Crisis…what crisis?

Question 1: How are you monitoring excessive confinement?

Answer: The minister’s letter makes no reference to the issue of prisoners spending 22 or 23 hours a day locked in cell, which we know from recent inspection reports continues to be a reality in many prisons. However, we know from previous correspondence with the ministry that there is no system for monitoring excessive confinement.

Question 2: What is the department’s projection of the prison population and capacity over the next 12 months?

Answer: The letter says the updating of projections has been postponed because of strike action by the Criminal Bar Association “creating uncertainty”.

Question 3: How long does the department intend to keep Operation Safeguard in place?

Answer: The letter says that Operation Safeguard is “temporary”.

Question 4: What further measures do you plan in the immediate future to reduce both excessive confinement and overcrowding?

Answer: The letter simply restates the government’s commitment to deliver 20,000 new places. Regular visitors to this website may recall our analysis of how this number fluctuates, along with a (now absent) date for when it will finally be delivered.

Visitors from overseas who have an interest in prison administration are often very impressed with the range of independent scrutiny mechanisms in this country — the inspectorate, IMBs, an ombudsman, an Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody, and knowledgeable organisations like PRT and the Howard League that get good access to prisons and prisoners. All of those organisations are telling the government about conditions in our prisons that are grossly and obviously unacceptable. But the minster persists in seeking to reassure us that “the safety and decency of our prisoners is paramount”. He even seeks to persuade us that there is a “fully transparent” capacity challenge process which we should take as a guarantee that “levels of decency” are maintained. Fully transparent to him and his civil servants, perhaps, but that’s an unusual definition of “transparent”. And all done in the absence of any legal or even administrative definition of what actually constitutes “decent conditions”.

In 2005, the late, great David Ramsbotham signed off an inspectorate report about race relations in prisons which he entitled “Parallel Worlds”. He used the phrase to describe the gulf between the optimistic perceptions of those in charge of prisons and the different perceptions of those living with the reality of being imprisoned. Sadly, the minister appears to be in just such a parallel world when it comes to what very many prisoners are currently enduring in very many prisons. The first step to solving a problem must be to acknowledge honestly that it exists — however inconvenient that may be politically.