British prisons are in continuous crisis, as the rate of punishment outstrips the places available for incarceration. Despite an extensive and costly building programme, the system is still massively overcrowded, with the Prison Service having to borrow spare places from the police in order to warehouse some of those being locked up in ever greater numbers. Conditions within all prisons are appalling, and especially in the old and crumbling 19th century institutions. Use of pandemic-style lockdown measures persists. Nicki Jameson reports.
As of 22 September 2023, the prison population of England and Wales stood at 87,965. This is almost double what it was 20 years ago, when some 44,200 prisoners were behind bars, and 9,117 more than recommended under the Ministry of Justice’s own ‘safety and decency’ criteria. There are 7,807 people in prison in Scotland. The imprisonment figures do not include those held in immigration removal centres or secure mental hospitals. Many tens of thousands more are under probation supervision and can be recalled to prison at any time.
There is repeated talk from commentators across the political spectrum of the problems being caused by a lack of available prison places and a lack of prison staff. Even the liberal reformers of The Observer, Howard League etc are sucked into this idea that more prison staff would somehow make prisoners’ lives better, and that what is needed is yet more money invested in imprisonment. They continue to parrot this despite the prison officers’ union having been jubilant during the pandemic about the increased power to keep prisoners in their cells for 23 hours a day and it continuing to demand more weaponry, such as tasers, to use even on child prisoners.
Liberal commentators routinely call for an end to the imprisonment of non-violent offenders serving short sentences. Clearly, this is a sensible demand in itself: repeatedly imprisoning people for the petty crimes of poverty is not only cruel but also has no deterrent effect. There has also been a marked recent increase in the number of people imprisoned for participating in non-violent protest activities. However, the rising prison population is not primarily due to short sentences. The past 20 years have seen subsequent governments bring in increasingly lengthy sentences for people convicted of violence, sex offending and terrorism. There are no votes in turning back this tide of mounting punishment, as once again the political parties compete for the mantle of ‘toughest on crime’.
Indeterminate sentences
The 1997-2010 Labour government not only gave us the draconian IPP sentence (see below) but also legislated to increase the minimum terms served by those sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Eager to show themselves as even more punitive, successive Conservative administrations then upped some of these still further, for example moving the minimum for ‘murder of a police or prison officer acting in the execution of their duty’ from 30 years to whole life in 2015.
Exploiting tragedy
In August 2019, shortly after becoming Prime Minister, Boris Johnson made a grab for the ‘toughest on crime’ accolade, with the promise to build 10,000 more prison places, make more use of whole-life tariffs and change fixed term sentences so that these prisoners would now serve a minimum of two-thirds of the period given by the courts, as opposed to half. His then henchwoman Priti Patel announced a new and harsher war on those who break the law: ‘I want them to literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences.’
In November 2019, former prisoner Usman Khan stabbed to death two young attendees at a prison education conference in London, before being shot dead by armed police. With an impending election, Johnson seized on this tragedy as vindication for his plans, despite the vocal opposition of the family of one of the victims to his death being exploited in this way.
Sentences for those convicted of terrorism were immediately increased, with legislation in April 2020 applying the same regime to anyone sentenced to seven years or more for ‘a relevant violent or sexual offence’. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 then extended the 2/3 requirement further to anyone sentenced to serve four years or more.
No parole
While prisoners serving ‘standard determinate sentences’ are automatically released, everyone serving life, IPP or an extended sentence has to go in front of a Parole Board panel which decides whether they are ‘low risk’ enough to be freed. This is also the case for determinate prisoners who have been recalled.
The Parole Board is inundated with cases and has massive delays at every stage of its process. Some of this is down to bureaucracy but much of it results from the climate of terror which has been foisted onto the supposedly independent Board by the Ministry of Justice and right-wing press in recent years, preventing it from making even straightforward decisions to release recalled prisoners without complex interrogation of their probation officers or the opinions of psychologists. During his time as Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Raab took interference with the parole process to a new level, refusing to accept recommendations for indeterminate prisoners to be transferred to open prisons and attacking decisions to release them. In July 2022 he also attempted to muzzle the very same probation and psychological experts who the Board is so keen to hear from, by telling them they could provide evidence but not recommend anyone be released. A court found this to be unlawful in March 2023.
Parties of law and order
With an eye to the coming election, the editorial writers at The Guardian and Observer are tilting at windmills as they entreat a forthcoming Labour government to ‘be bold in demanding an overhaul’. In a bleating piece on 11 August, The Guardian voiced its disappointment that ‘Labour’s fears about being portrayed as “soft” seemingly override any interest in a more nuanced policy that better balances punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation’ and lamented that erstwhile Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer had not ‘been braver in explaining to the public why overcrowded prisons full of desperate people are a source of risk, not security’.
There is zero prospect of Labour delivering what the ‘soft’ voices of The Guardian are after. In August, as the overcrowding figures hit the headlines, Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed complained that prisons were ‘turning criminals away because the Conservatives failed to build the cells they promised’ and assured the public that ‘Labour is the party of law and order. In government we will get on and deliver the prison places we need to ensure that dangerous criminals are where they belong – behind bars.’
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 296 October/November 2023
