Prison Crisis and Probation Irrelevance?

Now we know Keir Starmer did have a plan and there are responsible and knowledgeable adults in charge, I guess it's time to find something to say about the prison crisis and there's quite a bit of material to choose from. A contributor pointed me in the direction of this article from Yorkshire Bylines and it's a good trot through the issues, but somewhat alarmingly we're told "rehabilitation is a myth" and mention of probation is half-hearted to say the least:-

"contact with a probation officer who genuinely cares about the former inmate and their future can also support change." 

In this piece, probation is clearly an irrelevance. Have things got that bad and is this the new government's view? 

New government: new approach to the prison crisis?

Conservative neglect has left the prison service in a state of advanced crisis – Labour must take swift action

The prison service is running out of places. Prisoners are already banged up in threes in cells designed for one, along with their shared ‘piss pot’ as there are insufficient staff to unlock cells to let prisoners out to defecate.

A new government

The celebrations are over. Permanent secretaries and civil servants have welcomed ministers to their departments and the new minister will have said a few words about how honoured they are to work with them for the country’s good. It is now down to business. There will matters to be dealt with immediately – those relating to national security and any immediate decisions that have been awaiting the new minister’s arrival. Civil servants will open discussions on the most pressing items on their department’s risk register. At the top of the list for the home secretary will be the broken immigration system and the prisons crisis.

Labour has staked its claim to government on getting a grip on policy areas and processes, good governance and good management. The prisons crisis will be its first test. The prison service has run out of places. Prison inspection reports have highlighted the dire state of prisons in England and Wales. Violence is endemic and there are serious and imminent risks of rioting and destruction. Already prisons are dealing with ‘mini-riots’ on a day to day basis. A hot summer will be a powder keg. If prisons blow, it will risk death, millions of pounds in damage and the final collapse of the prison system.

Cause of the prison crisis

Every prison crisis is driven by overcrowding. Overcrowding erodes positive regimes, creates tensions amongst inmates and enables drugs and weapons to enter more readily. Overcrowding also impacts on officer overwork, their capacity to do the job well and with empathy. Ultimately, it destroys staff morale. New officers are naïve, lack judgement, and are insufficiently trained and experienced when being placed on the landings for the first time. They become vulnerable to prisoner exploitation, including developing inappropriate relationships with inmates. It can also feel safer to have a drugged-up prison population than to try and manage prisoners locked in their cells 23/7.

Two things cause overcrowding: more people entering the prisons and/or people being imprisoned longer. Both are occurring just now. In December 2023 there were 87,489 inmates incarcerated across England and Wales, a 7% rise on the previous year and 19,028 new receptions, a 20% rise on the previous year. More people are entering the system and sentences have been getting longer.

The length of prison sentences has risen hugely over the past few years. in 2010 the average custodial sentence was 16 months. By 2019 in was 21.4 months. The length of time people spent in custody (with remission or early release) rose from 8.1 to 13.7 months. Most of the increase in the average length of sentence and times served was down to longer sentences at the higher end of sentencing (over four years). At this rate prison places would need to rise by one third every decade.

Government response

The problems have been brewing for some considerable time. And reached a critical emergency in the summer of last year. Under the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act, the government began releasing offenders 18 days early in October 2023. Early release was extended to 60 days in March 2024 and 70 days from May. Also in May, under Operation Early Dawn, the government ordered the delay of court cases to avoid more people entering the prison system. Victims and witnesses, as well as defendants, were turning up at court to find their cases adjourned because of prison overcrowding.

The sentencing bill (abandoned with the general election) included clauses would have restricted courts’ ability to sentence people to under twelve months imprisonment, requiring them to impose a community alternative with a new suspended prison ‘order’ in case of failure.

Prison governors are also recommending that people are released after 40% of their sentence and government officials are considering implementing Operation Brinkman, a one-for-one in-out approach to immediate custody. The Conservative government ducked implementing new measures, fearful of an election backlash. These schemes may be necessary to avert a national emergency and Labour will have a short window in which to build on public sympathy for mess they have been gifted.

But these measures can only be a stopgap. Early release or deferral schemes have the long-term effect of undermining the criminal justice system and faith in sentencing, leading, in turn, to calls for longer and harsher sentences as the public believe that sentences are already too soft or are not being fulfilled as intended.

Longer term options

Longer term there are only three options to reduce overcrowding: build more prison places, reduce sentence length, or sentence offenders in some other way.

The Conservative government promised 20,000 new prison places in 2010 – at a cost of just under £50,000 per place, per annum. Since then, 6,000 have been brought on stream and Labour promises to finish the rebuilding programme. More prisons are being built and more places added to existing prisons. However, these places were intended to replace and modernise the existing prison estate, enabling some of the oldest prisons to be closed, and some have been. They also need to be staffed and there is a shortage of able recruits.

The courts already have many sentencing options open to them. They can discharge offenders without a punishment, fine them and place them on community orders with a whole range of conditions they think might be appropriate – unpaid work, residence, drug treatment etc. There is no shortage of ‘alternatives’ to imprisonment yet the UK continues to imprison at a rate double that of most other European countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Italy. Even France at a rate of 100 people imprisoned for every 100,000 is nowhere near the UK’s 167 per 100,000.

Prison – the ultimate failure of criminal justice policy

Punitive measures do not deter or reform and often accelerate an offending trajectory. Only a tiny proportion of reported crime (4-7%) comes to sentence. The offences people are most concerned about – sexual offences and violence against women and girls are rarely reported. Levels of crime in prison are far higher than they are outside although most ‘offences’ are categorised as disciplinary ‘adjudications’ not criminal matters.

In 2023, in just three months, there were 53,287 adjudications, 35% higher than the previous year and loss of remission for these infractions added nearly 5,000 prison place days in a year to already overcrowded prisons. The cost of reintegration following sentence is borne by the poorest communities whose public services are slashed to pay for increased incarceration of their neighbours and families.

Increased imprisonment does not even make the public feel better or safer. The public continues to believe sentences are shorter than they are, and, in any case, always too short. At best, imprisonment provides symbolic support for the law-abiding intentions of those who remain free.

The myth of rehabilitation

There is now a wealth of research on ‘what works’ on reducing offending, though it might be more accurately called ‘what fails’. Not much works. There is no magic approach, no effective treatment and nothing that deters. Crime levels are driven by economic and social conditions and the criminal justice system is almost irrelevant. It rarely prevents reoffending although it can have a positive impact in some individual cases and can support the conditions for desistance (a stable family, home job etc.). The contact with a probation officer who genuinely cares about the former inmate and their future can also support change.

Governments and rehabilitation services need to have a much more honest discussion with the public about what can be achieved. Punishment neither deters nor reforms. It should be the absolute minimum required to show society’s disapproval or to protect the public from dangerous offenders.

Distorted public perception on sentencing

Almost everything that the public believes about sentencing is wrong. It believes fewer than 25% of convictions for rape result in a prison sentence (the starting point for rape sentencing is four years and is applied in almost every single case). It believes people serve half the time of the average life sentence and that it has got shorter rather than longer over the years. It believes less than half of those who commit burglary are sentenced to imprisonment (it is over 80%).

The public believes prisons are ‘holiday camps’. While there are some new prisons and some of a higher standard, overall the prison estate is one of wall to wall rat infested squalor, degradation and violence. While there may not be much sympathy for the inmates, even though most are petty offenders in need of support, staff in these establishments are also at great risk.

Options for the new government

The Labour government is likely to implement some of the emergency measures listed above. It will need to do enough to enable the prison service to get itself back on track and to create some headroom so longer-term solutions can be found. While prison sentences under twelve months achieve only poor outcomes, I am not convinced their abolition is the solution. Already 37% of receptions into prison are for people who have breached community sentences or post release licence conditions. The more we sentence to community penalties, the greater the risk of breach and subsequent imprisonment.

It would be far more useful to reduce prison sentences to days instead of months for offences such as drunk and disorderly behaviour, breach of the peace, minor thefts, or breach of community orders etc. it should also be possible to have sufficiently short sentences so that those held on remand are immediately released. Too often they are sentenced to a community alternative, having spent months on remand, and then breach it.

Longer prison sentences could be reduced by years. While the public may believe that abhorrent crimes such as rape deserve strong retribution, sentences could be halved and would still be twice as long as the public believes the crime to deserve.

Prison sentences of days rather than months would mean people would retain their jobs, relationships and accommodation and would not have to start afresh on leaving prison. There would not need to be such a range of costly ‘rehabilitation’ services to put right the damage of imprisonment. All this can be achieved at no greater risk to the public and probably a great deal less.

Dr Stella Perrott

Stella Perrott is a consultant in criminal justice and children’s services who has spent 25 years reviewing public services when things have gone wrong. She lives in North Yorkshire.