The flipchart in the corner of the staff meeting room, deep inside a prison in the south-east of England, tells its own story about what our overcrowded jails are having to deal with, day in day out. Under the heading “Challenges”, it lists gangs, the destruction of cells, prisoners exploiting each other and complex behaviours.
Committed, hard-working staff talk about the high levels of psychosis, often combined with drug abuse. They provide examples of people actually committing crimes to go back into jail to get some respite from their chaotic, dysfunctional lives.
To tackle the current prisons crisis in England and Wales, planned changes to sentencing will see almost 2,000 people released early from Thursday and over the following month. It is the first tranche of the estimated 5,000 releases that will take place in phases over the coming year.
This will address the immediate crisis, but by the government’s own admission it is not a permanent fix. If it wants to ensure that the new approach to early releases does not need to be further accelerated, wider reforms will be needed across the system.
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As a first step, we need to address the staggering increase in people recalled to prison. The power that probation officers have to send someone back behind bars plays an important role in protecting the public, but with recall now accounting for one in seven of the prison population compared with one in 13 a decade ago, it is neither sustainable nor effective. Cases of people being recalled for missing probation appointments because transport was delayed or for moving out of their accommodation to get away from drug dealers and gangs, are too often punished with a return to custody. A justice secretary under the last Labour government tells me it’s a ludicrous approach that must change if prisons aren’t going to stagger from crisis to crisis.
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Second, we need to focus on the probation service. It is critical to fixing prisons and too often undervalued. Today it is a long way from its original social-work ethos to advise, assist and befriend those once described as clients but now always labelled offenders. The focus is much more on surveillance and compliance. Consecutive reports by the Chief Inspector of Prisons during the last two weeks reveal how, after years of being run down, the service is struggling to get the basics right. Electronic tags are a critical and expanding part of supervision on release from custody, but the inspector found the “systems, processes and frontline practice needed to make it effective have not kept pace”. The standard of probation work is not consistently what it should be, with staff shortages, poor information sharing and gaps in the capability of probation officers to keep people safe.
The government is committed to recruiting thousands more probation staff and to improving practice but, faced with people who have a complex mix of needs and behaviours, a more person-centred approach closer to the profession’s social-work roots is needed. Those coming out of custody whom we work with say they want probation officers to get alongside them and build trusting relationships so they can get their lives back on track.
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We need to be more open with the public. Prisons and probation are there to keep the public safe, but to do that, ministers need to be much more transparent about the importance of rehabilitation as well as punishment. The justice secretary’s speech to Labour conference this week started this, but far too many are still leaving prison to commit further offences because the system does not provide the drug treatment, access to employment, training and education – and then stable accommodation on release – that will help turn them away from crime. The fact that half of those rough sleeping in England and Wales have spent time in prison is a stark reminder of what’s not working.
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The services need connecting. Fixing this cannot be achieved by the justice system alone. Public bodies from the NHS to local councils have a role to play in giving people the support they need to stay out of prison. Beyond those, community providers can step in where state agencies are not best placed to reach people.
In his party conference speech, Andy Burnham spoke of the importance of being honest with the country. To be honest about our prisons would be to recognise that continuing to lock up more and more people on longer sentences in overcrowded jails will not deliver rehabilitation, nor will it protect communities. This means levelling with the public about what current sentences look like, who needs to be locked up and for how long.
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There is a precedent that shows it can be done. When Labour was last in government, in 2010, there were more than 2,000 children behind bars in England and Wales. Today there are fewer than 500. Where there is a will …
