2018: the year the failure of privatisation and austerity became undisguisable
The state takeover of Birmingham prison adds to a catalogue of private sector chaos: Carillion, East Coast, Northern Rail and bankrupt Northamptonshire council.
For nearly a decade, the Conservatives’ combination of austerity and privatisation has enfeebled Britain’s public realm. The failures of this approach have long been obvious (as the New Statesman’s Crumbling Britain series has charted) – but 2018 is the year they became undisguisable.
The Ministry of Justice has today taken emergency control of Birmingham prison – the first publicly-run prison to be privatised – from contractor G4S, after an inspection found chronic levels of violence and drug-use among prisoners, and corridors littered with cockroaches, blood and vomit. After cuts of more than 30 per cent to the Ministry of Justice budget since 2010, the UK's prison system has long struggled to manage, with a near-record population of 82,949 in England and Wales alone.
The events in Birmingham fit an unmistakable pattern: private failure, public rescue. In January, construction behemoth Carillion – which provided 11,500 hospital beds, 32,000 school meals and employed 20,000 UK workers – collapsed at a cost of at least £148m to the taxpayer.
In May, for the third time since rail privatisation, the East Coast Mainline was renationalised by the government after its private operators Virgin and Stagecoach defaulted on payments (costing the state an estimated £2bn in lost revenue).
The state of Britain’s railways is now a source of national shame. For too many commuters, the mere act of travelling to work is now an arduous odyssey characterised by repeated delays, cancellations and overcrowding. Northern Rail, one of the worst offenders, eventually cut more than 9,000 services from its timetable after daily chaos. On Southern, as many as 267 passengers have crammed into carriages designed for 107 people. And yet far from commuters being compensated, rail fares – already among the most expensive in Europe – are due to rise by another 3.2 per cent in January (having increased by an average of 32 per cent since 2010).
Meanwhile, Conservative-run Northamptonshire county council – once a Tory flagship – has been forced to declare effective bankruptcy and will now only provide a legal minimum of service (described by one observer as “a people-not-dying level”) including potential cuts to child protection. Up to 15 councils, according to the National Audit Office, are also at risk of insolvency (real-terms funding for local authorities has been cut by 49 per cent since the Conservatives entered office in 2010).
In every corner of the state, the cost of austerity is marked. Rough sleeping, which fell by three-quarters under the last Labour government, has risen by 169 per cent since 2010. The NHS has been forced to cancel operations and even urgent surgery as it struggles to meet ever greater demand. Relative child poverty has increased for three consecutive years and now stands at 4.1 million, or 30 per cent of children. Nearly 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres and 478 libraries are estimated to have closed since 2010. Potholed roads and uncollected bins are evidence of the scale of austerity borne by councils.
But the surprise is that anybody should be surprised. From the onset of austerity in 2010, critics warned that it would inflict irrevocable harm without achieving the aim of eliminating the deficit. The government’s dogmatic commitment to privatisation – foreign state firms have taken ownership of British rail franchises – has long put ideology before evidence.
For Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world, with its own currency and low borrowing costs, austerity has always been a choice, rather than a necessity. National governments have a duty to manage the public finances responsibly. But as economic evidence shows, the best long-term means of debt reduction is productive investment, not politically-driven cuts. Government borrowing, it is said, will “burden” younger generations. Yet austerity has enfeebled the collective institutions that they depend on and that their forebears strove to build.
In these circumstances, unsurprisingly, public appetite for alternatives is growing. A poll published last year by the Legatum Institute and Populus found the majority of Brits favour public ownership of the UK’s water (83 per cent), electricity (77 per cent), gas (77 per cent) and railways (76 per cent) - as proposed by Labour. Voters are weary of the substandard service and excessive prices that characterise many firms. Indeed – let it not be forgotten – the pretext for austerity was a financial crisis that originated in the private sector. Now, as then, the state – long disparaged by economic liberals – is being forced to intervene to save the market from itself.
Britain’s economic and social divisions are the root of its political polarisation. The Brexit vote was not merely an expression of antipathy towards the EU but a symptom of far greater discontent. Should the Conservatives continue to preside over a new era of private affluence and public squalor, the UK will become a yet more troubled and divided country.
--oo00oo--
Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian:-
The state takeover of Birmingham prison adds to a catalogue of private sector chaos: Carillion, East Coast, Northern Rail and bankrupt Northamptonshire council.
For nearly a decade, the Conservatives’ combination of austerity and privatisation has enfeebled Britain’s public realm. The failures of this approach have long been obvious (as the New Statesman’s Crumbling Britain series has charted) – but 2018 is the year they became undisguisable.
The Ministry of Justice has today taken emergency control of Birmingham prison – the first publicly-run prison to be privatised – from contractor G4S, after an inspection found chronic levels of violence and drug-use among prisoners, and corridors littered with cockroaches, blood and vomit. After cuts of more than 30 per cent to the Ministry of Justice budget since 2010, the UK's prison system has long struggled to manage, with a near-record population of 82,949 in England and Wales alone.
The events in Birmingham fit an unmistakable pattern: private failure, public rescue. In January, construction behemoth Carillion – which provided 11,500 hospital beds, 32,000 school meals and employed 20,000 UK workers – collapsed at a cost of at least £148m to the taxpayer.
In May, for the third time since rail privatisation, the East Coast Mainline was renationalised by the government after its private operators Virgin and Stagecoach defaulted on payments (costing the state an estimated £2bn in lost revenue).
The state of Britain’s railways is now a source of national shame. For too many commuters, the mere act of travelling to work is now an arduous odyssey characterised by repeated delays, cancellations and overcrowding. Northern Rail, one of the worst offenders, eventually cut more than 9,000 services from its timetable after daily chaos. On Southern, as many as 267 passengers have crammed into carriages designed for 107 people. And yet far from commuters being compensated, rail fares – already among the most expensive in Europe – are due to rise by another 3.2 per cent in January (having increased by an average of 32 per cent since 2010).
Meanwhile, Conservative-run Northamptonshire county council – once a Tory flagship – has been forced to declare effective bankruptcy and will now only provide a legal minimum of service (described by one observer as “a people-not-dying level”) including potential cuts to child protection. Up to 15 councils, according to the National Audit Office, are also at risk of insolvency (real-terms funding for local authorities has been cut by 49 per cent since the Conservatives entered office in 2010).
In every corner of the state, the cost of austerity is marked. Rough sleeping, which fell by three-quarters under the last Labour government, has risen by 169 per cent since 2010. The NHS has been forced to cancel operations and even urgent surgery as it struggles to meet ever greater demand. Relative child poverty has increased for three consecutive years and now stands at 4.1 million, or 30 per cent of children. Nearly 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres and 478 libraries are estimated to have closed since 2010. Potholed roads and uncollected bins are evidence of the scale of austerity borne by councils.
But the surprise is that anybody should be surprised. From the onset of austerity in 2010, critics warned that it would inflict irrevocable harm without achieving the aim of eliminating the deficit. The government’s dogmatic commitment to privatisation – foreign state firms have taken ownership of British rail franchises – has long put ideology before evidence.
For Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world, with its own currency and low borrowing costs, austerity has always been a choice, rather than a necessity. National governments have a duty to manage the public finances responsibly. But as economic evidence shows, the best long-term means of debt reduction is productive investment, not politically-driven cuts. Government borrowing, it is said, will “burden” younger generations. Yet austerity has enfeebled the collective institutions that they depend on and that their forebears strove to build.
In these circumstances, unsurprisingly, public appetite for alternatives is growing. A poll published last year by the Legatum Institute and Populus found the majority of Brits favour public ownership of the UK’s water (83 per cent), electricity (77 per cent), gas (77 per cent) and railways (76 per cent) - as proposed by Labour. Voters are weary of the substandard service and excessive prices that characterise many firms. Indeed – let it not be forgotten – the pretext for austerity was a financial crisis that originated in the private sector. Now, as then, the state – long disparaged by economic liberals – is being forced to intervene to save the market from itself.
Britain’s economic and social divisions are the root of its political polarisation. The Brexit vote was not merely an expression of antipathy towards the EU but a symptom of far greater discontent. Should the Conservatives continue to preside over a new era of private affluence and public squalor, the UK will become a yet more troubled and divided country.
--oo00oo--
Polly Toynbee writing in the Guardian:-
Squalid prisons are just the start. The entire justice system is in meltdown
Austerity’s most savage cut is barely visible. Ambulances stacked up outside overflowing A&E departments make news because that could affect you or yours, any day. Pot holes in the road draw motorist and cyclist wrath, as do missed bin collections. But the near collapse of the entire criminal justice system can happen right under our noses, and none but judges, lawyers, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and prison staff know anything about it.
Prisons did top the news on Monday when the horrifying inspection report on HMP Birmingham forced the government to take it back from G4S. Blood, vomit, cockroaches, rats, the air thick with the drug spice, staff hiding, in fear of violent prisoners: here was a scene of hell and squalor that should knock the “prison works” nonsense out of the most ardent lock-’em-up MP. One shock inspection report after another has thudded on to ministers’ desks, many among the 102 state-run as well the 14 privately run jails, revealing a prison estate in crisis. Under all previous governments, journalists could regularly visit any prison with due notice – and prison governors would speak out about problems. Now they are frightened into silence. I was allowed to film a whole Panorama programme in the most disturbed and violent part of Holloway prison, known as the “muppet wing”, in the Tory 1980s, when authorities were still open about prison problems. No longer.
In 2010 the shutters came down and it’s virtually impossible for journalists to visit prisons, except for a rare manicured walk-about with a minister. Why not? Because what the media would see would be too disgusting. Because desperate staff might say too much. Because the worst are too out of control. But where scrutiny by the press is denied, as it is now in benefit offices and anywhere else the effects of austerity are on display, this government bars access to public services as never before in my professional lifetime.
Secrecy suggests shame. The prisons minister, Rory Stewart, a semi-amateur politician, earns growls from colleagues for promising to resign if there’s no improvement by next year. He could start by opening the gates of his filthy estate to us of the filthy fourth estate.
Prisons returning to Newgate conditions are just the most extreme fallout from the disintegrating justice system, from inadequate policing to a crumbling CPS, malfunctioning magistrate and crown courts and vanished legal aid. The tottering edifice is only kept going by the superhuman goodwill of the dwindling numbers operating it. Who else sees it, beyond frequent-flyer criminals? The public – victims, witnesses and jurors – may only touch it once in a lifetime: then they find delays, adjournments and collapsed cases deeply distressing.
The Ministry of Justice is suffering the deepest cuts of any department – a huge 40% to be sliced away before 2020. The Treasury knows this is a secret world, hidden from public eyes, as courts are removed ever further from the local community, an integral part no longer. On the last day of term, when the government scuttles out bad news in written statements, the MoJ slid out an announcement that seven more courts are to be shut and sold off. That’s on top of the 258 that have closed and been sold off in England and Wales since 2010. In the great sale of public property – hospitals, schools, police stations, courts and more – the Treasury demands that capital raised be sucked into the running costs of remaining services, regardless of how a growing population will need this valuable land, gone forever.
Courts are so packed that clerks book in as many as seven extra cases, summoning lawyers, witnesses, victims and defendants from afar to wait all day, hoping a case collapses and they can be slotted in. If not, they are all summoned on another date to lose another day off work; child care rearranged, carers rebooked. Cases are often adjourned several times over or collapse altogether from bungled evidence collection. An over-stretched CPS after 25% cuts and a shrunken police force means evidence goes uncollected or is not disclosed to the defence, so the case goes under, setting free violent criminals and domestic abusers out of sheer incompetence. Political pieties promise to “put the victim first” – but victims are often left bereft and endangered by failed cases, after travelling miles several times over. A 2017 government report showed some 50% of cases are not prepared for hearings after the CPS lost a third of its workforce.
The great 1945 government is celebrated for its welfare state of pensions, benefits and the NHS. But less remembered is how its legal aid brought equal access to justice. No longer. In 2012 legal aid entitlement was removed from family, housing, immigration, debt and employment, leaving the poorest and weakest unable to claim their rights. Those trying to represent themselves take hours of expensive court time, where a lawyer representing them would cut to the chase. Defendants are granted longer sentences and less bail by magistrates when left to defend themselves: 15% of those remanded in prison, often for long periods, are found not guilty.
The unfolding calamity in our criminal justice system is best told in The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken. This angry yet forensic analysis from first arrest to prison is a gripping front-line view by an anonymous, lowly criminal barrister. Read and rage at evidence that “every day the provably guilty walk free”, while the hapless needlessly end up in jail.
All 650 MPs were sent a copy, crowdfunded by young legal aid lawyers. A ComRes survey of MPs’ summer reading finds it to be the third most popular beach-list book, a matching tale of woe to follow Tim Shipman’s account of the Brexit fiasco and Anthony Beevor’s history of the battle of Arnhem. But will they read it, or is it just listed by their spads, while they devour the latest Jack Reacher?
If they do, all 650 should return in September boiling with indignation. What have they been doing, prattling away about “sovereignty” and the supremacy of our laws over European courts, when gross injustice is done here daily by a legal system in meltdown, as reported by the Public Accounts Committee? Two-thirds of crown court cases are delayed or collapse, leaving 55% of witnesses saying they would never do it again.
When criminal barristers went on strike recently against 40% pay cuts leaving them often with less than the living wage after travel costs and waiting time, the government said: “Any action to disrupt the courts is unacceptable.” But they are the deliberate disrupters of a legal system that is the basis of democracy.
Austerity’s most savage cut is barely visible. Ambulances stacked up outside overflowing A&E departments make news because that could affect you or yours, any day. Pot holes in the road draw motorist and cyclist wrath, as do missed bin collections. But the near collapse of the entire criminal justice system can happen right under our noses, and none but judges, lawyers, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and prison staff know anything about it.
Prisons did top the news on Monday when the horrifying inspection report on HMP Birmingham forced the government to take it back from G4S. Blood, vomit, cockroaches, rats, the air thick with the drug spice, staff hiding, in fear of violent prisoners: here was a scene of hell and squalor that should knock the “prison works” nonsense out of the most ardent lock-’em-up MP. One shock inspection report after another has thudded on to ministers’ desks, many among the 102 state-run as well the 14 privately run jails, revealing a prison estate in crisis. Under all previous governments, journalists could regularly visit any prison with due notice – and prison governors would speak out about problems. Now they are frightened into silence. I was allowed to film a whole Panorama programme in the most disturbed and violent part of Holloway prison, known as the “muppet wing”, in the Tory 1980s, when authorities were still open about prison problems. No longer.
In 2010 the shutters came down and it’s virtually impossible for journalists to visit prisons, except for a rare manicured walk-about with a minister. Why not? Because what the media would see would be too disgusting. Because desperate staff might say too much. Because the worst are too out of control. But where scrutiny by the press is denied, as it is now in benefit offices and anywhere else the effects of austerity are on display, this government bars access to public services as never before in my professional lifetime.
Secrecy suggests shame. The prisons minister, Rory Stewart, a semi-amateur politician, earns growls from colleagues for promising to resign if there’s no improvement by next year. He could start by opening the gates of his filthy estate to us of the filthy fourth estate.
Prisons returning to Newgate conditions are just the most extreme fallout from the disintegrating justice system, from inadequate policing to a crumbling CPS, malfunctioning magistrate and crown courts and vanished legal aid. The tottering edifice is only kept going by the superhuman goodwill of the dwindling numbers operating it. Who else sees it, beyond frequent-flyer criminals? The public – victims, witnesses and jurors – may only touch it once in a lifetime: then they find delays, adjournments and collapsed cases deeply distressing.
The Ministry of Justice is suffering the deepest cuts of any department – a huge 40% to be sliced away before 2020. The Treasury knows this is a secret world, hidden from public eyes, as courts are removed ever further from the local community, an integral part no longer. On the last day of term, when the government scuttles out bad news in written statements, the MoJ slid out an announcement that seven more courts are to be shut and sold off. That’s on top of the 258 that have closed and been sold off in England and Wales since 2010. In the great sale of public property – hospitals, schools, police stations, courts and more – the Treasury demands that capital raised be sucked into the running costs of remaining services, regardless of how a growing population will need this valuable land, gone forever.
Courts are so packed that clerks book in as many as seven extra cases, summoning lawyers, witnesses, victims and defendants from afar to wait all day, hoping a case collapses and they can be slotted in. If not, they are all summoned on another date to lose another day off work; child care rearranged, carers rebooked. Cases are often adjourned several times over or collapse altogether from bungled evidence collection. An over-stretched CPS after 25% cuts and a shrunken police force means evidence goes uncollected or is not disclosed to the defence, so the case goes under, setting free violent criminals and domestic abusers out of sheer incompetence. Political pieties promise to “put the victim first” – but victims are often left bereft and endangered by failed cases, after travelling miles several times over. A 2017 government report showed some 50% of cases are not prepared for hearings after the CPS lost a third of its workforce.
The great 1945 government is celebrated for its welfare state of pensions, benefits and the NHS. But less remembered is how its legal aid brought equal access to justice. No longer. In 2012 legal aid entitlement was removed from family, housing, immigration, debt and employment, leaving the poorest and weakest unable to claim their rights. Those trying to represent themselves take hours of expensive court time, where a lawyer representing them would cut to the chase. Defendants are granted longer sentences and less bail by magistrates when left to defend themselves: 15% of those remanded in prison, often for long periods, are found not guilty.
The unfolding calamity in our criminal justice system is best told in The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken. This angry yet forensic analysis from first arrest to prison is a gripping front-line view by an anonymous, lowly criminal barrister. Read and rage at evidence that “every day the provably guilty walk free”, while the hapless needlessly end up in jail.
All 650 MPs were sent a copy, crowdfunded by young legal aid lawyers. A ComRes survey of MPs’ summer reading finds it to be the third most popular beach-list book, a matching tale of woe to follow Tim Shipman’s account of the Brexit fiasco and Anthony Beevor’s history of the battle of Arnhem. But will they read it, or is it just listed by their spads, while they devour the latest Jack Reacher?
If they do, all 650 should return in September boiling with indignation. What have they been doing, prattling away about “sovereignty” and the supremacy of our laws over European courts, when gross injustice is done here daily by a legal system in meltdown, as reported by the Public Accounts Committee? Two-thirds of crown court cases are delayed or collapse, leaving 55% of witnesses saying they would never do it again.
When criminal barristers went on strike recently against 40% pay cuts leaving them often with less than the living wage after travel costs and waiting time, the government said: “Any action to disrupt the courts is unacceptable.” But they are the deliberate disrupters of a legal system that is the basis of democracy.
"The prisons minister, Rory Stewart, a semi-amateur politician"
ReplyDeleteToynbee has a point. I think if Young Rory had stayed as a fully-amateur politician he would have a lot more respect from a wider fan-base. His recent forays into trying to be a polished 'professional' are diluting his past charms of honesty & integrity. If he stuck to effecting change AND recognised Probation as part of his brief - as opposed to playing political rock/scissors/paper with peoples' lives - he could probably recover his keen amateur credentials. But Gauke & co would probably cut him loose...
Probation is no longer a serious profession to concern ones self about
ReplyDeletePoor pay
Tin pot 'PQIF'
Robot twenty something 'Offender manager's '
Look to further to comparable semi professions such as social work and teaching who now outgun probation in terms of pay and quality professional qualifications . Even prison officers will be o n better pay soon .
Put that in your unwieldy oasys!
'squalid prisons are just the start. The entire justice system is in meltdown.' 'The near collapse of the entire justice system can happen right under our noses, and none but judges, lawyers, CPS, and prison staff know anything about it.' I was fuming yesterday when I read that article by Polly Toynbee by way of the Guardian. And today I am confused that no one has made a comment about it, not even you Jim. Have people not noticed the colossal damage done to the Probation Service? Most people don't even have a clue what we do. Staff struggle to continue to provide a 'portion' of the service which had been praised by the Govt, when clients/offenders/service users were offered quality,and personal supervision. As has been said frequently in the last 4 years, these cruel changes have only led to frustration, fear, desperation or anger from those who need and want support, and resistance from those who are more damaged and hardened, and places at greater risk, the victims, families and general public. We should be shouting out LOUD, that Probation staff are the first to meet the accused, and work with the offender in every aspect, from assessment, court reports, to regular supervision, maintain contact with prisoners, and prison staff; to work with court staff, prison staff, voluntary support groups; social services, police, families, addressing accommodation employment, drug and alcohol, mental health, domestic violence, and so much more, addressing every aspect of the individual and their victims. showing a fair face and a firm face in their decision making. Or at least try to, given the whipping done to the Probation Service. I would like to ask those individuals who make such destructive decisions, to tell me what probation officers do. I bet they don't have a bloody clue! Yet they are happy to kill it without telling the public what they had and what they have lost!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the sentiments you express ml.
DeleteI highlighted an article last week about probation in the USA. It spoke about how probation and parole officers were dealing with recidivism.
IIhighlighted it because I belive that is the direction UK probation services are going.
You can pay a parole officer far less then a probation officer.
Parole officers require far less qualifications then probation officers do, so easier to recruit.
Wasn't there talk from the PI some time ago about producing 'rehabilitation officers'? Perhaps it's the reason NPS staff are now being pushed to evidence qualifications and be vetted for VISOR?
Could NPS become the total extent of the probation service whilst CRCs become a totally separate organisation under the heading of parole services?
I really do feel that's very probable.
'Getafix
Privatisation is the root cause of the failing prison service
ReplyDeleteI think I read on your front pagethat a government minister, Rory Stewart, is admitting at least part responsibility for the failings of the prison service.
probation service, to mention but a few recent examples, it is clear that while on paper savings can be had, in practice the only beneficiaries are the senior executives of these, clearly incompetent outsourcing, companies, while we taxpayers are eventually left to pick up the pieces.
G Forward
Stirling
Whilst it's true, and there are countless examples of the public sector having to step in for private failure, the problems in the prison system cannot be idly attributed to privatisation. There were many problems before, perhaps exemplified by the Strangeways riots. There you had a screw's prison where prison officers were very much in control – to the point of being oppressive. Privatisation is not the solution, but nor is it the root cause of failure.
DeleteThe problems in the Prison Service are DIRECTLY LINKED to the privatisation process by the MOJ. The early privatisations, involving G4S and SERCO as I recall, resulted in the private companies doing what they always do; they come in with no real expertise and cut 40% of the staff to make their profits. The problem with this was that it appeared credible to the idiots at the MOJ and so they said to themselves 'well, if they can do it in the private sector, we can do it in the public; so the swingeing cuts to staffing levels began and PUBLIC SECTOR prisons were decimated by the same genii who agreed the contracts with G4S et al. It all falls to the MOJ commissioning processes and the willingness of the civil servant involved to be taken in by the sales pitches of the privateers. Since then, they have blamed 'legal highs' instead of the dips***s at the MOJ who ignored the warnings. No, it is not the fault of the private sector any more than it is the fault of the 14 year old prison officers who took on the jobs that were offered to them. Poor commissioning, poor planning and a lack of accountability.
Deletehttps://m.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/27832/22-08-2018/birmingham-prison-crisis-a-catastrophe-of-cuts-and-privatisation
ReplyDeletehttps://m.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/27603
Birmingham Prison has become the latest in a long line of catastrophic failures of privatisation, as the government is forced to step in and take over management from notorious private contractor G4S.
DeleteA recent inspection found HMP Birmingham inadequately staffed and very unsafe, rife with drugs and increasingly violent. G4S took over in 2011, and incidents of violence at the prison have risen fivefold since 2012.
The next day, Tory prisons minister Rory Stewart admitted on LBC radio that up to 20 prisons are in similar states of collapse!
17 out of 123 prisons across England and Wales are privately run. Five of these are run by G4S - which proudly boasts on its website that it offers "value for money" in the criminal justice system.
The chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke, said HMP Birmingham was "the worst I've seen anywhere." The details included in his report are stomach-churning. Vomit, blood and rat droppings.
It is mind-blowing that this is what it takes to make the government take action. Birmingham Prison experienced rioting in 2016. But instead of taking steps to improve safety, G4S and the Tories have allowed conditions to get even worse.
But what is even more shocking is the government's shameless attempt to squirm out of accepting that austerity and privatisation caused the fiasco.
The prisons inspector rightly says there is "a clear correlation between the lack of resources and the increase in violence." But the prisons minister admits only that perhaps a few too many staff - 4,500 net - were cut, while claiming the crisis is "largely driven by these new psychoactive substances like spice."
G4S and the government are keen to stress the firm has only failed one of its five prison contracts. But that's not the whole story either.
Last year an Ofsted inspection into Oakhill Youth Prison - run by G4S - found it "unsafe." And G4S gave up management of Medway Secure Training Centre in 2016, after BBC's Panorama exposed violence against teenage prisoners.
There is clear and repeated evidence of the abject failure of cuts and privatisation - not just in prisons, but railways, the NHS, schools, and across the board.
Government intervention at HMP Birmingham is temporary and not good enough. At the time of writing, G4S has not even had its contract ended. Nor have the Tories ruled out farming out more prisons to private interests - in fact, they continue to defend privatisation in the face of ever more damning evidence.
The prison and probation services must be fully renationalised with all staff cuts reversed, and fully funded to ensure the safety of all prisoners and workers. A socialist justice system would work for protection and rehabilitation, not private profit.
NAPO should be writing directly to Toynbee, as an influential journalist, to let her know in no uncertain terms that Probation is an integral part of the Justice System and when talking about the MoJ's Probation is one of the prime examples of serious damage that has been done. Could NAPO's (apparently) non-existant communications officer not cobble together something to send to Toynbee?
ReplyDeleteDifferent subject - Where is young Mr Spurr during this prison debacle? He gets the big bucks so he should be facing the music. Better still he should be sacked for gross incompetence.
Oops! Missing word in my last post. There should be the word failures between MoJ's and Probation
ReplyDeleteI have never understood how the state in our name can allow the warehousing of people to be something that allows a profit. I am a lefty but even my righty friends are saying, 'wtf is going on with G4S, they're useless.' I cannot quite get them to see that our important public services should not be in the hands of those returning dividends to shareholders, executive bonus collectors and a profit to boot. Still working on that argument.
ReplyDelete