17 November 2016
Economics and Incarceration
Addressing the re-offending rate is the only rational solution to the prison crisis
by Frank O’Nomics
Barely a day goes by without the release of yet more grim news from our antiquated prisons. In the last few weeks we have had news of 200 prisoners rioting in Bedford, 2 managing to escape from Pentonville and the Prison Officers Association this week staging a strike over their safety concerns. Murder, suicide, drugs and daily violence in prisons has been rising over the last few years and there have been obvious connections made with a lack of investment and insufficient numbers of prison officers. The government has made some response, first with Michael Gove’s intention to introduce “reform prisons”, an attempt to use the logic applied to academy schools by giving governors more freedom to manage their prisons, and more recently from Liz Truss, who has been working on a white paper on prison safety and reform. However, there are still serious concerns that, without a significant investment in infrastructure (way beyond the £1.3 billion proposed by Liz Truss), a reform agenda will have little hope of success. The problem is that the size of the investment is currently just too great to contemplate. Apart from the need to reverse the fall in the number of prison officers, huge sums of money are needed to modernise antiquated and dilapidated, largely Victorian, prisons. However the magnitude of the problem could be significantly reduced if ways could be found to further reduce the size of the prison population. This involves tackling the high level of re-offending. Currently 45% of those released re-offend within 12 months.
How bad are our prisons? I recently visited one of the larger institutions (as a guest for just a couple of hours, I hasten to add) and I can only describe conditions as squalid. 1,200 inmates are kept 2 to a cell; a small space in which they have to both eat (all meals are brought back to their cells), sleep and use the lavatory. Time outside the cells is limited to a small period each day, which will only be out in the yard if weather and warder numbers permit – on my visit those in the vulnerable persons unit (who need more warders when exercising) were complaining that they had only been outside on 3 occasions that week. The exercise yard was filthy, and when I asked why they did not get the prisoners to clean it, the response was that there were insufficient warders to oversee the process. The isolation cells were the worst area. These cells have crumbling lino and constant cockroach infestations, more akin to Devil’s Island than modern Britain. To be fair, the healthcare centre was modern, but one was struck by the degree to which anyone there was on varying degrees of suicide watch. There are many visits to the centre, partly because the majority of the inmates are on some kind of medication, but also because there is, I was told, one violent incident a day. The maintenance of order is not helped by the fact that drugs and mobile phones have been coming into the prison on a regular basis, via drones and ropes, as a result of both the perishing of nets over the exercise yard, and the grilles on the windows not being replaced (despite this being sanctioned last December).
Such anecdotal evidence is supported by the statistics. There were 23,775 assaults in prisons last year (prisoner on prisoner and warders) a rise of over 30%, and 105 self-inflicted deaths, a rise of 23%. The number of killings in prison, at 6 in 2015/16, is the largest number since 2000. There are efforts to recruit more prison officers (the government has just announced plans to recruit a further 2,500 over the next 5 years), but this is being undermined by staff retention problems. Since the start of 2015, 790 new prison officers have been recruited, but the total has actually fallen due to more leaving the prison service. That the cost to the government is huge is easily understood when one realises that prisons run at a cost of £37,000 per prisoner each year, and that there are currently around 85,000 adults in prison.
Spending money on prisons is unlikely to be much of a vote winner. Few of those impacted, beyond the prison officers and the prisoners’ families, will be voters, and the amount of money needed to be spent on not-fit-for-purpose Victorian institutions is unlikely to be within the scope of the current government’s budget, given that this would reduce money available for education and healthcare. Some would argue that no amount of money could make the current institutions acceptable. From the statistics above, the real way to make a difference is to reduce the prison population. This does not necessarily mean being less tough on crime; although many would do away with the common but supposedly useless short sentences. The real way to have an impact on prisoner numbers is to attack the causes of re-offence.
Many of those who leave prison have no qualification or trade, and little means of support on release. With no prospect of income or accommodation the level of re-offence should cause little surprise. There are efforts to teach prisoners skills while in prison (I watched some being taught to be barbers for example) but there seems little being done to help these people to get a job on release.
However, there is a process which is producing meaningful results. In 2009, frustrated by a 60% plus re-offence rate at HMP High Down, which was not improved by the introduction of catering courses at the prison, the charity CLINK went further by setting up a catering college within the prison and then helping those trained to find a job. With a mantra of recruit – train – support – employ – mentor – they have set up restaurants, both inside and outside the prison walls, so that the prisoners can become employment-ready and develop skills which can be advertised to potential employers. This has become a very effective social enterprise scheme in that the restaurants receive funding as a result of being a college and a prison, but also get an income from the meals that they sell. Given the quality of the tuition that the prisoners receive (the charity has support from some impressive names), the food is of a very high standard, and the extent of prison grounds mean that the inmates grow three quarters of the vegetables and herbs that they use. CLINK now operates out of 4 prisons and is building an events catering business to add to the restaurants. The real success has come from the reduction in the rate of re-offending, which has fallen by almost 90%.
Schemes such as CLINK’s are not for every prisoner and, although the catering industry suffers from a skill shortage, there are finite limits to the number of chefs needed. However, CLINK has trained over 800 prisoners and has engaged with over 200 potential employers. That equates to a significant saving in costs for our prisons and, if the process is rolled out over other trades and professions (building related trades are obvious examples) the additional cost savings could mean that the infrastructure spending needed for prisons, which is currently impossible, might actually fall within achievable bounds.
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