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| Prisoner suicides: the dire cost of Tory tough-guy posturing on crime | Prisoner suicides: the dire cost of Tory tough-guy posturing on crime |
| (about 7 hours later) | |
| I have disagreed with him more strongly, but I have never felt so philosophically different from David Cameron as when he said the idea of prisoners voting made him “physically ill”. I’m pretty sure it’s a political confection, the visceral hatred of criminals this government exhibits. It doesn’t indicate any serious reflection on who is actually in prison, what happens to them during their sentence, or what it will take for society to reabsorb them when they’re released. It’s there to establish their credentials as men – tough, morally certain and on the side of right. It’s crude and trivial minded, yet its consequences are showing in the most profound events. | I have disagreed with him more strongly, but I have never felt so philosophically different from David Cameron as when he said the idea of prisoners voting made him “physically ill”. I’m pretty sure it’s a political confection, the visceral hatred of criminals this government exhibits. It doesn’t indicate any serious reflection on who is actually in prison, what happens to them during their sentence, or what it will take for society to reabsorb them when they’re released. It’s there to establish their credentials as men – tough, morally certain and on the side of right. It’s crude and trivial minded, yet its consequences are showing in the most profound events. |
| Ken Clarke made genuine efforts to reduce prison numbers; professionals said at the time that it was the first time in years they’d had a justice secretary who understood the prison estate and what it needed. Clearly that was a PR disaster for the Conservatives, for whom “understanding” is a dirty word; Chris Grayling, his replacement, seems to take a kind of giddy delight in how little he comprehends of a business before “reforming” it. | Ken Clarke made genuine efforts to reduce prison numbers; professionals said at the time that it was the first time in years they’d had a justice secretary who understood the prison estate and what it needed. Clearly that was a PR disaster for the Conservatives, for whom “understanding” is a dirty word; Chris Grayling, his replacement, seems to take a kind of giddy delight in how little he comprehends of a business before “reforming” it. |
| As a direct result of his policies and tough-guy posturing, the number of prisoners increases every week. It even went up in August, which is unheard of because courts are on holiday. Suicides have gone up by 64%. Everybody knows what causes suicides in prison. Too many inmates have mental health problems and shouldn’t even be in prison in the first place. Had the sentencing magistrate been better trained, or simply more sensitive, they would have been handed a community sentence and stood a chance of getting the healthcare they needed (though, considering the underfunding of mental health services, not a very strong chance). However, that has long been the case. The recent change to explain this spike is overcrowding and understaffing. Wandsworth prison four years ago was a huge success story of modern jailcraft – it had a flagship education system, award-winning sex offender rehabilitation programmes and responsive, highly trained prison officers. In 2010 it had 427 officers; this June it had 260, to manage 1,634 prisoners. Four men have killed themselves since the beginning of the year. Frances Crook, from the Howard League charity, calculated by the Ministry of Justice’s own data that Grayling had cut staff by a third since he took over. The average local prison now has one officer for every 150 prisoners. | As a direct result of his policies and tough-guy posturing, the number of prisoners increases every week. It even went up in August, which is unheard of because courts are on holiday. Suicides have gone up by 64%. Everybody knows what causes suicides in prison. Too many inmates have mental health problems and shouldn’t even be in prison in the first place. Had the sentencing magistrate been better trained, or simply more sensitive, they would have been handed a community sentence and stood a chance of getting the healthcare they needed (though, considering the underfunding of mental health services, not a very strong chance). However, that has long been the case. The recent change to explain this spike is overcrowding and understaffing. Wandsworth prison four years ago was a huge success story of modern jailcraft – it had a flagship education system, award-winning sex offender rehabilitation programmes and responsive, highly trained prison officers. In 2010 it had 427 officers; this June it had 260, to manage 1,634 prisoners. Four men have killed themselves since the beginning of the year. Frances Crook, from the Howard League charity, calculated by the Ministry of Justice’s own data that Grayling had cut staff by a third since he took over. The average local prison now has one officer for every 150 prisoners. |
| One appalling detail is that all deaths have shot up, even deaths from illness. Heart attacks that needn’t be fatal are, because there aren’t the staffing levels to get people to hospital in time. The NHS has contracts to deliver healthcare to inmates; these are impossible to fulfil, because no staff are available to get the prisoners to the hospital. Another consequence of this is highlighted in the Howard League’s report, out today, Coercive Sex in Prisons. Men who are raped in prison have nowhere to turn. They can’t call specialist services, because their only permitted phone calls are to pre-agreed numbers. Healthcare is probably the only avenue of support, and they are not able to access it. Instead, sexual abuse goes unreported. Victims have to carry on sharing a cell with their rapists. Tolerating the sexual abuse of prisoners is no different to tolerating the abuse of anyone else. It doesn’t do anything to help the rates of self-harm and suicide. | One appalling detail is that all deaths have shot up, even deaths from illness. Heart attacks that needn’t be fatal are, because there aren’t the staffing levels to get people to hospital in time. The NHS has contracts to deliver healthcare to inmates; these are impossible to fulfil, because no staff are available to get the prisoners to the hospital. Another consequence of this is highlighted in the Howard League’s report, out today, Coercive Sex in Prisons. Men who are raped in prison have nowhere to turn. They can’t call specialist services, because their only permitted phone calls are to pre-agreed numbers. Healthcare is probably the only avenue of support, and they are not able to access it. Instead, sexual abuse goes unreported. Victims have to carry on sharing a cell with their rapists. Tolerating the sexual abuse of prisoners is no different to tolerating the abuse of anyone else. It doesn’t do anything to help the rates of self-harm and suicide. |
| It would be instructive for Grayling to go into a prison in the days after a suicide, or on the day of the funeral. The staff are destroyed by these events. This is not a story about callousness or lack of professionalism; there is no great divide of loyalty between those in custody and their custodians. There are simply not enough people to do this job adequately. So inmates such as 18-year-old Greg Revell, who arrived at Glen Parva young offenders institute with welts round his neck from a previous suicide attempt, die. The top line is suicide; the real cause is inadequate supervision. Attacks on prison officers have gone up too, in this new-style prison estate where everyone is brutalised by poor conditions. But the suffering among POs when they lose prisoners unnecessarily, feeling responsible but lacking the power to stop it, is an attack in itself, one that goes unrecorded. | |
| This is what prisons look like when the political rhetoric is all about the victim, and the criminal is relevant only insofar as he or she is seen to get their just deserts. Even if your worldview can’t compute a prisoner as a victim of anything, and sees his or her rights to justice as completely waived by the committal of any crime, however petty, you would nevertheless be able to see that prisoners aren’t rehabilitated in these conditions. Education, therapy, exercise, work: all these things take staff. If you’re trying to care for 150 inmates with one member of staff, they will by necessity spend most of their day in a cell, 22,000 of them sharing cells designed to hold just one prisoner. | This is what prisons look like when the political rhetoric is all about the victim, and the criminal is relevant only insofar as he or she is seen to get their just deserts. Even if your worldview can’t compute a prisoner as a victim of anything, and sees his or her rights to justice as completely waived by the committal of any crime, however petty, you would nevertheless be able to see that prisoners aren’t rehabilitated in these conditions. Education, therapy, exercise, work: all these things take staff. If you’re trying to care for 150 inmates with one member of staff, they will by necessity spend most of their day in a cell, 22,000 of them sharing cells designed to hold just one prisoner. |
| But even that argument – that this policy has the opposite of its desired affect, and will neither prevent future victimisation nor save money – is secondary. Because the problem is not a government that is bad at governing, though clearly that’s not ideal. The problem is a government that can write off some of its citizens as beneath its care. It’s a dangerous cruelty with implications far beyond the prison walls. | But even that argument – that this policy has the opposite of its desired affect, and will neither prevent future victimisation nor save money – is secondary. Because the problem is not a government that is bad at governing, though clearly that’s not ideal. The problem is a government that can write off some of its citizens as beneath its care. It’s a dangerous cruelty with implications far beyond the prison walls. |