Between 16 March 2020 and 28 February 2021, 118 prisoners in 54 prisons in England and Wales died of Covid-19, according to government figures published on 15 March 2021. Another 43 people who had been released from prison on probation licence also died of Covid during the same period.
Of these deaths, 49 occurred before July 2020 in the first wave of the pandemic, and the remaining 112 since September 2020 in the second wave. The highest number in a single month (36) was recorded in February 2021. Whilst held in check to an extent during the early months of the pandemic, the past six months have seen the virus tear through the prison system.
A study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine on 16 March 2021 explains that the incidence of Covid death in prison is more than three times that among people of the same age and sex in the general population, describing this as ‘unsurprising given the number of outbreaks in recent months. 107 (85%) of 126 prison or Youth Custody Service sites in England and Wales reported cases in January 2021 alone, between them representing over 4,000 new cases. Some of these outbreaks have involved hundreds of cases, and local areas containing prisons often have the highest overall rates of Covid-19 in England.’
Prison Service fails to prevent spread
A year ago, on 22 March 2020 The Observer reported that: ‘Provisional estimates from epidemiologists at University College London suggest that uncontrolled outbreaks of infection could lead to the deaths of up to 1% of the prison population but that this could be substantially reduced if steps are taken to protect elderly prisoners and those with chronic illnesses.’
Since then, the Prison Service has failed to prevent the spread of Covid in prisons, particularly in the second wave of the pandemic, whilst simultaneously using it as a pretext to keep prisoners in almost permanent lockdown conditions. This is the worst of all worlds and the toll it has taken on the mental and physical health of the men, women and children behind bars is huge. In the June/July 2020 issue of FRFI, we described pandemic prison life: ‘When people outside prison refer to the hardships of “lockdown”, little of what they are experiencing compares to actually being locked down in a prison, confined to your cell for 23 and a half hours a day. All social and legal visits have been cancelled; all prison courses have stopped; prison work other than essential cleaning has been put on hold; there is no access to the library or gym, and outside exercise in most prisons has been cut to half an hour a day, with some not even providing that, despite this being unlawful. Prison healthcare and mental health support, which are poor at the best of times, have been reduced to the barest minimum. In essence, the majority of prisoners are simply banged up for very nearly the whole of the day, every day.’ In the following issue, we reported on the sadistic joy which the Prison Officers Association took from the increased control which prison lockdown gave its members over the lives of those supposedly within their care.
Since the start of the pandemic, 14,480 prisoners have tested positive for Covid across 127 prisons. Every adult prison has had at least one prisoner testing positive, with 45 prisons having over 100 prisoners testing positive. Despite a plethora of guidance on ‘cohorting’ and other strategies to minimise spread, the system’s response has been simultaneously lax and punitive. It has also been incoherent, with guidance on face coverings for prisoners stating both that they will be punished for not wearing them when required and for wearing them if in a place not designated as a mask-wearing zone. Prisoners report testing negative and being kept in total lockdown for two weeks, while others with symptoms are not given tests and continue to leave their cells to do cleaning and servery work. The ‘early release’ scheme introduced last April was closed down again in August after a derisory 275 prisoners, most of whom had under two months to their release date, were let out of prison. Rather than expand such measures to reduce the number of people locked up, the government expanded its capacity to hold more people within the system on the premise that this would provide more space for self-isolation.
Hidden scandal of recall, remand and immigration prisoners
As we have previously reported, despite the government’s failure to release any significant number of prisoners, the prison population has dropped over the past year, mainly due to delays in sentencing people on bail to prison terms. On 19 March 2021 there were 78,081 people locked up in criminal prisons in England and Wales, as opposed to 83,709 12 months earlier.
The overall drop in numbers hides various scandals related to who is actually in prison who could easily be released, as they are not serving the main term of a custodial sentence. The system contains 1,895 men and women serving the invidious Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection, who have never been released, despite their minimum term for punishment long having expired, and a further 1,357, who have been recalled to prison for breaching their licence. There are also vast number of prisoners who have been recalled on licences following short sentences: 8,931 people serving a sentence of less than 12 months were recalled to prison in the year to June 2020, and on 30 September 2020, there were 9,250 people in prison recalled from licence.
The prison system holds in the region of 11,000 remand prisoners, either awaiting court hearings to determine their guilt or awaiting sentence. Delays to the court process have resulted in a situation whereby, despite the government extending the time limit that a person can be remanded in custody before a Crown Court trial from 182 days to 238 days, thousands of prisoners are still being held beyond the legal time limit. Figures revealed following a Freedom of Information Act request by the campaign group Fair Trials revealed that, as of December 2020, 3,608 people had been held for six months or longer, 2,551 of them for eight months or longer.
At the end of June 2020, there were 809 people held in criminal prisons purely under immigration law, having completed their custodial sentences. Many of them were not contesting their deportation but were stuck in prison in this country because of the cancellation of flights due to the pandemic, and could easily have been released on bail.
Nicki Jameson
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 281 April/May 2021
