Many, though not all, of England’s prisons are in a terrible state. The alleged escape last year of Daniel Khalife from HMP Wandsworth, and the manhunt that led to his recapture, focused attention on staffing and other problems at the south London prison (Mr Khalife has pleaded not guilty and goes on trial in October). Last week’s letter to the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, from the prisons inspectorate, put paid to any hope that this dramatic episode could have led to improvement. The warning it contained, known as an urgent notification, criticised “poor leadership at every level” including at the Ministry of Justice. The prison’s governor, Katie Price, has resigned.
The failures at Wandsworth are acute. After four years as chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor said the jail was characterised by “a degree of despondency he had not come across” before. Seven self-inflicted deaths have occurred in the past 12 months. In drug test results from February, 44% of prisoners were positive.
Ministers have 28 days to respond with an improvement plan. But the problems at Wandsworth are far from unique. Last year, five other prisons were subject to urgent notifications – the highest number in a single year since the mechanism was introduced. While the mood inside Wandsworth was judged by Mr Taylor to be exceptionally low, many of the reasons cited are wearyingly familiar. While more than half of inmates were on remand, waiting to be tried, staff were a combination of inexperienced and burnt-out. Cells were seriously overcrowded and filthy, and the smell of cannabis was “ubiquitous”. There was a chronic lack of purposeful activity and officers did not know what prisoners were doing.
In the past, some prisons have shown themselves capable of changing in response to criticism. In his annual report last year, Mr Taylor described Birmingham as having been transformed under the leadership of Paul Newton, and there are up to 30 other governors he sees as “visionary”. But elsewhere, systemic and cultural failings have proved intractable. Four prisons including Rainsbrook youth prison, before it closed down, were the subject of more than one urgent notification within five years.
Overcrowding is recognised to be among the hardest challenges, and is linked to rising levels of drug use and violence. Keeping thousands of men locked up in tiny, unhygienic cells with nothing to do not only fails to rehabilitate them, it exacerbates problems. If offenders are to become better at functioning within the law outside prison, they need to be able to work while carrying out their sentences, mixing with staff and each other. Yet ministers’ promises of more prison places have not been linked to a strategy for education and employment. Mental health care is another area of concern, recently highlighted by the inspectorate with reference to women’s prisons, and also in our series on the suffering caused by indeterminate (IPP) sentences.
To say that prisons need reform is to state the obvious. Just as urgent is serious work on alternatives to prison, to reduce the ceaseless churn that so destabilises them. Mr Taylor’s suggestion of a comprehensive redrawing of responsibilities should also be looked at. The current, highly centralised model of prison and probation management, including staffing, has not succeeded. Perhaps governors would make more effective recruiters? Why not make them part of wider, ongoing discussions about devolution? There is so much room for improvement.
