Disturbing prison statistics

We are not great fans of statistics, but these tell a disturbing story.

Firstly, reports indicate that prison suicides are running at two a week. Inevitably, the increase is put down by many to prison overcrowding – prison numbers in England and Wales have now hit 81,000 for the first time ever. Why? There’s been no significant increase or decrease in crime. The increase in prison numbers is due to more people being given prison sentences when convicted, and for longer.

Also more people are being recalled to prison for failing to comply with probation orders. Previously, they were given more chances because probation officers know that change comes slowly and incrementally for the people they work with. But government has given them new and more punitive orders to work under. Part of politicians’ competition to look ‘toughest on crime’.

Try this: we have more people on life sentences in this country than anywhere else in Europe, and more than France, Germany, Italy and Turkey combined. The number of men serving four years or more in prison increased by 86% from 1995 to 2005. One could go on and on but it makes for desperately annoying reading. Are we really more criminal in this country than elsewhere? We don’t think so!

At over £40,000 per year per head on average, the country’s increase in the use of custody is an expensive policy. So, is our money being well spent? Let’s hear what the Prime Minister’s own Strategy Unit said in its 2003 Carter report: “There is no convincing evidence that further increases in the use of custody would significantly reduce crime.”

That doesn’t sound like money well spent to me, and that’s without taking full account of the damage being done by imprisoning so many people. Apart from the fact that the prison regime will be greatly impoverished, leading to anger, bitterness and despair, there’s plenty of well-researched evidence that the prison environment is in itself a ‘criminogenic’ one, which means that it’s a cause of crime: it creates crime rather than reducing it.

In addition to the impact of this on society as a whole, there is the impact on prisoners’ families. The Home Office estimates that 17,700 children are separated from their mothers by imprisonment each year. Far more suffer from separation from their fathers: around 150,000 have a parent in prison. In March 2007 there were 9,311 young adults and 2,413 children in prison – that last figure has doubled in the last ten years. Children as young as 14 have committed suicide while incarcerated by us.

If prison doesn’t reduce crime, the main reason for imprisoning people (other than those who are a danger to society) must be retribution; in other words revenge.

We know, and the government knows, that the majority of the people who commit crimes have generally suffered the most deprivation and poor life chances. That’s why they do it. Perhaps society should grow up a little and realise that, by imprisoning some of the most vulnerable people in the community, we are fuelling the fires of crime as opposed to damping them down.

People in the field are fully aware there are better ways of dealing with offenders. Once again, government has failed to listen to the professionals, has used the country’s money ineffectively. And it’s not just the criminals who suffer for that. When they are released into the community without proper preparation, which is what now usually happens, we all pay the price.

Statistics from Bromley Briefings: Prison Factfile, May 2007, Prison Reform Trust, London.