The 1997-2010 Labour government constructed a huge criminal justice apparatus comprising mass imprisonment and myriad forms of coercion and supervision: ASBOs, electronic tagging, behaviour compacts, community punishments, complex post-prison licence conditions and so on. The ConDem Coalition is now determined to make budget cuts, but cannot dispense with all this without losing face and appearing ‘soft on crime’, so it is anxiously exploring ways to deliver it on the cheap. Nicki Jameson and Eric Allison report on the privatisation plans for the Probation and Prison Services.
PROBATION
On 9 January 2013, as part of its ‘Rehabilitation Revolution’, the government published a consultation paper Transforming Rehabilitation: a revolution in the way we manage offenders, setting out plans for 70% of the core work of the Probation Service to be put out to competitive tender. Private contractors will be responsible for supervising all low and medium risk offenders, while the state Probation Service will retain the supervision of those deemed high risk. Serco, Sodexho and G4S are among the companies involved in the bidding. Voluntary services will be invited to take part in the ‘payment by results’ scheme, but are unlikely to be able to compete because they do not have the cash to set up such schemes. So private sector companies are likely to have this potentially highly lucrative field to themselves
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling admitted the plans will not reduce re-offending rates overnight, but hopes the move will lead to a ‘steady year-by-year decline’. NAPO, the probation officers’ union, claims the move is ideological and represents the end for the 105-year-old service. The Labour Party, which embraced penal privatisation when in power, says ministers are taking a reckless gamble, using an ‘untested and untried payments by results model’.
Critics point to the failure of another Coalition ‘revolution’ – the flagship welfare-to-work programme. Under this scheme, rolled out in 2011, firms and charities are paid to find work for the long term unemployed. But figures released last November showed that of the 878,000 people who joined the programme only 31,000 found a job for six months or more.
Ministers point to high reoffending rates to justify the new measures and use the example of short-term prisoners to make their case. The figures are indeed high: last year, 70,000 people received prison terms of 12 months or less. Almost 70% of them were back inside within weeks of being discharged. NAPO correctly says the use of these figures is unfair, as the Probation Service has no responsibility for this group.
The Probation Service has its roots in religion. In the latter part of the 18th century, the Church of England Temperance Society appointed a selection of missionaries to the London Police Courts. Soon after, offenders began to be released into the community on the understanding they kept in touch with an appointed missionary. In 1907, an act of parliament appointed probation officers to continue the practice.
Those days, when probation officers were known as the prisoner’s friend, are long gone, and the thousands of prisoners recalled to prison for breaching the terms of their licences – some for mind-bogglingly trivial reasons – would no doubt say that with friends like these, who needs enemies? From a service whose role was supposed to be assisting those coming out of prison with reintegration and rehabilitation, advising on education, employment, and housing, probation officers have become simply another part of the policing apparatus. Many prisoners will therefore be delighted that probation officers are losing their jobs and will have little sympathy with their replacement by the low-paid employees of private contractors.
Eric Allison
PRISONS
On 10 January Grayling announced plans to build a new 2,000 place prison and to expand four other prisons, whilst closing or partially closing nine old Victorian gaols.
Grayling became Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor in September 2012, replacing Kenneth Clarke, who had held the post since the Coalition came to power in 2010. Whether Clarke was considered too soft or he simply wasn’t cutting quickly enough for Cameron and Clegg is not clear. In contrast to Clarke’s perceived liberalism, Grayling – who was previously Employment Minister – had the reputation of being a right-wing ‘attack dog’.
The latest cost-cutting plans revolve around the concentration of imprisonment into fewer facilities, the majority of which are privately built and run. Grayling’s aim is clear: ‘My intention is to have more adult male prison capacity available than we had in 2010 but at a much lower unit and overall cost…Last year we opened a significant amount of new accommodation including 1,600 places at HMP Oakwood in the West Midlands. The average cost at Oakwood is £13,200 per place. This is less than half the average cost of existing prison places, and sets the benchmark for future costs.’
Oakwood prison opened in April 2012 and is run by infamous giant company G4S. Although G4S lost its contract to run The Wolds prison in Humberside in November 2012 and has been excluded from the final round of bidding for the other prison contracts currently out to tender, it is still a major player in imprisonment in Britain, and will continue to be as long as it can house prisoners at reduced cost to the state. In October 2012, a prisoner who had been at Oakwood since June wrote in Inside Time:
‘…there seems to have been no planning for the arrival of actual prisoners…As we 9 were processed through “admissions” we asked for prison kit. “You are supposed to provide your own clothes” was the answer. We were reluctantly provided with sweatshirts and jogging bottoms and were told that other kit, ie boxers, socks and shirts would be provided on the wings. Three months later we are still waiting…as are 800 other prisoners because G4S didn’t plan for the cost of providing prison kit!
‘…there are 236 jobs in the jail for 800+ prisoners and more prisoners are arriving at a rate of 20 per day…The “mega” wages we were promised work out at £7, £8 and £9 per week for Basic, Standard and Enhanced. Kitchen workers get £12.50 per week and the food is disgusting as it is sub-contracted to another private company, Aramark. Servery workers get no training, no PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and there are no food temperature or cleaning records kept. Temperature probes and PPE are costs that were not planned for, nor are cleaning materials.
‘We are issued with one sheet and one pillow case and must wash them in the second-hand washing machine on the wings. We are allowed to order bedding and clothing from catalogues, at extortionate prices, but not allowed them sent or handed in – this would cut into the profit of G4S and their shareholders.
‘There seems to be no system set up to deal with daily applications or complaints…Of the 9 prisoners in my intake all 9 have now applied for transfers anywhere but here, but G4S can’t let us leave or they will lose the money that the government gives them… Staff are assaulted regularly, due to the frustration of this place, but the perpetrators never get shipped out because each one of us represents a cash return for G4S and they cannot afford to lose any of us.’
G4S also runs Parc prison in Wales, which along with Peterborough (run by Sodexho), Thameside (Serco) and state-run The Mount, is earmarked by Grayling for the building of new houseblocks which will provide 1,260 new prison places.
This will allow the government to close Bullwood Hall, Kingston, Canterbury, Shepton Mallet, Gloucester and Shrewsbury prisons and to partially close Chelmsford, Hull and one of the three prisons in the Isle of Wight ‘cluster’. The majority of these are medium-sized 19th-century prisons located in towns and cities. Currently, Kingston and Shepton Mallett house only prisoners serving life sentences, while since 2007 Bullwood Hall and Canterbury have held only foreign national prisoners. While closing them is undoubtedly a good thing, the effect on the families and friends of any prisoners from the areas where they are located, and who now have to travel long distances to visit, will be devastating.
The Prison Officers Association opposes these plans, not out of any concern for prisoners or their families, but in order to protect its members’ jobs. Darling of left Labourites John McDonnell MP put an early day motion to parliament complaining that ‘seven of Her Majesty’s prisons…are to be closed at a time when the prison population is high and prisons are already overcrowded [which] will put further pressure on remaining prisons, make rehabilitating prisoners more difficult and put safety at risk…as well as damaging prison services it will lead to massive job losses harming the economies of the local communities where the prisons are based’. Meanwhile, Labour Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan – who opposes votes for prisoners and has consistently taken a stance further to the right than the Coalition on criminal justice policy – spoke against the loss of any prison places at all.
Closing old prisons and concentrating prisoners into new, larger institutions run privately and on the cheap is just one of a range of current ConDem tactics aimed at resolving the conundrum we have described in previous articles in FRFI.* The Coalition’s relentless drive to cut public spending means less money is available for the machinery of punishment; however this same programme of cuts is viciously attacking the working class and the resultant desperation and resistance mean that the government cannot allow itself to reduce prison capacity. At the start of 2013 the prison population has only just begun to drop after increasing week on week ever since the 2011 uprisings; this year will see the harshest cuts yet and further militant resistance is clearly on the agenda.
Nicki Jameson
Prison visiting at Full Sutton made harder by bus company cuts
Full Sutton prison is described as being in York; however it is actually 12 miles from York City Centre. Currently, visitors can get to the prison from York Railway Station on East Yorkshire bus route 747 which leaves the station at 12.45 pm and returns from the prison at 16.10 pm on Monday to Saturday. East Yorkshire Buses have now announced that as part of ‘improving buses in the York area…Service 747 will also be changing. From 28 January the late afternoon short journey from Full Sutton Prison to York will no longer run.’
This means that there will now be no way to do that journey if you do not have a private car, other than paying £25 for a cab.
Complain to: East Yorkshire Motor Services Ltd, 252 Anlaby Road, Hull HU3 2RS Tel: 01482 327142 Fax: 01482 217614 Email: [email protected]
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 231 February-March 2013
