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Give the prisoner a second chance for all our sakes

Erwin James argues that prisons have never really been able to develop into places where ‘rehabilitation’ is the key purpose of the prisoner’s experience

Prison life in the UK has never been easy or primarily positive. Many would argue that neither should it be. Indeed as a new Conservative MP in 2011 our current Justice Secretary Dominic Raab co-authored a book called After the Coalition, (jointly written with four other Conservatives including Priti Patel, now Home Secretary, and Liz Truss, now Foreign Secretary) – in which they called for a tougher approach to law and order.

“Punishment in the justice system,” they said, “is too often a dirty word … We are not ashamed to say that prisons should be tough, unpleasant and uncomfortable places. That’s the point of them. Once an offender has gone to prison they should not want to return.”

Raab and Co’s book implies that the prison experience in this country is not sufficiently punitive. But for decades the suicide rate has consistently been around 80 to 90 self-inflicted deaths each year (there were 79 in the year up to March this year). And incidents of self-harm have risen dramatically – in 2020 there were more than 55,000. Clearly for those people prison is more than sufficiently punitive.

It has long been the tradition in this country that people are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. Political rhetoric such as that of Raab’s and his colleagues, along with the sensationalist tabloid reporting of crime, has blurred this fundamental tenet so much so that our prisons have never really been able to develop into places where ‘rehabilitation’ is the key purpose of the prisoner’s experience. Even though it stands to reason that more rehabilitated people coming out of prison would mean fewer victims of repeat offenders. And the economic costs saved would be enormous.

The UK has one of the highest re-offending rates in western Europe. Almost half, (48 per cent) of all released prisoners are reconvicted of another offence within a year. The prisons and probation system costs in the region of £4bn to run – 10 years ago the economic and social costs of reoffending by released prisoners was estimated by the National Audit Office (NAO) to be £15bn. I doubt any other CEO of a business running at such a loss would last long in the job.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption in the normal running of the prison system for sure. Regimes were reduced to almost no purposeful activity. Since mid-March 2020 the majority of prisoners have been kept locked in their cells for 23 hours a day, two-thirds in conditions that amount to solitary confinement, the other third sharing cells. (Up to May 2021, 16,865 people in prison tested positive for Covid and there were 149 Covid-related prisoner deaths.)

But Covid aside, even under ‘normal’ circumstances our prisons are generally places of human corrosion and debilitation, with rife overcrowding and ever limited opportunities for personal growth and development. There are pockets of excellence, vocational and educational courses run by dedicated people who work often thanklessly to help prisoners to achieve better lives post-prison.

But the fact remains that anyone who makes it to a successful crime-free life after a stint inside in this country does so by chance rather than design. Yet still we keep piling people into these places. In 2020, over 40,000 people were sent to prison. Scotland and England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rates in western Europe. The prison population has risen by 74 per cent in the last 30 years and, according to the Ministry of Justice, is currently projected to rise by a further 20,000 by 2026. The National Audit Office, however, states categorically that there is no link between the prison population and levels of crime.

Nevertheless there is a glimmer of hope, which comes, ironically from Dominic Raab himself – in his most recent speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester. Speaking about prisoners and former prisoners he said that more must be done if we are to be a “second chance” society and support people who have been to prison to turn their lives around. One of the most successful rehabilitative schemes in our prisons in the last 12 years, a true ‘pocket of excellence’, has been the introduction of the Clink charity catering training programme.

Raab spoke glowingly of the Clink’s work. “You may remember the Clink scheme, a restaurant set up at HMP High Down in 2009, training offenders in their kitchens to give them the skills to get a job when they are released,” he said. “The Clink now operates in eight prisons, and the prisoners who take part are a third less likely to re-offend, because if you give someone a job, if you give them something to lose they’re much less likely to return to crime. This year, I’m trebling the Clink scheme, and extending it to another 17 prisons.”

The only power able to reverse the negative results of our prisons is political power. Sadly for all of us there has never been the political will in this country to make the changes that could give us prison outcomes we can be proud of instead of constantly the opposite. But just maybe, despite his past praise for punishment, our new Justice Secretary will have the moral courage to build on his applause for the Clink’s success and start to turn the tide of misery and failure that has dominated our prison system for far too long.

Hate the crime, hate the criminal –but give the prisoner a second chance for all our sakes.