Criminal Justice: Prison Reform

"Locked Up Potential: A Strategy for Reforming Prisons and Rehabilitating Prisoners"  | Published 23 March 2009

This report presents the conclusions of the Prison Reform Working Group. The 276 page paper provides a comprehensive analysis of, and 70 policy recommendations for, our failing prison system including: prison management and governance; overcrowding; mental health and substance abuse; prisoners’ families; personal development through education, training, work and the arts; prisoners and their victims; resettlement, and three proposed new Acts of Parliament.

The three core recommendations of the report are:

• Localising the management of the prison system by abolishing the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) and replacing it with a network of Community Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts (CPRTs).
• Scrapping the Titan prison programme and reinvesting part of the budget to build five recommended new Mitson Academy model prisons.
• Revolutionising prison rehabilitation to reduce re-offending and its annual £12 billion cost.

 
Click here for the Prison Reform Report
Click here to read the Executive Summary

Criminal Justice: Prison Reform

Introduction

Informed by the voluntary sector, professionals and leading academics, Locked Up Potential outlines a strategy which would transform our prison system from an expensive network of warehouses, to institutions of rehabilitation that reduce re-offending. The review, led by Jonathan Aitken, makes more than 60 recommendations across prison policy areas including governance, overcrowding, mental health, and resettlement. The report concludes by outlining a new programme for government.

• There are 83,246 people in prison across England and Wales: 78,511 are male, 4,283 are female.[i] The prison population has risen by more than 25,000 since 1997. In 2008 the population moved beyond 83,000 for the first time ever.[ii]
• The average annual direct resource cost of custody per prisoner is £39,000, equivalent to more than £100 a night.[iii]
• Approximately 50 per cent of prisoners are re-convicted within a year of release. For those released who have served less than 12 months this figure rises to approximately 60 per cent.[iv]
• Half of prisoners, approximately 40,000, do not possess the skills required by over 95 per cent of jobs.[v]

The RAPt 12 step in action: freeing prisoners from addiction

Charlie is a 22 year old single male, he is a former heroin, cannabis, amphetamine, ecstasy and alcohol user. His father left the family when he was three years old. He was repeatedly sexually abused by a neighbour from the age of eight to 11 years old. He was badly bullied at school for many years from the age of nine, which was when he began to regularly use cannabis. At aged 10 he began to steal money from his mum and grandfather. At aged 11, he was drinking alcohol. At age 13 he began using heroin. By the age of 14, Charlie’s mother was no longer able to cope with his behaviour, so she sent him away to a Children’s home.

He remained there until the age of 17. He loathed his time there. His crime and drug using continued to escalate. His addiction became more acute, and he progressed to using highly addictive stimulants. Charlie began the RAPt programme shortly after his move to Prison. He successfully completed the programme and has remained free from all drugs and alcohol since, the longest period since Charlie was 9 years old.

1. Abolish National Offender Management service (NOMS). Replace it with a local network of Community Prison Rehabilitation Trusts (CPRTs) across England and Wales who will be held responsible for delivering a reduction of re-offending in their area. Her Majesty’s Prison Service (HMPS) staff will be TUPE’d to CPRTs, save those responsible for the High Security estate which will continue to be managed by HMPS.

2. Introduce five special categories of prisoner for selected transfer to newly established Community Supervised Homes for Offenders (CSHOs).

3. Introduce a new, academy model, design for prisons. These prisons should be rolled out by scrapping the Titan prison programme and reinvesting the budget in five new academy prisons of 600 inmates each.

4. Redress the prison drugs treatment balance by more utilisation of abstinence based programmes such as RAPt’s 12 step or Therapeutic Communities. Far too few prisoners currently access these courses.

5. The MOJ should appoint a National Commissioner of Voluntary and Charity groups. This Commissioner will reverse the anti-Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) culture across NOMS and the prison estate, as well as increase VCS commissioning levels. When CPRTs are established, the Commissioner will hold them to account to ensure full utilisation of such the sector in strategic planning and rehabilitation.

6. Introduce pre-release benefit applications and decisions to prevent the delay between release and access to core welfare benefits – currently this can be up to five weeks. We have heard that this delay frequently drives hungry and homeless prison leavers back to crime to survive.

7. Legislate early in the next parliament to introduce a ‘Second Chance’ Act. This Act, inspired by the US Second Chance Act 2007, will reform the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 by incorporating the recommendations of the Breaking the Circle review (2002) as well as introduce other key proposals we call for to better rehabilitate prisoners.

8. Launch a volunteer mentoring scheme kick start fund for young adult prisoners serving 12 months or less. This group of prisoners currently receives no support from the Probation Service and has one of the highest rates of recidivism. A kick start fund of approximately £20 million should be divided between the 43 probation areas, and in time CPRT areas, for them to commission existing or new voluntary organisations to lead such work.

9. Reform Mental Health diversion schemes – operating in Police Stations and Courts – to transfer more offenders with mental health disorders to secure health care. Too many are dumped in prison which is often an inappropriate and indecent destination for them.

10. Introduce Restorative Justice (RJ) conferencing widely in prison. RJ programmes will reduce re-offending.

Reform Mental health division scheme

Fred said to me, ‘The voices, the police, they are in my head.’ I was the prison hospital orderly and Fred had been brought in for observation. I made him some tea and helped him into a cell. In the morning I heard a yell from the officer who unlocked Fred’s door. When I got there, I saw that on one wall Fred had written, ‘FRED IS DEAD,’ in his own blood. There was a note on the table and a pool of blood under his bed. Fred was under the blankets, just his head showing. His eyes were closed. The paramedics arrived in time to save him and he was sent to a secure hospital. When he returned three months later he was placed back on ‘normal location,’ in a cell on the main wing. He looked well. He smiled a lot. But soon he was looking distressed again. An officer told me to get a hospital cell ready for him. ‘He’s going down hill again,’ he said. But it was too little too late. The morning he was supposed to come over they found Fred hanging from the bars of his cell window. This time he really was dead. It was just one of many incidents that brought home to me how inappropriate prison life is for those who are mentally unwell.
Erwin James, CSJ Prison Reform Working Group member

“In all of our troubled public sector, the prison system is in the greatest disarray and danger.”
Lord Hurd, President, Prison Reform Trust (PRT)

“Prison is becoming a warehousing service in which people are stored in between their crimes.”
Senior prison officer in evidence to the CSJ

CHAIRMAN

Jonathan Aitken
Jonathan is a former Conservative government minister who was jailed for perjury in 1999. He chronicled this life-changing experience in a two-part autobiography, Pride and Perjury, and Porridge and Passion. He is a Director of Prison Fellowship International and frequently visits prisons to talk to inmates. Jonathan’s experience of both politics and prison means he is uniquely qualified to lead the Prison Reform Policy Group. Jonathan has also written biographies of Richard Nixon and Charles Colson.

WORKING GROUP