Prison Crisis - MoJ Economical With Truth

You've got to hand it to the Guardian, they're really doing a good job reporting on all aspects of the mounting criminal justice crisis and over the weekend, published two articles highlighting the dire prison situation. Here's the first:-  

Are Britain’s prisons facing a meltdown?

Few in government can now deny that our jail system is in severe crisis. Yet no one seems to want to tackle it

It is highly likely that Khader Ahmed Saleh felt fear in the weeks before he was murdered. And if he did, the wiry young father from London’s tight-knit Somali community would not have been alone. In a recent survey, more than two-thirds of his fellow inmates inside Wormwood Scrubs prison admitted feeling unsafe. That finding was published weeks before Saleh was stabbed to death on the afternoon of 31 January.

Last Thursday Saleh’s family and friends assembled outside the west London prison, demanding answers in relation to another violent tragic episode inside the UK penal estate; one that has left three inmates charged with murder. As they protested and mourned, the distinctive Victorian towers of Wormwood Scrubs loomed large. Behind its high, weathered brick walls, living conditions have plummeted to a level which should shame a wealthy 21st-century society.

According to a report by the chief inspector of prisons published 53 days before Saleh, 25, was murdered, rats and cockroaches routinely gorge on litter dropped from broken windows into the prison yard. Conditions in the Victorian-era C wing, where Saleh died, were so chaotic that food routinely ran out and inmates survived on “mountain survival” dried-food packs.

Those who have observed Britain’s prison estate at close quarters have been uniformly shocked by what they have witnessed and what they have been told. Peter Clarke, a methodical, down-to-earth detective who once ran Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command, was asked by the Ministry of Justice in 2016 to investigate the prison estate. He notes as a matter of “particular concern” the 40 to 50 violent incidents each month. Every two days a member of staff is assaulted.

Prison officer David Todd has patrolled both Wormwood Scrubs and served in the British infantry in Derry during the Troubles. The 47-year-old has little doubt which was the more intimidating. “I feel more vulnerable walking the landings in British prisons than I did walking the streets of Northern Ireland,” he says. Even after 27 years of life as a prison officer, Todd describes the narrow walkways of Wormwood Scrubs as “very daunting”. In some jails, he adds, one officer is left to oversee 100 inmates. Organised gangs hold huge power. It is, says Todd, the precise opposite of a controlled environment. Or at least of one controlled by the state.

Ex-offender and former drug abuser Mark Johnson founded the charity User Voice to encourage prisoner rehabilitation. “Being incarcerated in this country at the moment,” he says, “is being in a system tantamount to torture. You’re in a place of chaos. You may have left behind a life of chaos but it’s like going from frying pan into the fire.”

Overpopulated, under-resourced, drug and pest-infested and terrifyingly violent, no public institution in England and Wales, according to expert consensus, has deteriorated more dramatically and more profoundly in recent years than our prisons. Todd has seen many things he wants to forget but cannot. Once he watched an inmate smoke spice, the synthetic drug that renders users catatonic, before flinging himself headfirst off a second-floor landing, arms by his side, making no attempt to break his fall. He found a prisoner in the kitchen in a Kent jail with his stomach sliced open. He remembers an inmate with mental health problems who would sit in his cell, silently eating his own faeces.

Government data published six days before Saleh was murdered confirmed that prisons in England and Wales have never been more dangerous. Assaults and serious assaults are, according to the Ministry of Justice, at record levels. In the 12 months to September 2017, 28,165 incidents were recorded – a 12% increase. Of those, 7,828 were assaults on staff. The rate of attacks continues to escalate. During the last quarter of 2017, another high was set with assaults rising to 86 a day, 24 of them against staff.

Independent analysis by the Observer of 220 official prison inspections, covering 118 adult jails in England and Wales, found that more than two in five were unsafe for prisoners. Self-harm inside prisons has also reached record levels – there were 42,837 incidents during the year to September, an increase of 12%. On an average day, there will be 117 such incidents. Eight inmates will be hospitalised. Someone takes their own life in prison every five days. Todd says prison officers quickly become accustomed to dealing with the “shocking” loss of blood after an inmate slices their wrist with a razor.

Since October, the parliamentary justice committee has been investigating what no one now denies is a crisis in our prisons. According to Bob Neill, the committee’s Conservative chairman: “We really need to have a serious conversation about what we use prison for. Society has to think about that.” Neill cited a vignette from a recent inspection of HMP Liverpool as illustrative of the challenges facing the penal estate. “The inspector went into one cell where the shower wasn’t working, the lavatory was broken and flooding. There was a mattress with a guy on it with mental health problems who had been there for six weeks. How much of our prisons now are just warehousing for people with mental health and other issues?”

One answer to that question comes from the Criminal Justice Alliance, which estimates that 21,000 mentally ill people, a quarter of the current jail population, are currently imprisoned, competing for just 3,600 high-security and medium-security beds reserved for mental-health patients in English prisons. The British Medical Association says the average life expectancy of a prisoner in England and Wales is 56, less than conflict-ridden, poverty-stricken South Sudan. The statistic, warns the BMA, is “a worrying reflection of the overall wellbeing of those in the secure estate”.

At the root of so much squalor, violence and distress is one inescapable truth: we are as a society incarcerating too many people. Official data revealed on Thursday that the number of prisoners in England and Wales rose to 84,255 – the highest imprisonment rate in western europe. A quarter of a century ago in 1993, the prison population stood at 44,552. Two-thirds of prisons are officially overcrowded.

Lord Woolf, the former lord chief justice who wrote the report on the 1991 Strangeways prison riot, said that a complete government rethink was required, beginning with the need to address overcrowding. “I’m afraid we’ve got to have a complete reassessment of the situation. Although you can’t change the situation overnight, there has been a complete breakdown in recognising the fact that serious action is needed and recognising that the only way to do it is to have a long-term plan.” If any plan is to succeed, the prerequisite will surely be a reversal of the deep cuts that have stripped away thousands of experienced prison staff. Between 2012 and 2016, as the prison population rose, frontline staff fell by more than 7,000. A commitment to recruit 2,500 new prison officers has since been made, but Todd feels it is nowhere near enough.

Between 2016 and 2017, 57 prison officers left their jobs but only 21 were replaced. On C wing, where Saleh was killed, supervision problems were noted. Lack of staff meant too many prisoners were locked up in their cells, some for as long as 23 hours a day. Denied any purposeful activity, prisoners become desperate to kill time. Drug use has escalated, in particular the use of spice, the synthetic cabannoid described by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman as a “game-changer” capable of quickly transforming a passive inmate into a dangerous aggressor. Todd said: “It makes someone who is normal into an absolute animal. It’s hideous.” Clarke found drugs were “easily accessible” inside Wormwood Scrubs. The wing where Saleh died contained the prison’s unit for dealing with inmates needing help with substance misuse.

Given what amounts to the slow-motion meltdown of the prison estate, Rory Stewart, the new prisons minister, faces instant pressure to make an impact. Battle-hardened observers are already sceptical. Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform charity which campaigns for change, recently met Stewart. “As he pointed out, this is his fourth or fifth job in two years. He says he doesn’t know how long he is going to be there – and we’ve had six secretaries of state in seven years. “No wonder the system is in chaos. It’s a shambles.”

Many agree that Stewart’s initial challenge is to somehow cap, then lower, a prison population which is proportionately twice that of Germany’s. In the longer term, other issues require fixing: namely how to deal with the specific challenges of a fast-growing group of older prisoners aged over 60, largely driven by historic sex offending. Other demographic issues also need to be addressed, the chief of them being why there are so many black and ethnic minority people among the prison population. If the demographic makeup of inmates locked up reflected those of England and Wales, there would – as the Labour MP David Lammy recently noted – be 9,000 fewer black and ethnic minority people in prison, the equivalent of 12 average-sized prisons.

Stewart must also urgently examine future prison privatisation. The Ministry of Justice expects the private sector to play a role in running prisons, but after a period of cross-party consensus, support for this is now waning. Among one of the less reported failures of Carillion, the government contractor which folded last month, was its role in maintaining Wormwood Scrubs. So hapless was its performance that the firm was deemed to represent “a threat to the security of the prison”.

On the basis of his visits to HMP Liverpool, Peter Clarke made a series of recommendations for improvements in our jails, emphasising among other things the urgent need to address the issue of overpopulation. On Friday a justice committee report condemned the government for failing to act on his advice. He is reportedly exasperated by the lack of a coherent response from Whitehall. Campaigner Mark Johnson said simply: “Report after report of evidence is being unearthed and yet nothing is changing. We need to start asking the question: what is prison for? We need to talk about what is happening.”

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In another article, the Observer goes into some greater detail:-  

Exclusive: shock figures reveal state of UK’s brutal prisons

Observer analysis of inspection reports shows two in five jails are unsafe and inadequate conditions prevail in over two-thirds

The scale of the crisis engulfing Britain’s prisons can be revealed, after an Observer investigation found that two-thirds are providing inmates with inadequate conditions or unacceptable treatment. An analysis of hundreds of inspections covering 118 institutions found that a staggering 68% are now providing unsatisfactory standards in at least one respect, with two in five jails deemed to be unacceptably unsafe. Rory Stewart, the prisons minister, described the state of some jails as “deeply disturbing”. Writing in the Observer, he concedes that prisons are rife with psychoactive drugs, and see “increasing levels of violence committed by prisoners, and horrifying rates of self-harm”.

Speaking to the Observer, Lord Woolf, the former lord chief justice – who oversaw an inquiry after the notorious Strangeways riot in 1990, in which two people died – warned that there was a real risk of such an outbreak happening again. “[If] you ask me whether we have gone back to where we were pre-Strangeways, I think we are there in that sort of territory,” said Woolf. “It is not confined to one of our prison establishments. It is across the board. There has been a complete breakdown in recognising the fact that serious action is needed, and recognising that the only way to do it is to have a long-term plan, with somebody in charge of it throughout the term.”

All prisons are tested to see if they satisfy basic standards for safety, respect for prisoners, access to purposeful activities and help when they leave the institution. In each area, they are deemed as being good, reasonably good, insufficient or poor.

The Observer investigation found that in the most recent inspections of adult prisons in England and Wales, 80 out of the 118 jails examined were providing insufficient or poor standards in at least one area. Only 7% of prisons – just eight – received a “good” rating across all four categories. An alarming 44% were providing poor or insufficient safety, and almost half (47%) offered insufficient or poor access to meaningful activities – often leaving prisoners locked in cells for very long periods. Two in five prisons were providing inadequate assistance to prisoners as they left – a major problem in tackling reoffending.

As many prisons were deteriorating as improving, with conditions worsening in 41% since their last inspection. The worst-performing prisons, such as Bristol, Guys Marsh, Liverpool, Nottingham and Wormwood Scrubs, were also overcrowded. The government is attempting to reduce the prison population by exploiting an underused scheme to release thousands more prisoners early. Governors have been told to review cases of inmates refused release under a home detention scheme, allowing them to stay at home under curfew and with an electronic tag.

The latest official figures show that self-harm and assaults in prison are at a record high, with critics blaming cramped cells, a shortage of staff and prisoners spending too long locked up in poor conditions. The chaos has seen self-harm reach a record high of 42,837 incidents in the 12 months to September 2017, up 12% from the previous year. Assaults have reached a high of 28,165 incidents over the same period. Serious assaults are up by 10%. Of these, 7,828 assaults were on staff.

The judiciary, MPs and campaigners are calling for a wholesale rethink of what is expected of the prison system. Bob Neill, Tory chairman of the justice select committee, said: “This shows the system is in a state of crisis. We really need to have a serious conversation about what we use prison for. Society has to think about that. “The immediate issue is that we’re failing to provide decent conditions in too many of our establishments, [and] as many are getting worse as have improved.” He said too much money had been taken out of the prisons service under the coalition government. While a plan to recruit an extra 2,500 prison officers was announced at the end of 2016, the measure only partially made up for the 30% cut in numbers suffered since 2010.

Frances Crook, the chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, a charity that campaigns for change in prisons, said that the revolving door of political leadership for prisons was a big part of the problem. “We’ve had six secretaries of state in seven years,” she said. “No wonder the system is in chaos.” Woolf said that overcrowding urgently needed to be tackled. “I’m afraid we’ve got to have a complete reassessment of the situation,” he said. “Whenever there is a particularly nasty crime, what parliament wants to do is have a new offence and put sentences up – and so we go on.”

Stewart, who was appointed prisons minister last month, writes that he wants to tackle the flow of drugs into prisons and improve basic cleanliness. “Criminal gangs have become ever more skilled at pouring new psychoactive drugs into prisons,” he writes. “And partly as a result of these drugs, there are increasing levels of violence committed by prisoners, and horrifying rates of self-harm. Half of prisoners reoffend within a year of leaving custody – costing billions to the economy – and, more importantly, ruining the lives of tens of thousands of victims. “But I strongly believe we can improve our prisons and that we can make progress at pace.”

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"The government is attempting to reduce the prison population by exploiting an underused scheme to release thousands more prisoners early. Governors have been told to review cases of inmates refused release under a home detention scheme, allowing them to stay at home under curfew and with an electronic tag."

Despite the MoJ wanting to try and play down the situation, many have been saying that several times the pressure on prison numbers has been so severe that there were only days away from declaring an emergency which would involve prison use of police cells. Maybe they need to liaise with their Home Office counter-parts because, due to police cuts, there are far fewer custody suites of any kind nowadays. 

I'm reliably informed that the situation had become so desperate that suitably-qualified HQ staff have been involved in touring prison establishments in order to facilitate executive releases. Of course we are all now aware that prisoner release of any kind has top priority, hence the rush to re-write the HDC process, referred to above, and announced last month. There are grave dangers in what is being proposed as the changes pretty much remove probation involvement around risk assessment:-  

"The Revisionistas strike again. i.e. in the same vein as their Glorious TR-iumph of kicking fiendish social workers into the gutter, they have now re-imagined HDC as being previously a grey, onerous task that has been magically freed from red-tape & drudgery by the courageous, swash-buckling MuskeTories. Huzzah! Gins all round!!"

"Also not good that risk is not a reason to refuse HDC! Where previously supervising officers were asked their views on whether they support (or not) release, this is no longer a question asked on HDC forms. The only issue is whether they have a suitable address. You can comment on risk but it's abundantly clear that release will happen if that address is deemed suitable. I'm currently on my 4th HDC report for the same high risk case. They really want every one with an address out asap."

"Words from HDC Clerk (similarly unimpressed with the change in decision-making process: “it’s a right now, not a privilege... I can’t think of many occasions where someone wouldn’t get it.”

Some have high hopes of Rory Stewart, the new Prison and Probation minister (although he's chosen to drop the 'Probation' bit), but sadly he talks a lot about drones but neglects to mention that most drugs get into prison via staff and pedals two lies in his Observer article:-

"In order to help this and many other things happen – such as increasing the quality of education in prison, boosting employment prospects and ensuring accommodation on release – we are recruiting an extra 2,500 prison officers. The recruitment is going very well, and we are close to hitting that target ahead of schedule."

It's news to us that there's any "ensuring accommodation on release" because we all know TTG is just an urban myth and in relation to prison officers, "The recruitment is going very well"  comes as a surprise to many, including Civil Service World who thinks he's been caught out telling porkies. This from their website:-

MoJ accused of ‘misleading public’ on prison officer recruitment

The Ministry of Justice has been accused of misleading the public over the state of staffing levels in UK prisons, following its announcement that a recruitment milestone will be reached nine months early. This week the department said its target of delivering a net headcount increase of 2,500 staff by the end of 2018 – set by then-justice secretary Liz Truss in 2016 – was on course to be met within the coming weeks, showing that the drive was working.

But union the Prison Officers’ Association said the MoJ was “massaging prison officer recruitment figures” in a way that gave a “massively false impression” of a service that was still in crisis after years of budget cuts. The latest figures, released by current justice secretary David Gauke, showed a net increase of 1,970 officers between October 2016 and December last year, with numbers up from 17,955 to 19,925 across bands three to five.

The MoJ said a further 1,582 new recruits had been offered roles and booked onto prison officer training courses, meaning the government was on target to recruit the 2,500 officers “nine months ahead of schedule”. POA general secretary Steve Gillan welcomed the increase in officer numbers but insisted that the current drive would not be enough to “undo the damage of years of cuts” that began under the coalition government.

He said that the government figures were “smoke and mirrors” that did not properly reflect the changing nature of the prison workforce since 2010 – particularly for entry-level grade prison officers in band three, whose numbers he said had fallen by 16% over the past eight years. According to the MoJ, there were 24,831 prison officers in bands three to five in March 2010, of whom 983 were custodial managers at band five, and 3,940 supervising officers at band four. The remaining 19,908 were prison officers.

Gillan said the MoJ’s latest dataset included 3,333 staff in bands four and five, meaning that POA estimated there were 16,592 band three prison officers. “In March 2010 there were 19,908 prison officers [at grade three] and as of 30 December 2017 there were 16,592 – a cut of 3,316,” Gillan explained. Further, in March 2010 there were 7,698 operational support grades and as of 30 December 2017 there were 4,422. That’s a cut of 43%." The union said it was calling on the government and the MoJ to “stop misleading the general public”.

Truss’s recruitment drive – announced at the Conservative party conference in 2016 – came against the backdrop of concerns over violence and suicide rates inside prisons, and has not been helped by staff turnover levels. The latest figures show the annual turnover rate among band three to five prison officers is 9.7%. Lauding his department's recruitment “milestone”,​ Gauke acknowledged that prison officers often worked in “very challenging, difficult and dangerous circumstances” and that issues in the secure estate needed to be dealt with “head on”.

“I am determined to tackle the issues in our prisons head on and I am committed to getting the basics right so we can focus on making them safe and decent places to support rehabilitation,” he said. “Staffing is the golden thread that links the solutions we need to put in place to drive improvement, so I am delighted our recruitment efforts are working.”

Civil Service World offered MoJ the opportunity to comment on the POA's observations. It declined.