In some cases this was disproportionate to the incident, and it seemed to have become a routine response.’
41% of YOI prisoners and 43% of those detained in ‘Secure Training Centres’ are black or minority ethnic, a far higher figure than for the adult prison system. A third have been in local authority care.
Immigration detention
The number of people held in immigration removal centres in Britain has steadily increased, with a total of over 30,000 detained in 2013. At any one time, up to 3,000 people can be imprisoned. The inspectorate reports that the handcuffing of male detainees was ‘thoughtlessly routine, regardless of risk’. This resulted in ‘the appalling incidents when one elderly, confused man died in handcuffs and another man was kept cuffed while sedated and undergoing an angioplasty in hospital and died just after the handcuffs were removed.’
Prison regimes
On top of all this, due to a mixture of cost-cutting and Grayling’s drive to render the system more overtly punitive, prison regimes have become far harsher and starker in the recent period:
- The food budget was reduced from £2.20 per prisoner per day in 2012 to £1.96 a day in 2013.
- The new version of the ‘privileges’ scheme which was introduced in December 2013 prevents prisoners receiving parcels from outside, restricts access to a wide range of items and makes it far more difficult to obtain the ‘enhanced’ privilege level, on which prisoners can wear their own clothes, receive longer and more frequent visits and spend more money in the prison canteen.
- Using the excuse of a few high-profile cases in which prisoners have committed crime while released on temporary licence (ROTL) from open prisons, since May there have been increased restrictions, with further measures in the pipeline, including plans to electronically tag those on temporary release. However, as the report points out: ‘The number of prisoners who fail ROTL is extremely low. Figures from the Ministry of Justice for 2012 show that fewer than 1% of releases on temporary licence were recorded as failures, and the proportion of recorded failures resulting from an arrest while on licence was 6.1% [of that 1%], or around five arrests per 100,000 releases on temporary licence.’
Shooting the messenger
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons was set up in 1981 following the May Report into British prisons, published in 1979. The Chief Inspector’s role is to be an independent watchdog, although he or she is appointed by the Home Office. As is the case with the Prison and Probation Ombudsman, there is constant tension between the inspectorate and the Home Office, as while neither of these monitoring bodies is anywhere near as critical as most prisoners and their supporters would like, they are still way too critical for the government. Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw ensured that Sir David Ramsbotham, the Chief Inspector from 1995 to 2001, who was highly critical of prison regimes under both the Tory and Labour governments, did not have his contract renewed, and commentators suggest that Grayling has the same termination of employment in line for Nick Hardwick. Hardwick is no radical but the state of British prisons today is such that even the most compliant of inspectors would be hard-pushed to cover this up.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 242 December 2014/January 2015
