Truly criminal

If you want to get a true picture of crime in the UK, look at the raw numbers of crime recorded by the police. This shows that reports of violent offences against the person have gone up by a staggering 283% in the last ten years.

In the same period, reports of sexual offences went up by 61%, robbery by 34% and property crime went down by 15%.

Of course, you have to take into account trends in reporting crime. But most of us do have a clear sense of society getting more violent. This is reflected in these figures rather than in the Government’s favoured British Crime Survey, which fails to properly include households in high crime areas because of difficulties of access.

I got these figures from Inside Time, a newspaper specifically for prisoners which is distributed for free in our jails. Inside Time is professionally produced and is probably the best way to gain an understanding of prison, other than going inside one yourself. Novelist Rachel Billington has a regular column in it; she wrote about The Dialogue Trust in one issue. Check out the website: www.insidetime.org

The crime figures in Inside Time came from the Home Office itself. They also show that in ten years drugs offences went up by 888%. Perhaps it’s about time Government ministers listened to people like Julian Critchley, the former director of the cabinet office’s anti-drugs unit, who says drug legalisation is favoured by the “overwhelming majority” of professionals in the field, including ministers, police officers and health workers?

Legalisation doesn’t necessarily mean a free-for-all. Correctly handled, drugs would be properly controlled and regulated and would become safely available to those who needed them. Crime would be cut by half and we’d all sleep safer in our beds.

Back to the old gaff

Last week I returned to my old gaff – Holloway prison. I was with fellow commissioners for the Howard League Commission on English Prisons Today and we were given a good tour of the place.

We went first to reception, where prisoners enter and leave the establishment. I remembered being on the other side of the two-way mirrors, in the holding room where women had smuggled out drugs and drug-taking paraphernalia (lighter, silver paper) despite the thorough strip searches. They had a toot in the toilets. Feeling infuriated with being locked up, I felt a kind of satisfaction they’d got one over the establishment.

Then we went onto the wings, initially to the First Night Centre. My jaw dropped: carpet on the floors, unheard of in my time. I remembered being thrown into a cell and having to learn the ropes from other, more experienced prisoners. Had things really got that much better?

On the main wings, the palace had clearly had a good lick of paint since I was there. The prisoners’ lockers looked pretty much intact, and relatively clean. Most people were still in four or six bed cells but joy of joys, there was a small TV in each one. Never had it so good!

It was when we actually went into a four-bed cell I realised that the changes, while admirable, were largely superficial. Just one woman was out, on an activity. The rest were banged up and in bed, despite it being the middle of the day, because there wasn’t enough staff to make use of all the prison facilities. These prisoners were bored, fed up, and deeply depressed.

“Haven’t you got anything to do apart from watching TV?” asked a fellow commissioner. Yes, and they proudly showed us knitting and handiwork kits, but it was obvious they couldn’t get up the motivation to actually do any of it.

At healthcare we met a team of keen NHS professionals who were clearly doing some fantastic work. “Do you have enough to meet the needs?” I asked them. There was a resounding ‘No’ from the head of counselling, and echoed by the others. The main message they gave us was that the work they were doing would be far more effective if it was being done in the community, rather than in the prison environment. Sending women to prison, for mainly short sentences, was counter-productive.

The majority of women prisoners are banged up for non-violent crimes and 66% of them have dependent children aged under 18. Of these children only 5% stay in their own home while mother is in prison. Most women prisoners are vulnerable and have mental health problems.

But those blessed politicians continue their love-affair ……… with prison!

It’s time to talk

One of my lasting memories of the HMP Wandsworth dialogues was that among the scores of prisoners we worked with over the year from 2005-6, we were never treated badly or threatened, even though no prison staff were present.

The prisoners were men we randomly invited to the dialogues when we met them on the ordinary prison wings and landings of the largest prison in the country. There were no security checks, no weeding out of undesirable people. We worked with drug addicts, robbers, thieves and murderers and they treated me, my co-facilitator and the volunteers who came into the prison with us with respect.

I always felt safe, despite being really quite defenceless among criminals who were seen by many as ‘scum’, and often treated in a way that made them feel like ‘scum’. Treat someone well, they usually respond well.

Yet when I recently spoke to a high ranking officer working on the infamous D-wing at HMP Pentonville, he said he certainly wouldn’t feel safe as a prisoner on this, the largest wing in the prison. I wondered how safe it felt for staff. I wondered if dialogue might help.

I was visiting on behalf of the Howard League Commission on English Prisons Today. We were allowed to see every part of the prison – except D-wing. A bit like officials telling us about the good work that goes on in prisons – but not telling us about the huge mass of prisoners that the work does not reach.

Criminologists have warned of an ‘epidemic of violence’ fuelled by our spiralling prison numbers. Violent crime is on the increase, as are suicides in prison, generally accepted as due to dire conditions caused by over-crowding and by a severely under-resourced service.

Now the number of people in prison in England and Wales has topped 82,000 for the first time in history. While the numbers increase, the humanity of the system inevitably decreases, as does the ability of establishments to manage humanising interventions such as dialogue.

How many more prison wings will go the way of Pentonville’s D-wing as a result?

A fair chance?

We all know that life isn’t fair but what everybody wants is a fair chance at life. While visiting a couple of prisons as a commissioner for the Howard League Commission on English Prisons Today, I was struck that the prisoners I spoke to all asked for just that: a fair chance.

They desperately wanted training and education that would give them a chance of getting work when they came out, so that they could steer clear of crime. At one large London prison, inmates spoke about their frustration in the prison as well as their worries on release.

They said they had to wait months to get on courses offering education and training, and that all too often they were moved to another prison before completing them. And then they were back to square one.

The Governor was also frustrated that the prison had so little to offer and had drawn up plans for extra capacity in that direction. A slight problem was that these plans also involved building capacity for an extra 600 prisoners. It’ll be needed if we fail to help prisoners re-train.

If we are not going to make proper provision for people whose lives more often than not have been blighted by failed family and schooling, we are setting ourselves up for ever high crime levels. The government seem happy to take that route: they are cutting 3% of the budget for prisons and generating new plans to build three monstrous ‘titan’ prisons to house the fall-out. How short-sighted and, at root, how inhumane.

Lack of resources for proper rehabilitation in prisons has been shown up by the High Court, in its recent ruling on indeterminate sentences for public protection (IPPs). Prisoners on IPPS must demonstrate to the Parole Board that they are fit for release but not enough money has been made available for proper rehabilitation courses.

The Appeal Court called this “an unhappy state of affairs” and judged that: “There has been a systemic failure on the part of the Secretary of State (Jack Straw) to put in place the resources necessary to implement the scheme of rehabilitation necessary.”

Will the Justice Department do anything in response? Fat chance.

The season of goodwill to all…

The use of imprisonment is already barbaric in this country. Planning to build new super-prisons called titans is a destructive and sadistic act, unethically perpetrated by politicians and bureaucrats who patently know better.

With over two-thirds of ex-prisoners committing further crimes in the two years after release, we all know prison doesn’t work. Dangerous people do have to be imprisoned, but the rest (the majority) can serve sentences in the community, in ways that address rather than reinforce criminality.

Criminologists nowadays accept that the prison environment is in itself criminogenic; that is, it causes people to become more criminal. This is hardly surprising. The focus of criminogenic behaviours is lack of empathy, alienation and failure to think before doing something – and it’s certainly not easy to hold onto thinking in prison.

Prison is a harsh place, with over-crowding leading to more lock-up in the cell and little activity. Prison makes people frustrated, stressed and despairing; powerless and desperate for privacy because of cell-sharing; often unsafe, cut off from the outside world and ostracised by its citizens.

No wonder people come out of prison screwed up. Bear in mind that we are doing this to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities; people who have been let down by their families, the welfare services, doctors and health units.

The government itself knows, states, that 72% or male and 70% of female sentenced prisoners have two or more mental disorders. It knows that mental health issues among prisoners are often linked to previous experiences of violence and sexual abuse. It knows that 30% of prisoners will be completely homeless on release.

Jack Straw, our Orwellian Justice Secretary, has known this since the government first released figures in 2002, when he was Home Secretary.

“The government will not be able to build its way out of the prison crisis” Straw said in July 2007 when interviewed by The Times. But then, in December, he allocated an extra £1.2bn to build three “titan” jails containing 2,500 inmates each. This is on top of £1.5bn already committed for prison expansion. Orwellian indeed.

Knowing what he knows, Straw and his colleagues are guilty of perpetrating a huge injustice on this country. Meanwhile, nobody in politics seems prepared to stick their head above the parapet and denounce this Emperor with No Clothes.
 

Crimble behind bars

Christmas is a miserable affair in prison. People become even more acutely aware of their separation from their families and, because few staff are happy to work over the holidays, you tend to get more ‘bang up’ in the cell than usual.  But prisoners do find ways to get a little enjoyment (I could mention the hooch but I won’t).

Incarcerated at Highpoint during the turn of the millennium, this is how I experienced New Year’s Eve:

At 7.30pm we are back locked behind the spurs, early again so that the screws can go off and enjoy themselves. People make last minute phone calls.

“You’ll be sure to see them every day,” says one woman as I pass. Our children, oh how we miss them, and how they must miss us. I look at the photos of the family stuck onto my cupboard, imagining what they are up to right now: maybe Rachel will be raving it up with her boyfriend in Cambridge and Gordon and Joel will be together at home. Grace sticks her head round the door.
“What are you doing? Come an’ join the party.”

Everyone is gathered on the central landings, all of us squeezed together behind the thick white bars of the spur gates. I have two sets to the back of me and three in front, familiar faces behind them all. Someone puts Radio One on loud, and here it comes, the final countdown: 5-4-3-2-1. We erupt, yelling, whistling, a-huggin’ and a-kissin’, scenes being repeated throughout the country. The music rings out. A large black woman smashes a cake tin repeatedly against a wall, the noise reverberating……..

Fifteen minutes later everything has died down. I chat awhile to Annette, a Yorkshire lass doing four years, and then I am back in my room and like most of the others thinking about those on the out, straining to pick up their thoughts on the ether.

“From the Inside” Aurum Press 2003

Prison inquiries

There seems to be a sudden rush to set up inquiries into prisons. First at the post was the Howard League, which has set up a Commission on English Prisons Today.

I happen to be one of the Commissioners, sitting with Oscar who also has experience of being a prisoner, amidst a gaggle of academics, including six Professors at the last count. Plus a Dame, a Baroness, a few media people and a businessman.

Perhaps the task for Oscar and I is to keep the humanity in focus amidst the academic debate. After all, this is about real people, like you and me, whatever their offence against society. People whose behaviour all too frequently results from being offended against by people they should have been able to trust.

We just get going and up pops Jonathan Aitken, another ex-con but in a slightly different league (millionaire, former cabinet minister) who found God in prison. He’s leading an inquiry for the Centre for Social Justice, run by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, and he seems to think things can be done with no extra resources. The focus is on how volunteers could support prison literacy programmes and post-release mentoring. Coming from a Tory, one could suggest there’s nothing much new there.

Not to be outdone, the Conservatives announce the launch of their own separate official inquiry into the failing prison system which will examine overcrowding, and how more of the mentally ill and drug abusers can be kept out of prison. Sorry, but it can only be done if mental health and drug abuse issues and needs are properly resourced in the community.

No inquiry from Labour, the political carpet having been resolutely whisked from under them. But perhaps there should be an inquiry into their double-speak. Recently, the Minister for Justice, Jack Straw, said: “We recognise that prison is not a mere repository for those with mental health, educational, social, behavioural or drug problems, where no real attempt is made to rehabilitate or reintegrate offenders back into society.”

Jack, my condolences go to you this time: as it stands prison in this country is largely just that.

The obituary of the National Offender Management Service

Not many will cry for the demise of NOMS, the unwieldy National Offender Management Service which was supposed to merge and replace the Prison and Probation services.

Since 2004 it has spent £2.6 billion of taxpayers’ money, including £155 million on a failed computer system and more than £5 million on consultants in the last two years.

According to The Times newspaper (28 September), one Whitehall source said: “God knows where all the money has gone.” Into the pockets of over-paid consultants and computer geeks by the sound of it.

Big is not beautiful and you certainly don’t get out of an operational crisis by providing more management. The struggling criminal justice providers need less bureaucracy, not more; less central control and more community links.

But most of all we need a radical rethink about the way we manage crime. Prison is a failed experiment: three-quarters of people released from prison re-offend within two years. Probation also has a high rate of recidivism. In both cases, staff struggle to provide the help offenders need to stay away from crime partly because of a severe shortage of resources. They could have done with some of the money wasted on NOMS.

It’s generally accepted that the main problems behind most crimes are to do with someone’s personal and social situation, which has led to faulty ways of managing in the world. Going to prison isn’t going to make a positive impact on that; in fact, it will make it worse.

If we are going to make a real impact on reducing crime, we need to accept that the old ways aren’t working and that different interventions are urgently needed to make our communities safer and more cohesive.

The Howard League’s Commission on English Prisons Today is looking at these issues, and at effective alternatives to imprisonment, and we promise to be radical – exactly what I wanted to hear when we had our first official meeting in September. The Commission will report in 2009. Hopefully those responsible for the dire state of our prisons and the probation service will be prepared to listen.

Stuart – a life backwards

The screening on BBC2 of the TV film “Stuart – a life backwards” on 23 September 2007 at 9pm has a special resonance for The Dialogue Trust and for me in particular. More broadly, it should open some people’s eyes as to why lives become chaotic, criminal and out-of-control.

Having spoken to hundreds of prisoners, ex-prisoners and homeless people, I know first-hand that no-one chooses a life of crime, or a life on the streets. If you scratch just under the surface, you find that they all want the same things as we all do: a home, a job and a loving family.

There’s always a reason why these things have become unattainable and in almost every case, there is a remedy. I won’t spoil your viewing of the film (or your reading of the book on which it was based) by letting you know the reasons for Stuart’s plight. But every Stuart has their own story, often desperate and painful.

Our Patron Alexander Masters wrote his best selling book “Stuart – a life backwards”, and the subsequent screenplay, as a result of his involvement in the Campaign to free the Cambridge Two. I was one of them: imprisoned for allegedly allowing heroin dealing in the courtyard of a Cambridge day centre for the homeless. My prison experience led me to help found the Dialogue Trust.

Alexander’s unusual friendship with Stuart grew out of their joint work on the campaign. If Stuart had been treated differently in prison, he might have got the chance he needed to live a happier and more fulfilling life. That would have been a good result for him, his family and for society as a whole.

It is a tragedy that so many people like Stuart suffer so pointlessly at the hands of our under-resourced, ineffective and old-fashioned prison system.

Prison Officers’ strike

Prison officers around the country have finally had enough and gone on a 24-hour strike. It’s not surprising. Prisons have been getting more and more over-crowded. Numbers recently hit record levels, prison staff cannot do their jobs effectively, prisoners become increasingly desperate and the inevitable happens: violence ensues.

This is a crisis that has been a long time coming. But there were repeated warnings of it, right up to the Lord Chief Justice who described over-crowding as a cancer in our prisons.

What did the government do? Nothing of any real substance. Reassuring words and plans for more prison places in five years time don’t mean much to struggling staff and despairing prisoners.

To add insult to injury, word leaked out about plans to actually cut prison budgets, and remember that these budgets are already cut to the bone.

In fact, earlier this month Michael Spurr, the Head of Operations at NOMS (the National Offender Management Service), suggested that all prisoners be locked up every afternoon to make the £60 million savings he had been charged with. More lock-up means less rehabilitation work and therefore more chance of prisoners offending on release, and being incarcerated once again. Surely that’s a false saving.

In my experience, Michael Spurr is a sensible man. We were both lecturers at the Prison Service’s annual Perrie Lectures a couple of years back. I heard him stress the importance and benefits of rehabilitation, and how it was an essential component of prison life if we really wanted to reduce offending.

He won’t be happy about the cuts. I haven’t met anyone in the Prison Service who is – those on the coal face know it means a worse service, continuing failure to address crime and its cause, more damage to those locked up and damage also to prison staff who have to implement these short-sighted policies.

The Government is terrified of appearing to be ‘soft on crime’ and look where it’s led them (and us). Now the Tories are jacking up their tough stance, in response to taunts from the tabloids. Yet it is generally accepted by independent-minded criminologists that prison does not work, and that the experience actually does make people worse. This results in more crime.

Now the public is getting wise to this. A recent Guardian/ICM poll overturns the assumption that the public think tough prison sentences are the best way to tackle crime. The majority of those polled think the government should scrap its prison building programme and find other ways to punish criminals.

But we live in a cynical world. Not long ago The Dialogue Trust representatives met a senior politician who wanted to know how to make reducing the use of prison palatable to the public, because he knew it was the right policy. Needless to say, he has now been demoted.