Governors Fire Warning Shot

Clearly the Prison Governors Association feel they know what's coming, so what chance has probation got for the future? 

6 October 2022 

Dear Lord Chancellor, 

The Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) welcomes you to your new role as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. Your portfolio is demanding, and we wish you well as you navigate the complexities and competing priorities of your new role. A measure of your success undoubtedly sits in the hands of our members, who fill some of the most senior roles both in prisons and headquarters. Your success, and legacy as Lord Chancellor will, above all else, be gauged by public critique of our prisons. It is our members you must enable to deliver the aspirations of Government, and not see our service as a cash cow in an economic crisis.

Although the PGA feels compelled to write to you spelling out our concerns for the future of the Prison Service, we are committed to working collaboratively to get the best possible outcomes across HMPPS, and it is appropriate to state that your CEO, DG and senior operational leaders in HMPPS retain our support and confidence. Whilst we have seen frequent and significant changes within ministerial teams across many Governments over several years, it is our members who have remained a constant within HMPPS. They are the experts: they are the best in their field, and we ask that you do not demand they make financial savings to an already impoverished agency. 

It is likely that you will be asking your department heads to identify and make significant savings to help reduce the financial burden our country is under. This is nothing new to HMPPS: recent history has shown what a disastrous impact the austerity years had on the agency and its ability to provide the most basic of services. Our prison system was decimated by catastrophic cuts without the corresponding reduction in prison population. We lost a generation of improvements in decency and safety; our prisons were cited as being the most violent place to work across Europe. 

The loss of thousands of years of prison officer experience through redundancy, followed by a much-reduced pay and reward package, caused untold damage to the staffing position and ability to maintain safe regimes. All of this was to support a fiscal ideology and did nothing to safeguard those who lived, worked, or expected protection from those in custody. 

The level of disinvestment and efficiencies demanded by Government during the austerity period resulted in near total breakdown of the prison system. Scrutiny, both from external and internal bodies, has described a prison system that was broken and on its knees. Government austerity measures have resulted in untold harm and damage being caused to those within the prison system, either working or living in it. The PGA will not stand by quietly and let this happen again. 

We are still seeing the impact of austerity in our Service. We have a pay system which was designed to drive out cost. Fair and Sustainable (F&S) saw the reduction of prison officer pay to unfair and unsustainable levels. Recent attempts by the Prison Service Pay Review Body to remedy some of the recruitment and retention issues caused by this out-of-date pay system were rejected by Government. This unwillingness to invest in our people is one reason our Service is in such a perilous position. 

HMPPS were placed in the invidious position of implementing Government cuts or face the prospect of widespread or wholesale privatisation. Our most senior leaders were asked to make decisions no-one should be expected to make. We saw an increase in demand on prison capacity, at the same time the levels of investment in capital maintenance were at near non-existent levels. We saw the system wide dissection of prison maintenance, which placed the day-to-day upkeep out to the market with devastating effect. The lack of investment over many years in the crumbling prison estate was exposed in report after report from external scrutiny bodies; long term and sustained investment in the prison estate is still required and must not be put at risk or threatened by cuts. 

The benchmarking process to deliver the cuts left prisons dangerously understaffed, allowing organised crime gangs and more bullish prisoners to fill and control the void where larger numbers of experienced staff used to be. The results of this change in the cultural dynamic led to dramatic increases in suicide, self-harm and violence as evidenced by the Ministry of Justice’s own statisticians and a workforce who entered their workplace fearful for their health and safety. 

It is important to state that this austerity was imposed on a prison system which was hitherto functioning well. Safety was improving and decency was underpinning the delivery of its core function. The impact of the savage cuts was immediate and devastating: so deep were these cuts that recovery to pre austerity levels of safety a decade later has not been achieved. Covid may have played a part, but the main blocker to recovery is inadequate resources for the job required. 

Rolling forward to right now and we are seeing further decline in our more challenging prisons. The recruitment and retention issue remains at crisis point with leavers outstripping joiners. Some prisons are running at 50% non-effectives in their staffing profiles. Regimes are impoverished, resulting in prisoners becoming frustrated and angry at constant lock up and unpredictable daily routines. Staff bear the brunt of this with violence and disorder against them; is it any wonder our attrition rate is too high in such a working environment? The mental health and wellbeing of all grades of staff in these prisons has reached an unacceptable level.

The PGA is becoming increasingly worried at the country’s financial picture and what it means for prisons. Media coverage and commentators over recent weeks are following a line that the new Government will enforce “iron discipline” over public spending to restore its battered fiscal credibility. This has been confirmed by the Prime Minister in her keynote speech to the Conservative Party Conference this week. They also report that the mood music from Whitehall is that a further period of austerity is in the offing. It is imperative that we state loud and clear to you that we already have a prison system which in many areas has not recovered from previous austerity and is still broken. To expect efficiencies against this backdrop is a recipe for disaster and we are totally opposed to it. History has shown in graphic detail what happens if you don’t invest properly in prisons. We have seen first-hand both the personal and professional impact working in a broken system has on our members, let alone the lost opportunities to help reduce reoffending and protect the public. 

The removal of someone’s liberty is the greatest sanction a civilised society can place on one of its citizens, there is no greater sanction. To protect the public and have any hope of rehabilitating those who are locked up costs a significant amount of money. Our prisons are overcrowded, and the overall population too high. If the cost of imprisonment on this scale is not affordable to Government, we ask you to take swift action to reduce the demand placed on prison spaces. This needs to be bold and see a significant reduction at a time when we are not able to recruit and retain prison officers in the required numbers. 

For as long as we can recall, HMPPS has had efficiency savings at the forefront of its own budget strategy, and as such we believe there is no more to be taken out. There needs to be public acceptance from Government that if prisons are to be places which are safe and support rehabilitation then HMPPS must see increases in resources and not be subject to arbitrary budget cuts. If this is something Government will not accept, they will carry the risk of prisons becoming warehouses for those society do not wish to see. This is not something we want or accept. 

Therefore, we ask that you take urgent action to address the current crisis in our prisons by focusing on the following: 

• A public commitment to maintain funding of HMPPS to deliver all recent White Paper objectives. 
• A public commitment to accept future Prison Service Pay Review Body recommendations. 
• Take action to deliver an immediate and sustained reduction in the overall prison population.

Yours sincerely, 

Prison Governors’ Association National Executive Committee

Andrea Albutt President 

Mitch Albutt National Officer 

Carl Davies National Officer 

cc. Amy Rees, Director General Chief Executive Officer, HMPPS 

Phil Copple, Director General of Operations, HMPPS 

Francis Stuart, Head of Employee Relations, HMPPS 

Dawn Orchard, Senior HR Liaison Manager, ER, HMPPS

More Inspection Reports

Time to leave aside the internal problems of Napo for awhile and return to the relentless crisis of our prisons and probation service, with recent reports from both Chief Inspectors. Interestingly, the Prison Governors are clearly getting fed up of being made to feel responsible and have called out the government in no uncertain terms. This from the Guardian:-  

Exeter prison condemned by inspectors for violence and drug use

Scathing report comes as Prison Governors Association accuses government underfunding of contributing to jail safety crisis

The crisis-struck HMP Exeter prison, one of only four to have been subjected to special emergency action, is “very violent” and has overt drug use that is not regarded as exceptional by staff, according to inspectors.

The prison was inspected in May, prompting the chief inspector of prisons, Peter Clarke, to invoke an urgent notification protocol, requiring the justice secretary to publish an emergency plan. The report on that inspection, published on Tuesday, reveals that the inspector himself entered a cell from which a strong smell of drugs was emanating. Many incidents of violence were serious and involved weapons, the report says, highlighting a concerning trend among prisoners of throwing boiling water mixed with sugar at staff and other inmates.

The report, published by the president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), accuses the government of failing to respond quickly enough to the jail safety crisis. Andrea Albutt, the PGA’s president, will claim in a speech to its annual conference this week that “dis-investment” has contributed to the decline in standards that has hit much of the estate in England and Wales. The number of assaults against prison officers has continued to rise; the most recent official figures revealed 9,003 assaults on staff in the 12 months to March, up 26% from the previous year.

The prison inspectorate has handed four urgent notices to the justice secretary in the past year, covering prisons in Exeter, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bedford. It is the most serious level of action the inspectorate can take over conditions in a prison it inspects. In the case of HMP Birmingham, the prison was taken out of the hands of its private operator, G4S, and returned to state control for at least six months as officials battled to reduce violence, drug use and disorder.

The Inspectorate of Prisons report on Exeter said standards had deteriorated so sharply that staff appeared to see widespread drug use and poor conditions as normal. Clarke said: “It [one cell] contained two prisoners who were clearly heavily intoxicated by drugs, surrounded by obvious signs of smoking [in a supposedly ‘smoke-free’ jail], food waste and other detritus. Sadly, the staff on the wing did not seem to regard this as exceptional.”

He said living conditions for many prisoners were very poor. “The situation had come to be regarded by many staff as normal,” he said. “There had been six self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection and apparently another within weeks of this inspection. Self-harm had risen by 40%.

“The rate of assaults between prisoners was the highest we have seen in a local prison in recent years and had more than doubled since the last inspection. Illicit drugs were still prevalent, with 60% of prisoners telling us it was easy to obtain drugs and around a quarter testing positive for drugs.”

In a scathing critique, Allbutt will say: “A constant irritation of mine is that the government do not have the humility to admit that they got their policy completely wrong this decade in our prisons. We have crumbling prisons and an inability to give a safe, decent and secure regime to large numbers of men and women in our care due to lack of staff, not-fit-for-purpose contracts and a much more violent, disrespectful gang- and drug-affiliated population.”

She will defend Michael Spurr, who was leant on to leave his role as chief executive of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) in March. Describing Spurr as “dedicated and competent”, Albutt will say: “The last thing we need is another change of direction. Without a doubt, lack of continuity this decade has contributed to instability in our prisons.”

The prisons minister, Rory Stewart, said a team of specialists was sent in to transform HMP Exeter’s safety approach as part of the response.

He added: “We’ll be building on this momentum over the coming months, ensuring each prisoner has dedicated support from a specific prison officer and reviewing incentives to reward good behaviour. This will make relationships between offenders and prison officers more constructive, reducing violence and improving efforts to steer them away from crime.”

--oo00oo--

Meanwhile HM Chief Inspector of Probation continues to find evidence that TR is far from working well under private operation. Here is the press release on Essex:- 

Essex probation service receives mixed performance report

Essex Community Rehabilitation Company – which supervises more than 4,000 low and medium-risk offenders – has received a mixed write-up from independent inspectors.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation has given Essex CRC a ‘requires improvement’ rating, but acknowledged some aspects of its service are delivered well. Chief Inspector of Probation Dame Glenys Stacey said: “This organisation can rightly aspire to a better rating in the future, if it is able to deal with the shortcomings that we found in our inspection.”

Inspectors identified public protection work as a key area for improvement. Dame Glenys said: “We found a lack of focus on the understanding, identification and management of risk of harm to the public, and this must be remedied as a priority. In a third of the cases we looked at, there were concerns about domestic abuse and the same proportion of cases had child safeguarding concerns.”

She recommended managers take steps “as a matter of urgency” to ensure that people on probation do not cause serious harm to others. Essex CRC’s method of supervising people on probation by telephone also came in for criticism.

Dame Glenys said: “Dispiritingly, many individuals under supervision are quickly relegated to telephone rather than face-to-face contact with their probation worker, despite pressing needs in the more complex cases. This approach provides nowhere near the level of supervision we expect.” Staff at the CRC cited heavy workloads – more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of those that interviewed by inspectors said their workload was unmanageable.

On a more positive note, inspectors found the organisation was well led by “committed, able and forward-looking” senior managers and had “an outstanding approach to local partnership working”. Inspectors noted Essex CRC has an “impressive” range of specialist services to help people on probation to move away from further offending and antisocial behaviour. This included specific provision for women offenders and people who misuse substances.

The CRC’s unpaid work scheme – known locally as community payback – was singled out for praise. The scheme supervises people who have been sentenced by the court to complete between 40 and 300 hours of unpaid work in the community. Dame Glenys said: “Unpaid work is delivered to a good standard, with elements of delivery showing signs of an outstanding scheme. This is unusual and a joy to see.” Last year “highly motivated” staff supervised people to complete more than 215,000 hours of unpaid work, providing opportunities for reparation and rehabilitation.

The inspection focussed on three areas: the organisation’s leadership and delivery of its services; the quality of supervision of low and medium-risk offenders; the CRC’s delivery of unpaid work and services to people leaving prison, known as Through the Gate. The Inspectorate has made six recommendations to help Essex CRC improve its performance.

What About Probation?

I notice Rory Stewart has been speaking to Inside Time. It's a shame probation seems too difficult to talk about. 

Time to clean up

Minister for prisons Rory Stewart shares his thoughts and ideas with Inside Time readers

“What I’m trying to work out is what it is that makes one prison, for example Altcourse, work well, and another prison – not too far away – not work well,” says Prisons Minister Rory Stewart when we meet at MoJ headquarters to discuss his policies and vision for the prison system for which he now has responsibility. The Minister, formerly Minister for Africa, has perhaps one of the most colourful career paths of anyone who has ever held his current office, including a two year walking odyssey through rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, (a journey totalling around 6,000 miles which he began in 2000) – and a period of governance in Southern Iraq following the coalition invasion in 2003. In 2004 he was in command of his compound in Nasiriyah when it was besieged by Sadrist militia and was later awarded an OBE for his services. A best-selling author, his book about his time in Afghanistan, ‘The Places in Between’ was a New York Times best-seller described by the newspaper as a “flat-out masterpiece”. He is currently the MP for Penrith and the Border.

In the flesh he looks too young to have lived through such drama and adventure. “I’m ten years younger than my predecessor,” he says smiling. I guess it’s true what they say about getting older; policemen and government ministers all just look so young.

The first thing I want to say to him is ‘please try and sort out prison food’. While there are some establishments that provide sufficient nutrition in healthy portions, and understand the value of keeping incarcerated human beings well fed, there are many others that fail miserably in the servery department. I tell him about Lucy Vincent, a 20-something young woman who is campaigning through her website Food Behind Bars for the government to provide good nutritious meals for all prisoners, regardless of the institution. “Thank you,” he says, and notes down my comments.

” I don’t think there are any easy recipes for success. Its about relationships between prison officers and prisoners. “

Secondly, I remind him of what President of the PGA Andrea Albutt said about the outsourcing of prison maintenance contracts following the collapse of the construction company Carillion. She said the services should be handed back to the works departments so that the governor has instant control of where and what needs to be done. “But when it’s done properly there is no reason why outsourcing shouldn’t work well,” he says. “I agree with him, there were serious problems with that contract.” But I remember as a prisoner that working with a works officer was a way for prisoners to learn skills, or even utilise skills they had before coming to prison. “Sure, sure,” he says, “I’m very, very much in agreement with you there. I’m very keen to get many more prisoners employed. I was talking to a prisoner recently, a qualified electrician, and he’s very rare. He’s employed by the prison to use his skills. But so often, Governors are not taking advantage of the skills available in the prisoner population.” Would he like to see Governors actually taking advantage of the skills and abilities of prisoners in their charge? “Much more. Much more,” he says emphatically.

But traditionally, prisoners are not seen as assets. Does he want to change that? My view, from the 20 years I spent in various prisons from Cat A to Cat D is that prisons can be places where good things happen, not just places of shame and neglect. I believe a prison should be seen by society as a valuable community resource, as valuable as a hospital or a school. So why don’t we do that? I think that it’s because politicians and the media have famously used prisons and prisoners as whipping boys for the electorate. I well remember former Justice Secretary Chris Grayling announcing when he took on the role that prisons under his watch were, “no longer going to be Holiday Camps.” One of the most disingenuous utterances from someone in his position that I could remember.

“A prison is a very, very challenging environment,” he says. “You can see prisons going in three years from good prisons to bad prisons, then from bad prisons to good prisons. A lot of it seems to be about detailed leadership. I don’t think there are any easy recipes for success. It’s about relationships between prison officers and prisoners. It’s a lot about how the custody managers work, the way the POs work, the way that young prison officers engage with prisoners.”

Don’t prison officers deserve more respect from society for the work they do? Why shouldn’t officers have similar cultural and educational opportunities that many of our prisons offer prisoners? Are there any plans to enhance the work of prison officers? “Yes, I am interested in that,” he says, “but I’m also taken back a step. We have to make sure before we start talking about Art groups that prisoners are unlocked and able to get safely from their cells to that Art group. One of the things that frustrates me is that we talk about these wonderful things that might be on offer, but if the prison is filthy, violent, drug infested, out of control – you can’t get to any of those opportunities. Unless you get those basic things sorted – are the cells clean, are the yards clean, are people out of their cells enough – and getting them out of their cells enough also means do the prison officers feel safe? I think we need to get a much clearer set of basic uniform standards right the way across the estate.”

Is it about pride? Should we feel pride in our prisons? “Part of this is about who we are,” he says. “Do we feel proud of our prisons? Is this somewhere I’d be happy to be? You have to find a way of having a very difficult conversation with ourselves and with the public, about helping people understand what a prison is; that it’s doing a lot of different things – its punishing people, deterring people, its reforming people, educating people. And the really great prison officers manage to find a very practical way of doing these very different things.”

” We have very good evidence that we can reduce the reoffending rate dramatically if we can get people into skill building and education and into employment. “

I asked him if he was aware of the Unlocked Graduate programme, whereby students from universities enrol for a couple of years as prison officers as part of their social responsibility development – an idea championed by educationalist Dame Sally Coates. “Yes,” he says, “I think they’re terrific. I’m very much a fan.”

So how do we convince the public that prisons are places where we should expect good things to happen? “For me, I don’t think it’s about having one or two shiny ideas,” he says. “You’ve got to have a system that works across the board. One of the things I’m interested in is what can we do to get a bit of consistency – some sense that you can expect the same basic things whichever prison you are in…

What about the drug problem? Isn’t it time to face up to the fact that when a prisoner is found to have five kilos of ‘Spice’ in his cell or, as in HMP Hewell recently, a ‘brick of heroin’ – that this quantity of drugs has not been smuggled through the visits room? “By and large our prison officers are very professional and honest people, but there will of course, in any organisation, always be bad apples. And one of the things that I am very keen to do is to make sure that it is much more difficult for anybody – prisoner, family or prison officer, to bring illegal substances into prisons. One of the ways I plan to do that is by ramping up our gate security. Scanners, sniffer dogs and more routine searching of everyone who comes through the gate. I’ve spoken to the Prison Officers Association about that and they are quite comfortable with it. They also agree that they are not in the business of protecting people bringing in kilos of heroin.”

” One of the things I’m interested in is what can we do to get a bit of consistency, some sense that you can expect the same basic things whichever prison you are in. “

Stewart was speaking to me ahead of the announcement of the new education and employment strategy for prisoners. “One of the ways we think will be helpful is that we are going to radically improve the way we assess prisoners on arrival and make sure that they have, alongside their sentencing plan, a very clear education plan, for each individual, taking into account their educational needs, and planning out what they want to achieve during their time in prison. What can we do in relation to training to make it’s easer for you to become what it is you want to be when you leave prison. We will provide national standard examinations. We have very good evidence that we can reduce the reoffending rate dramatically if we can get people into skill building and education and into employment.”

The week before, he says he had a group of leading businessmen and CEOs around his table, including James Timpson. “They talked through what they need, what they are looking for and it was very interesting. Some of what they want is formal stuff, English language etc. but some of it was softer skills. Can you stand for eight hours behind a Timpson’s counter dealing with the public?”

‘Compared to wallowing in the mire of wasted time and chaos that defines much of our prison system’, I said – that sounds like absolute luxury.

Of Drones, Drugs and Prison

Here's David Gauke completely missing the point and ignoring the Probation Service:- 

"Just heard new Justice Sec’s first prison speech. If you misdiagnose the problem your intervention will either be pointless or compound things. He’s obsessing on drones, drugs, gangs - they are a symptom of the problems." Frances Crook on twitter

"I look forward to the reaction of the high security estate when burglars and other petty criminals serving short sentences start landing at their gates because they have been judged too troublesome by the Governor of some Cat C."

Well thank you Rachel [O’Brien] for that introduction and for the work you and the RSA do on prison reform and the important contribution you make to public policy in this area. It is a huge privilege to have been appointed Justice Secretary and I am grateful for the opportunity to set out my thoughts, after two months in post, on our prison system.

Purpose of prison

Depriving someone of their liberty for a period of time is one of the most significant powers available to the State and must be imposed with respect for the rule of law and with purpose. Prison is the sharp end of our justice system. By imposing this serious sanction, we must be clear about what prison is for. I believe its purpose is threefold:

First, protection of the public – prison protects the public from the most dangerous and violent individuals. Second, punishment – prison deprives offenders of their liberty and certain freedoms enjoyed by the rest of society and acts as a deterrent. It is not the only sanction available, but it is an important one. And third, rehabilitation – prison provides offenders with the opportunity to reflect on, and take responsibility for, their crimes and prepare them for a law-abiding life when they are released. It is only by prioritising rehabilitation that we can reduce reoffending and, in turn, the numbers of future victims of crime.

Getting the basics right – secure, safe and decent

And yet it’s clear that prisons don’t always achieve what they are there to do. The reasons for this are varied and complex, but I am determined to ensure prisons can fulfil those three purposes I have set out. As the Minister for Prisons, Rory Stewart, has made clear, for prisons to be effective, we must get the basics right.

Getting the basics right means creating prisons that are secure: with the physical integrity of the prison a priority to prevent prisoners from getting out – and drugs, mobile phones and other contraband from getting in. It means creating prisons that are safe: with orderly, purposeful and structured regimes, free from violence, intimidation and self-harm.

And it means creating prisons that are decent: with clean wings and humane living conditions. It is clear that some of our prisons have, frankly, fallen below the standards that we expect. I want the prison service to have a relentless focus on these fundamentals in the months ahead. That’s why I am giving renewed focus to our programme of prison maintenance to drive the much-needed improvements to our estate. I will also carry on with my predecessor, David Lidington’s, important work to ensure inspection reports are acted upon.

Prison staffing

I am also continuing to push hard on improving not just the number of prison officers, but also how we deploy them. Liz Truss, as Secretary of State, committed to raising the number of prison officers by 2,500 by the end of this year. I’m pleased to say that we’re on track to deliver those officers, and ended last year with the highest number of officers in post since 2013. The reason increased staffing levels are important is that they are allowing us to introduce a new ‘key worker’ model – with prison officers spending much more time, one-to-one, with small groups of prisoners.

As we introduce this new model, we should start to make a difference in the levels of violence we are seeing, which are currently far too high. 28,000 incidents were recorded in our prisons last year alone. That figure includes 20,246 attacks by prisoners against fellow inmates and 7,828 assaults against prison officers by prisoners.

The violence against prison officers is particularly shocking. No prison officer should go to work in fear for their safety simply for doing their job. I want to take this opportunity to thank the thousands of prison staff across the country who do incredibly important work each and every day. By its nature, the work is often hidden from view but it protects the public and keeps our prisons secure and prisoners safe. And I want to thank the families of prison staff. As the son of a police officer, I know the worries they carry, and the pride they take, in knowing their loved one is performing such an important public service.

The drug problem and how it’s been exploited

Increasing the numbers of prison officers and deploying them in a more effective way will help create more positive relationships between offenders and prison officers. But if we are to bear down on the levels of violence we are seeing, we need to deal with the biggest cause of the violence, which is drugs.

Now, the problem of drugs entering and circulating in our prison system has always been a challenge. But the nature of the challenge has changed over the past few years, with the emergence of cheap and highly addictive new psychoactive substances, like Spice, in our prisons something exploited by criminal gangs who have capitalised on the control they can exert and the money they can bring in. After all, what better place to target than a captive market made up of some of society’s most susceptible and vulnerable groups when it comes to drug use and addiction.

The economics mean that Spice can sell in prison for many times its street value – bringing in a healthy return for the criminals. At the same time, it is relatively cheap to buy in prison compared to other drugs – so is financially attractive for prisoners. In exploiting the emergence of new psychoactive substances, prisons have proved a perfect marketplace for the criminal gangs. And for our prisons, it has created a perfect storm.

And while there have always been low-level networks dealing in cigarettes or illegal contraband, the criminal networks and supply chains have recently got larger and more complex and new technologies have empowered gangs to be more sophisticated and brazen about the way drugs are smuggled in.

Many of you will be aware of the kind of things I’m talking about. Spice, and other drugs, ordered with a ‘Deliveroo-style’ responsiveness on tiny mobile phones from prison cells and delivered by drones direct to cell windows, the paint used in supposed children’s drawings sent to their parents in prison laced with liquid psychoactive drugs, or the pages of fake legal letters purporting to be from a prisoner’s solicitor soaked in drugs, gangs engineering situations where a prisoner, who has been released from prison, deliberately breaches their license conditions so they are sent back to smuggle in more drugs, gangs enforcing control by using threats and violence towards prisoners, extorting their families and attempting to corrupt prison staff.

From the conventional to the cunning, by design or device, through fear or intimidation, these criminal gangs will stop at nothing to maintain their access to such a lucrative market. We need to make prison less congenial for the modern-day Harry Grouts.

It is clear that the reason drugs are so prevalent in our prisons is in large part because gangs are fuelling demand, boosting the supply and catching prisoners in a cycle of debt and further criminality from which they struggle to break free. As I’ve been visiting prisons, the conversations I’ve had so far with prison governors have brought home to me the scale and nature of the criminal gang activity and the impact of drugs in our prisons.

Governors tell me that it’s not just when the drugs come in that there is an issue, but a couple of weeks later, when they see a spike in violence, a spike caused by prisoners carrying out attacks on fellow inmates and on staff as a payment in kind to pay back debts they have accrued by taking the drugs. And it is not just about attacks on other inmates or staff. We are seeing a rise in the incidents of self-harm.

Last year there were 42,837 incidents of self-harm in our prisons, involving 11,428 individuals. These statistics, together with the figures for assaults I highlighted earlier, are sobering. But they only give us half the story. Behind all the numbers, is a catalogue of physical and mental injury, of intimidation and of abuse.

I have been shocked and sickened watching some of the videos filmed by prisoners using illicit mobile phones that are posted on social media. They show the terrifying and debilitating impact Spice can have and the drug-fuelled violence and humiliation it unleashes. One of these videos shows inmates laughing and joking as the Spice takes over the mind and body of a fellow prisoner. The effect is immediate and shocking. Within a few seconds they are having a fit on the floor.

Another video shows two naked prisoners believing they are dogs, with makeshift muzzles and leads around their neck, barking at and fighting each other, goaded on by other prisoners. Another shows a prisoner climbing into a tumble dryer in the prison laundry room. Other prisoners then turn the machine on and he is spun around inside – a dangerous act of humiliation to ‘earn’ himself some more Spice. And I’m afraid, these videos are merely a short snapshot of a grim reality. Many of the attacks against prison officers have been linked to Spice.

Last year for example, a prisoner viciously attacked an officer with a table leg at HMP Northumberland after the officer intervened to break up a fight. The attack left him with bruising and tissue damage. The prisoner had no memory of the attack and subsequently described the officer as being a nice man who was thoroughly decent towards him whilst he was in prison. Cases like this show starkly how drugs like Spice are leading to violence and undermining efforts to create safe environments and respectful relationships in prisons.

And it’s clearly not just physical damage that drugs like Spice cause. There is an enormous toll on the mental health of prisoners, often exacerbating existing mental health conditions and long-term issues with alcohol and drug abuse. Prison staff have a key role to identify and support prisoners with mental health needs. That’s why we are investing more in mental health awareness training for staff.

We have also increased our grant to the Samaritans to fund the continued delivery of a peer support scheme called ‘Listeners’ which supports prisoner mental health. We must ensure offenders have access to the treatment they need to come off drugs and support their recovery – whether that’s in prison or in the community. That’s why we have been working with the Department of Health and Social Care and others to improve access to mental health and substance abuse services for offenders, including agreeing a clear set of standards across all the various agencies involved.

Tackling the drugs problem in our prisons and the gangs beyond prison

Every prisoner who attends one of these drug agencies will have their own story about what happened to them and it will very often involve, in some way, criminal gangs. This government has undertaken many important reforms and cracking down on drugs and criminality has always been and remains a priority. But the sophistication and reach of these criminal gangs into our prisons is a relatively recent development.

It is therefore right that we continue to adjust our approach to tackling it. So, today, I am doubling down on our commitment to target organised criminal gangs and cut off their ability to do business in our prisons. That’s why I can announce today that we are investing £14 million to tackle the threat of serious and organised crime against our prisons. This includes creating new intelligence and serious and organised crime teams.

Working with the National Crime Agency, they will enhance our intelligence and information-gathering capability across the country to help us identify and stop the gangs’ ability to operate in our prisons. This improved intelligence picture is already delivering major successes, including at least 30 successful convictions for drone activity following joint intelligence-led operations.

And in December, following an investigation by prison intelligence officers and police, 11 gang members were handed sentences totalling over 32 years for using drones to smuggle drugs, weapons and mobile phones into prison. To build on that success, I can also announce today that we are installing technology at 30 prisons that will allow officers to quickly download data from illicit phones seized from prisoners.

This means officers can access information on a phone on the same day it is seized rather than having to send it away to be processed – something that can currently take months. If a phone has details about an expected drone drop later that day, officers will be able to know where, how and when and can act on that intelligence and intercept it. In doing so, we will be able to collect vital intelligence about the criminals’ contacts and associates, who they are buying from and selling to and the bank accounts they are using.

This will help us to stop drugs getting in and give the police the intel they need to target the source of the drugs. But technology can’t be the only solution to tackling gangs….

Understanding and managing security risks

The fact is, there are around 6,500 prisoners who have links to organised crime. At the moment, these offenders are spread across the estate and are helping to perpetuate the cycle of crime by drawing fellow prisoners into the clutches of the gangs. So, I want to rethink how we categorise prisoners – that means looking again at who goes to higher security-level prisons.

Rather than just considering their length of sentence and risk of escape in determining which prison an offender goes to – or moves to – I want to look, as well, at their behaviour in prison and their risk of directing crime and violence whilst in prison. This would ensure those ringleaders, who ostensibly behave but have others do their bidding, would be cut off from their network and prevent them from operating.

Incentives of hope over despair – the route to rehabilitation

Removing the ringleaders also means that prisons can then focus on maintaining an orderly environment and, crucially, get on with helping prisoners rehabilitate so that they don’t re-offend when they leave prison. We have to make it absolutely clear to prisoners that the path of further criminality only leads to more punishment and less freedom, that there is another, better way.

We also need to recognise that there is a better way for the whole of society. Re-offending and the cycle of crime costs society £15 billion a year. It creates more victims. And, it leads to the perpetuation of unfulfilled potential on the part of offenders. If the third and final purpose of prison is for rehabilitation, then we need to look again at what works.

I believe rehabilitation starts with conformity with the prison rules and a rejection of further criminality, a commitment to change and an embrace of opportunities that help offenders to leave prison as law-abiding, and tax-paying citizens. I want to make those the desirable and attainable choices that prisoners make. I believe harnessing the power of incentives in our prisons is an important way to do that. My experience and the large amount of research out there shows that ‘incentives work’.

As Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, I saw how a mixture of positive incentives, support and sanctions can influence behaviour and help people change their lives for the better. For example, the incentive of making work always pay more than benefits is a fundamental principle of our welfare system and has helped bring about record levels of employment in this country. I believe we can not only make prisons safer and more secure, but also help to break the cycle of reoffending, supporting and incentivising people to make the right choices that will prepare them to lead crime-free lives when they leave prison.

An offenders’ experience in prison is too often one of detention and boredom, which leads to drug abuse and despondency, which in turn, leads to debt and despair. I am clear that offenders go to prison as punishment, not for punishment. So, I want prisons to be places of humanity, hope and aspiration. I want prisoners to know that there is a route to a better life, that there is a life to be had free from the clutches of gangs and free from the intimidation and abuse and that the route to that better life is through purposeful activity, through education, through skills and through employment.

The way I see it is that prisoners have a contract with the state. By serving your sentence and conforming to the rules, you are repaying your debt to society. If you do that, you will find the State and the prison system backing you up, supporting you, and you will be able to earn greater rights and privileges. This is beneficial for prisoners but even more so for wider society.

So, I want to reset and reinvigorate the system of incentives in our prisons so they work much more in the favour of those prisoners who play by the rules and who want to turn their lives around, whilst coming down harder on those who show no intention of doing so.

However, prisoners should be under no illusions that a failure to abide by the rules will be met with strong sanctions. I am supportive of the steps that have been taken to improve the punishment of unacceptable and illegal behaviour in prisons. Just the other month, we introduced a new protocol between the Ministry of Justice and CPS to ensure that, where there is sufficient evidence, we bring to justice prisoners who commit violent attacks against prison officers and other prisoners.

But for those offenders who see their time in prison as a genuine opportunity to reflect and take responsibility for their crime and to be rehabilitated, to build the skills and behaviour they need to re-join society, I want to create the incentives that will support and encourage them in that effort. That means prisoners having the opportunity to earn rights and freedoms, an opportunity to live in a more liberal environment with greater personal responsibility, and therefore have more to lose if they fall foul of the rules.

After all, incentives are given, and they can be taken away. I know that prison governors feel strongly that the current approach to using incentives in our prisons is not working. I hear that. I also know that governors want more flexibility for what and how incentives are used in their own prisons. I agree. I believe governors should govern. They are the best judge for what will work best in their prison. So this is not about me imposing a top-down system or a list of incentives. But I do want to give a couple of examples where I think we can more effectively use incentives.

Prisons are required to provide a minimum amount of contact between an offender and their family whilst in prison. I think we could reinforce good behaviour by offering a prisoner extra and additional time to see family members, for example by using technology like Skype, to allow contact they would otherwise be unable to have.

Another example is giving an offender a better prospect of securing a job after release by providing access to certain training and experience. For example, I want to look at the availability and use of “release on temporary license”. Specifically, I want to see how we can use ROTL to allow those prisoners, who have earned it, to have a routine where they, with close monitoring, leave prison each day to go to work nearby.

Work is the best route out of crime

I have seen how getting and keeping a job can change people’s lives. The prison and probation service have an important role to help offenders build the skills and experience they need whilst they’re in prison so they can have the right attitude for work and get a job when they’re released. To do that, prisons and probation need to act more as brokers between prisoners and the local community, employers and education and skills providers.

We will shortly be launching our Education and Employment Strategy that will set out our approach to helping offenders get the skills they need to find a job and avoid the activities that landed them in prison in the first place.

Cross-government work

Having a job after release is a crucial factor that determines likelihood of reoffending, but it is only one of several. For someone coming out of prison, having a place to live and access to mental and physical health treatments are also critical. In this sense, re-offending is not solely a justice problem for my department, but it is a wider issue about social justice and ensuring that offenders, many of whom have complex backgrounds, are not dismissed as part of society.

We need a cross-government approach to reoffending. That’s why I can announce today that I will be convening a cross-government group of senior Ministers, with the full backing of the Prime Minister, to work across all relevant departments to reduce re-offending and the £15 billion cost of reoffending to society as a whole.

This approach means that we can target prisoners and ex-offenders with the support they need to find a job, a home, to get help with debt, or to get treatment for a drug addiction or, as I mentioned earlier, a mental health issue. I met with my Cabinet colleagues yesterday to discuss this and I am encouraged that there is a consensus on the mission and energy to make real progress.

Conclusion

Now I’m clear about what purpose our prisons serve – protection, punishment, and rehabilitation. But for prisons to do this well we must get the basics of a safe, secure and decent environment right. Only an immediate and relentless focus on maintenance, infrastructure and staffing will allow us to make further progress, and we are acting on that.

The basics matter because organised criminal gangs have cynically and systematically exploited the rise of a drugs problem in new psychoactive substances that first reared its head on our streets and has found fertile ground in our prisons.

We are taking action to bolster our defences at the prison gate whilst also going after the organised criminal gangs. I want them to know that as a result of the action we are taking, they have no place to hide.

Through our covert and intelligence-led operations, we will track them down, removing their influence from our prisons so they can become places of hope not despair, of aspiration not assaults because my approach is a practical one, based on what works and what’s right, supporting prisoners to make the right choices and take the right path towards rehabilitation and re-joining society.

I know that incentives work, and I want to put them to work in our prisons. By doing that, our prisons will not only be safer, more secure and more decent, but will support prisoners to do the right thing and turn their back on crime for good.

David Gauke MP

Prison and Drugs

The new justice minister David Gauke is due to make a major speech today regarding the crisis in our prisons and with particular reference to drugs. It won't tackle any of the underlying issues of course, but it's fascinating to see how the Prison Governors Association cite Chris Grayling's infamous Offender Rehabilitation Act as being routinely 'abused' by Organised Crime Gangs using recalled prisoners as drug 'mules'. Another example of the law of unintended consequences in relation to drug policy to go alongside that of Mandatory Drug Testing. Here's Alan Travis of the Guardian:-      

Prisoners linked to gangs face being moved to tougher jails

Plan will recategorise prisoners into higher-security prisons if they have high criminality risk

More than 6,000 prisoners believed to have links to organised crime gangs face being moved to tougher jails under proposals to be unveiled by the justice secretary, David Gauke. The plans to recategorise prisoners into higher-security prisons based on their continuing risk of criminality in jail, rather than their original sentence, are to be outlined in Gauke’s first speech on tackling the prisons crisis in England and Wales.

The government is spending £14m on tackling organised criminal gangs in prisons, including on creating a serious organised crime unit within the Prison Service. Prison governors have said organised crime gangs have gained a substantial foothold in jails and in some instances have greater authority and control than staff.

Mitch Albutt, national officer of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), recently described how organised crime gangs had built a lucrative trade in psychoactive drugs inside jails based on coercion, beatings and violence that could turn substances worth £200 on the street into £2,000 profits in prison.

“This pervasive environment of threats and violence exposes individuals’ vulnerabilities, resulting in increased levels of self-harm, suicide and requests for segregation or transfer,” Albutt wrote in the latest PGA newsletter. Gauke will announce an initiative to crack down on these serious organised criminal gangs that operate outside and increasingly inside prisons. The prison service estimates that more than 6,500 of the 86,000-strong prison population have links to organised crime gangs.

“We are taking action to bolster our defences at the prison gate and going after the organised criminal gangs,” Gauke will say. “I want them to know that as a result of the action we are taking, they have no place to hide. Through our covert and intelligence-led operations, we will track them down.”

The justice secretary will disclose that criminal gangs not only use drones to fly illicit drugs into prisons but can direct them to specific cell windows and have even resorted to coating children’s paintings in psychoactive substances.

He will say: “The criminal networks and supply chains have got larger and more complex. And new technologies have empowered gangs to be more sophisticated and brazen about the way drugs are smuggled in. From the conventional to the cunning, by design or by device, through fear or intimidation, these criminal gangs will stop at nothing to maintain their access to such a lucrative market. We will remove their influence from our prisons so that they can become places of hope not despair, of aspiration not assaults, because my approach is a practical one, based on what works and what’s right.”

The current system of categorising prisoners by their sentence length determines whether they serve the majority of their time inside a range of security regimes, from a category-A high-security prison to a category-D open jail. A decision to give a higher security rating to prisoners based on their activities inside jail represents a major change in prison rules.

The new prisons minister, Rory Stewart, recently called for an effort to clean up filthy jails and tackle drugs, saying his priorities were “windows, searches and walls”. The PGA has said the level of budget cuts faced by the prison service without any reduction in the prison population has had an impact on stability, decency and safety inside jails.

--oo00oo--

Here is the PGA newsletter article referred to above:-

We all know the depressing state most of our Prisons are in, despite the enormous effort and hard work our members and staff deliver every day. One awful aspect of this are the levels of violence which have reached epidemic proportions, however there is a potential solution should the holders of the purse strings choose to fund it. 

It is clear that those in our care cannot engage in a rehabilitative journey if their environment is unsafe. Drugs pervade every aspect of Prison life effecting those around it with particular notoriety to New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) also now referred to as PS. This one particular label causes chaos in our Establishments and can turn a healthy individual into a medical emergency or a trusted orderly into a frenzied ultra-violent assaulter. 

I believe that due to many compounding issues the Organised Crime Gangs (OCG) have gained a substantial foothold in our Prisons and in some instances have greater authority and control than staff. 

The Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) was introduced resulting in short term prisoners being released on licence. Evidence details the abuse of ORA by OCGs, they coerce individuals to commit minor breaches of their licence conditions resulting in them returning to custody for 7 or 14 days. However the OCGs will have these individuals “plugged” (illicit items concealed in a bodily orifice), then dropped off at a Police station to hand themselves in and thus the illicit items end up in our prisons. In fact I have heard colleagues describe this as a very lucrative business model. To give an idea of how lucrative intelligence at one Establishments indicated that NPS with a street value of £200 would return a profit of £2000. With the control of the supply of drugs comes the violence, beatings are ordered and rival mules “spooned”, an item (usually a spoon) is inserted into the anus to retrieve any secreted package. This pervasive environment of threats and violence exposes individual’s vulnerabilities resulting in increased levels of self-harm, suicide and requests for segregation or transfer, (which is evidenced in HMPPS data). All of these factors divert valuable limited resources away from the delivery of a structured engaging regime resulting in general frustration and increased levels of anxiety and incidents. This ultimately effects the resilience of our staff causing issues with attendance and retention. Thus we descend further into the inescapable grip of the maelstrom. 

Although we deal with the symptoms of drugs in our prisons we need to bring greater focus and energise our ability to deal with the causes. If we are able to choke off the supply routes then the OCGs will eventually abandon a money losing business model. 

In 2015 the Prisons Minister Andrew Selous and Justice Secretary Chris Grayling were so impressed with the Body Scanner technology that one was promised to every Prison, with the Centre for Social Justice quoting it as a game changer. I recently visited HMP Belmarsh to view this equipment and hear firsthand from the team that use it. To say that I was mightily impressed is an understatement, the team enthused its abilities and showed me evidence of how it detected illicit items secreted externally and internally on prisoners. They also used it if a prisoner was suspected of receiving an item during visits or in fact any intelligence led requirement. 

It is most effective if used (as part of an overarching strategy) and with a small group of well-trained dedicated staff and if it has the potential to mitigate all of the above then why would you not devote your resources to achieve this endeavour. The hard outcomes that this approach can deliver are: 

• Reduction in medical emergencies and the associated staffing resource and cumulative stress. 
• Reduction in violence and the associated staffing implications and cumulative stress. 
• Reduction in incidents of selfharm and suicide and the related staffing resource and cumulative stress. 
• Reduction in external hospital escorts where prisoners state they have swallowed something and the associated staffing requirement and risk of escape. 
• Reduction in the need to respond to incidents and the associated staffing. 
• Managing fewer incidents allows managers to spend more time in their function delivering outcomes. 
• Reduction in the disruption to the delivery of an effective regime. 
• Reduction in stress levels for all staff which should help with wellbeing / resilience and improve attendance and retention. 

HMPPS have submitted a bid for specific money to enable more body scanners (currently there are only two), to be put into our Establishments and the PGA fully support this bid. National Officers have been pursuing this issue at every opportunity and have lobbied the new Secretary of State (David Gauke), the Prison Minister (Rory Stewart) HMPPS and the media. We sincerely hope the holders of the purse strings commit to deal with the causes rather than the symptoms of a prison service in crisis. 

Finances are very limited but there may be opportunities at local level to secure funding or collaborate with partners to fund such technology. If you would like more information or have any questions about this article then please contact National Officer Mitch Albutt. 

Governors Take On the MoJ

Following the government reshuffle and the obvious disappearance of a Minister for Probation, the MoJ may feel that further progress has been achieved in their long-term aim of completely erasing the term from the lexicon of criminal justice. They've never understood us and were always nervous and irritated by our proudly independent voice and notorious historic resistance to all attempts at imposing command and control.

I have heard it said that this blog continues to be regarded as a 'risk' by the MoJ, precisely because it steadfastly remains a bastion of non-conformity and resistance to their efforts at ridding themselves of such troublesome dissident voices. So imagine how upset and uncomfortable the mandarins must be at the emergence of a much reinvigorated Prison Governors Association under the inspiring leadership of Andrea Albutt. 

Of course there was a time when the Probation Service had a similar authoritative and respected voice, but we all know where that got us. Anyway, here she is telling it how it is in the Guardian and I dare the MoJ to try and silence her:-      

Andrea Albutt: ‘Carillion has left our prisons in a terrible state’

Andrea Albutt, the president of the Prison Governors Association, is angry. The former army nurse, who joined the prison service as a young hospital officer in 1990, announced last week that despair was “running through the veins” of her organisation. With the highest rates of self-harm, suicide, drug use and violence ever seen and the recent scathing prison inspection reports on HMPs Liverpool and Nottingham, the prison system has arguably reached the lowest point in its history.

The collapse of Carillion, the construction company responsible for prison maintenance contracts, has only added to its woes. “It’s a big deal,” says Albutt. “Governors have had to run prisons with not-fit-for-purpose contracts which failed to deliver the promised service. These contracts have failed in their entirety, leaving accommodation and maintenance in a far worse state than when governors owned their own works departments.

“We desperately need a reintroduction of the prison works department. I can then say to my works guys, ‘the seg’s [segregation unit] in a mess, needs work, B wing needs new windows’. I, as the governor, the boss, tell them – and then they crack on with it. With an external contract, governors are not empowered to do that. Too much senior management time has been spent trying to deal with these contracts instead of strategically managing prisons.”

Since taking over the £200m maintenance and cleaning contracts for the prison service, agreed by the then justice secretary, Chris Grayling, in 2014, Carillion has been continually criticised by the Prisons Inspectorate and Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) for its failure to carry out contracted works. In its latest annual report, the Independent Monitoring Board for Dartmoor prison said that Carillion’s contract was “an ongoing source of frustration”, calling it cumbersome and expensive.

It is clear from talking to her that Albutt cares a great deal about our prisons. But, I say, why should decent, law-abiding citizens care? If prisoners are living in cells with no windows, infested with rats and cockroaches, many would say, so what? They shouldn’t have committed the crime. “We disempower people when they go to prison,” she says, “so we have to care for them. If we don’t do the best we can for them, what hope is there? You have to remember that prison could happen to anyone – a member of your family, a friend, a loved one. I know how I’d want anyone in my family treated, if, God forbid, it happened to them.

“It’s a well-coined phrase – but there but for the grace of God go any of us, really. None of us knows what might be waiting in life, and you have to remember that most people in prison will be released.” The main source of her frustration is the constant change at the top at the Ministry of Justice. This is where she gets particularly animated. “In seven and a half years, we have had six secretaries of state, which has left prison governors punch-drunk with change,” she says. “We have endured constant interference from ministers who have little or no knowledge of the complexities of prisons, and who leave our service in a disastrously worse state than they found it.

“So, we had David Lidington for six months and he didn’t do anything. It just feels like they do not care about our prisons. They chop and change secretaries of state without a thought. Ministers don’t know prisons, their special advisers don’t know prisons. They might visit them occasionally, but they haven’t a real clue about how to run one safely and effectively. Even civil servants busy writing policy – they also might have visited a prison, but they don’t know prison.”

Albutt certainly knows about prisons. She joined the prison service in the first place, she says, “just to pay the mortgage,” but it soon turned into her vocation. She spent seven years patrolling prison landings, including HMP Woodhill, a Category A prison holding some of the most dangerous prisoners in the country, before being promoted to management.

“As one of the first women into Brixton, I quickly saw that it was a brutal place – and I was just shocked at some of the things I saw,” she recalls. “As a nurse in the army I’d seen tragedy, but the violence of prison was something else.”

Initially her male colleagues were “terrible” she says. “I don’t know if they felt threatened by women entering their male environment, undermining their perceived macho culture.” In contrast, she says male prisoners were generally quite protective of her and her female colleagues. “I have to say, though, that there were times in that first six months when treatment by male colleagues was so bad, I thought about getting out. But I stuck it out and I’m glad I did. In that respect, it’s a different world in prison these days.”

What’s her advice to the new justice secretary, David Gauke? “The one positive thing is that the path we’re on now, started by Michael Gove and then carried on by Liz Truss, is helping us make, possibly – and I emphasise possibly – some inroads into the decline. I don’t know David Gauke at all; we had a brief conversation on the phone, but I just hope that he doesn’t decide to go down a completely different path.

“We lost 7,000 staff and apparently we’re getting 2,500 back. But that still leaves us with 1,500 vacancies, so in fact we need closer to 4,000. I was talking to a colleague last week, and I think they are wondering in the MoJ why things aren’t improving. Well, if you had new officers who were experienced and confident you might get some improvement. But if you’ve got brand new officers going into a place like Liverpool, it’s going to take a while for them to get confident, to acclimatise and to make a difference,” she says. “A failing prison takes forever to turn around. To get back to where we were 10 years ago is going to take years. That’s something I’m determined to get through to ministers.”

She also wants a public inquiry into government policy in the prison service over the past decade. “It’s highly unlikely we’ll get one,” she admits. “We have the Grenfell inquiry and rightly so. But if you think of the number of people who have killed themselves in prison in recent years [2,022 since 1990], so many people have died in our care in prison. We need to look and find out why.”

Career: 2015-18: operational lead for HMPPS national project; 2012-15: governor, HMP Bristol; 2010-12: governor, HMP Eastwood Park; 2007-10: governor, HMP Swansea; 2004-07: governor, HMP Low Newton; 1990-2004: prison officer at HMPs Brixton, Woodhill, Grendon, Wakefield and Eastwood Park; 1984-1990: military nurse, Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps, serving in Germany, UK and Falkland Islands.

No More Prison Closures

It would appear that someone in authority has woken up to the fact that prison numbers are rising and we're running out of places to hold them. This from the Guardian:-

Closures of ageing jails on hold for five years as prison numbers soar

The head of the prison service has ruled out any closures over the next five years, shelving a 2017 Conservative manifesto pledge to shut down and sell off dilapidated Victorian jails across England and Wales.

Michael Spurr, the head of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation service, has said it had been an “incredibly difficult” summer after an unexpected summer surge in prisoner numbers to a record 86,000 prisoners, and further rises forecast to come. “I anticipate that we won’t close any prisons this parliament,” Spurr told the annual conference of the prison governors’ association in Derby on Wednesday.

It is now expected that Hindley young offenders’ institution and prison in Wigan, and Rochester jail in Kent, both of which had been earmarked for redevelopment, will now remain open. Home Office plans were also revealed this week to turn the Verne immigration detention centre in Dorset back into use as a prison, reducing its capacity by 20%. Spurr said plans to provide 10,000 extra prison spaces this parliament were still on track, with the 2,100-place HMP Berwyn in Wales opening in phases.

Michael Gove made a high profile pledge when he was justice secretary to close “ageing and ineffective” Victorian inner city jails. The revival of longterm “new for old” plans was enshrined in the latest Tory manifesto, which promised to “invest over £1bn to modernise the prison estate, replacing the most dilapidated prisons and creating 10,000 modern prison places”. It now seems likely that manifesto pledge will be abandoned.

Spurr said Ministry of Justice officials were “still trying to understand” the reasons behind the surge in the prison population between May and August this year, when it went up by 1,200. He told the prison governors he had never known the jail population to rise by so much in such a short space of time. “It did shock us through the summer,” he said.

Officials believe the unexpected rise might have involved a number of factors, including major court cases finishing and changes to police bail arrangements. The unforeseen surge in prison numbers was accompanied by a sharp upwards revision of prison population projections. Prisoner numbers are expected to hit 88,000 by March 2022.

The former director general of the prison service, Phil Wheatley, told the Guardian in August that the summer surge in numbers was adding to the pressures on a jail system that was “already woefully short of space” and subject to frequent riots that took out cell spaces. He said the rise in jail numbers had “more or less wiped out” the value of a boost in the number of prison officers and prevented the closure of older jails.

Meanwhile, the chief inspector of prisons has revealed that substantial numbers of convicted sex offenders who have been sent to a Yorkshire prison with problems with violence in order to “stabilise it” have not been provided with adequate programmes to challenge their offending.

Peter Clarke said that over the course of the past year number of sex offenders held at Doncaster prison had trebled as part of a deliberate policy in order to help to stabilise the prison because of the serious problems with violence. He said that while levels of violence had been reduced they were still too high and came about at the expense of the rehabilitative needs of the sex offenders. The prison service confirmed that decision to increase the number of sex offenders at the Serco-run prison was not national policy but part of a local strategy to improve stability at the jail. A new specific houseblock with a regime for sex offenders had been opened.

Probation officers will be able to impose new licence conditions on prisoners leaving jails including bans on alcohol, gambling and access to online content, under changes announced by the prisons minister Sam Gyimah on Thursday. He said those who failed to stick to the tailored restrictions could find themselves recalled to jail.

--oo00oo--

Meanwhile Tornado teams had to deal with trouble at another prison overnight, possibly linked to the recently-introduced smoking ban. This from the BBC website:- 

Long Lartin: Prison staff 'attacked with pool balls'

Staff were attacked with pool balls during a disturbance at a high-security prison, the BBC understands. Up to 80 inmates at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire became violent, forcing staff to retreat, a source said. BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said he understood about 10 "Tornado teams" of riot officers were sent to the prison on Wednesday.

The Prison Service said the incident had been "successfully resolved" by Thursday morning. No staff or inmates were injured, it said. "We do not tolerate violence in our prisons, and are clear that those responsible will be referred to the police and could spend longer behind bars," it added.

Our correspondent said there had previously been serious violence in local and training prisons, but to have a disturbance like this at a high-security jail would cause alarm at the MoJ. He said staff on E wing had retreated and it had been secured, so the troublemakers could not go elsewhere. There were also reports of a separate protest elsewhere in the jail, our correspondent said. The disturbance followed riots at a number of jails in recent years, including Lewes, Bedford, Birmingham and Swaleside.

Analysis 

Any disturbance at a prison is worrying, but at Long Lartin it's particularly worrying. It's one of the highest-security prisons in England and Wales; two-thirds of the inmates are serving life sentences. Normally the higher staffing ratios and older age of the prisoners means you get less trouble. But like all prisons, Long Lartin has suffered cuts and has lost a fifth of its staff.

HMP Long Lartin is a maximum security jail which also holds up to 622 male inmates. The category A prison has housed a number of high-profile inmates, including radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza and murderer Christopher Halliwell. Four prisoners have been killed at the jail in the last four years. Child murderer Subhan Anwar was strangled in 2013, while killer John York was beaten to death in his cell in 2015. In June 2016, Sidonio Eugenio Teixeira was killed using a rock wrapped in a pair of socks. Two inmates who murdered a fellow prisoner were jailed for life last month.

An inspection report published in 2014 described a "calm, well controlled prison". "But, while violence and bullying were few, there continued to be some very serious incidents," it added.

PGA - 'Time To Release Some Prisoners'

There is definitely a head of steam building for some kind of executive release of prisoners in order to try and alleviate the current prison crisis and here we have the Prison Governors Association throwing their weight behind such a proposal. It's just such a shame that it's both politically impossible and practically too given the current crisis in the probation service. This from the Independent:-

Government urged to reduce prison population as conditions reach ‘worst ever seen’

Prisons in the UK are “full to busting” and the Government must “be brave” and reduce the number of people behind bars, the Prison Governors Association (PGA) is to warn in a scathing attack on the penal system. With violence, suicide and self-harm statistics in jails at “the worst we have ever seen”, Andrea Albutt, president of the association, will call on ministers not to “worry about votes” and cut the prison population.

Delivering a highly critical assessment to the PGA’s annual conference on Tuesday, Ms Albutt will say a safety and reform drive is “led and predominantly run by generalist civil servants with little or no understanding of the very complex nature of prisons and their inhabitants”. The unusual intervention from the PGA will lead to fresh scrutiny of the politically charged issue of the prison population, which penal reform campaigners have warned must be reduced in order to stabilise the estate.

It comes as the UK’s prison watchdog warned in an an alarming report that prisoners are living in insanitary, unhygienic and degrading conditions that threaten their health and can drive them to take drugs. The report, published today, reveals that 31 per cent of prisoners report being locked in their cells for at least 22 hours a day, with inmates often forced to eat their meals in shared cells next to unscreened or inadequately screened toilets.

Ministers have so far resisted calls for direct measures designed to bring about an immediate cut in the prison population, instead focusing on driving down reoffending rates and improving confidence in non-custodial punishments. The number of people in prison has almost doubled since the early 1990s and remained around the mid-80,000s mark in recent years. It currently stands at 85,375 – 1,124 below the “useable operational capacity”.

Ms Albutt will say: “Currently our prisons are full to bursting. The Government must be brave and reduce the prison population and don’t worry about votes. Don’t dabble, just do it – because morally it is the right thing to do.” Describing sentences of a year or less as “pointless”, she will say: “This cohort must be dealt with in a different way in the community. Executive release is possible. We have prisoners on IPP (imprisonment for public protection) sentences years past their tariff but still in prison.”

Jails are holding “old and infirm” inmates who are no longer a danger to society, as well as “far too many mentally ill people where prison is absolutely the worst place for them”, she will say. Ms Albutt will also express doubts over a government commitment to provide 10,000 new prison places by 2020, describing the target as a “distant dream”, and is expected to warn that staffing issues mean prisons are unable to deliver a rehabilitative regime.

The Government has launched a drive to add 2,500 new front-line officers and, although Ms Albutt will acknowledge that the picture is improving, she will also flag up the “attrition rate” in staffing levels. Highlighting the impact of psychoactive substances, she will say they “remain a constant threat to stability, reducing already depleted and sometimes critical staffing levels further as prisoners are taken to A&E suffering from the effects”.

Her critical words come as the new report from HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke reveals that just 51 per cent of prisoners aged between 18 and 21 are able to shower every day, and that inmates can only get cleaning materials on a weekly basis in only around half of jails. Mr Clarke warned that the “insanitary, unhygienic and degrading conditions” inmates are forced to endure can threaten their health and can drive them to take drugs.

“The aspirations of the prison reform programme will not be met if prisoners are confined in conditions that embitter and demoralise, leaving them unable to access rehabilitative activities and, all too often, turning to illicit drugs to break the boredom born of long periods locked in their cells,” he said.

In light of both the intervention from the PGA and the Inspectorate’s report, Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, told The Independent the Government must take “bold” action, urging that people were “dying” in jails and said reoffending rates were going up as a result of poor conditions.

“We entirely support the prison governors and other prison staff who are warning the Government that bold and courageous action must be taken,” she said. “Long-term plans to build more and more prisons are the wrong answer at the wrong time – it’s not a good use of public money. We cannot go on cramming more and more people into overcrowded jails without any thought for the consequences – and we cannot build our way out of this crisis.

“People are dying, staff are being assaulted and the public are suffering the consequences of this are more people reoffending after they are released from stinking prisons where drug and alcohol addictions are made worse by their terrible experiences in jail. This is a national emergency, and ministers need to get a grip. Bold action is needed to reduce the prison population and prevent more people being swept into deeper currents of crime, violence and despair.”

Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, meanwhile said: “This is the view from the sharp end, and it’s not a call for more prisons. There is an urgent job for the Government, and it’s to devise a plan to reduce the number of people in prison. That is the relief governors need and the way to a prison system that delivers what the public have a right to expect.”

Responding to the PGA comments, a Prison Service spokesperson said: “The Justice Secretary has been clear that our wide-ranging prison reforms will continue unabated and we will tackle the challenges facing the estate head on.

“We have already taken immediate action to stabilise prisons; including investing £1.3bn to modernise the estate and significantly increasing staff numbers by recruiting a net 2,500 extra prison officers. We are on track to meet this target by December 2018. In addition; we have empowered Governors so they have more freedom to innovate and make the best decisions for their prisons. By next year, every governor will be able to tailor education and training to the needs of their prisoners, providing offenders the right support and challenge to help turn their backs on crime.”

On the report about living conditions, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We are investing £1.3bn to modernise the prison estate, closing older prisons that are not fit for purpose and creating in their place high-quality, modern establishments. This will help deliver prisons that are more safe and secure, so our staff can work more closely with offenders to change their lives and turn their back on crime for good. Our work in this area is supported by a drive to recruit an extra 2,500 prison officers, who will boost the front line and help turn our prisons into places of reform.”

Prison News 2

Here we have Rob Allen's take on the current situation:-

Fired Up about Prison Reform

It’s less than 18 months since David Cameron cast prison reform as “a great progressive cause in British politics”. His vision was for “the leadership team of a prison to be highly-motivated, to be entrepreneurial and to be fired up about their work”. The President of the Prison Governors Association is certainly fired up alright but less with enthusiasm than exasperation. I can’t recall such a broadside being delivered by a public servant to her bosses - nor one that is so (almost) wholly justified - as that which was delivered by Andrea Albutt today.

Cameron’s hubristic vision of a modern, more effective, truly 21st century prison system looks as far away as ever. The levels of violence, drug-taking and self-harm which he thought should shame us all in February 2016 have continued to soar.

So what’s gone wrong? Three things. First was the failure - wilful or otherwise - to see the severity of the impact which budget reductions would make on the stability of prisons. There was never really a “Golden Years pre austerity” as Andrea Albutt has put it. But all too often, “too great a degree of tolerance of poor standards and of risk” as Robert Francis QC said of Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust. Such a tolerance was one of the reasons why numerous warning signs did not alert the health system to developing problems in Mid Staffs. The same is true of many prisons which were never truly stable enough to withstand the level of cutbacks, particularly when Ken Clarke’s efforts to reduce the population were shelved.

Second the government applied a formula approach to reform which ignored some of the distinctive challenges of prisons. Cameron promised to "bring the academies model that has revolutionised our schools to the prisons system". It was a mistake. An approach is needed that recognises that individual prisons cannot float free in the same way as schools and their customers have no choice over which establishment they attend. Given the risk averseness of government, whatever ministers may say, innovation is always likely to be closely controlled from the centre. The so called empowerment agenda has, says Andrea Albutt, yet to gain any traction, with governors now accounting both to their headquarters and the Ministry- the result of a ‘perverse’ severance of policy from operations which has so far added cost but little benefit.

Third there has been an optimism bias about the reform agenda. I’m not sure whether Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is still in vogue, but it should have been obvious that without safety and security, loftier ambitions about rehabilitation have no chance of success, however flowery the rhetoric. Too many stakeholders have been taken for a ride. The National Audit Office for example, will presumably look back with some embarrassment on their 2013 assessment that "the strategy for the prison estate is the most coherent and comprehensive for many years, has quickly cut operating costs, and is a significant improvement in value for money on the approaches of the past". Their view that the Ministry of Justice make good use of forecasts of prisoner numbers and have good contingency plans is flatly contradicted by the PGA’s view that the recent rise in the population, unforeseen by the statisticians in MOJ, has left virtually no headroom in prison spaces.

So what to do? First to stabilise the population, create that headroom and make a dent on overcrowding, some kind of early release scheme should be introduced while longer term plans to reduce the population are put in place. There’s no shortage of ways of doing that -only a shortage of political courage to do so. The new Secretary of State for Justice needs to show that.

Second, some structural changes. Shifting responsibility for juveniles out of the MOJ and prisons into the education ministry; a Youth Justice Board for young adults, a new body to deliver alternative accommodation for elderly prisoners. Devolving financial responsibilities for prisons to local areas. They won’t produce quick fixes but could help take the pressure off an overburdened prison system in the medium to long term.

Finally, capable prison governors working in Whitehall should be returned to the front line and experienced staff who have left the service in the last five years lured back into it whatever it takes. Plans to recruit more and better qualified staff are promising but will take time the service has not got. Some of the capital resources intended to build new prisons should be converted to revenue to pay for staff .There is growing scepticism that the £1.3 billion secured from the Treasury for new prisons can be spent by 2020. Some of it should be used to repair the current arrangements rather than establishing new ones.

In less than three months, the largest annual gathering of international prison professionals takes place in London for a week of discussions about “Innovation in Rehabilitation: Building Better Futures”. Its focus is on improving outcomes for prisoners. But that won’t happen unless they are improved for prisons first.

Rob Allen

--oo00oo--

Meanwhile, the fallout from the Grenfell fire continues to have ramifications in a number of directions, such as here:- 

Peter Clarke

HM Chief Inspector of Prisons

3rd August 2017. 

Dear Peter,

No doubt you will have seen the media coverage on the serious issue of failing fire safety in prisons today? I write to ask if you will in future take with you during your inspection of prisons specialist Guest Inspectors from all disciplines for which the Inspectorate does not have in-house experts - and especially one from the Crown Properties Fire Inspection Group (CPFIG) to inform you about fire safety in the prison you are inspecting? 

Currently you do not concern yourself with inspecting fire safety, and I fail to understand this irrational approach. But more seriously your current approach to prison inspections, and your failure to address fire safety, demonstrably results in reports that are completely misleading. Let me explain. 

Your approach is irrational because you do not concern yourself with 'fire safety' on the basis that fire safety is the responsibility of a separate statutory regulator - CPFIG. Yet you always inspect and report on 'healthcare' during your inspections, despite the fact that healthcare is the responsibility of another separate statutory regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC). This approach doesn't make any sense. 

You report on healthcare because you take along with you a Guest Inspector from the CQC; so why not take with you a Guest Inspector from CPFIG to report on fire safety? Both are critical issues of health and safety. More seriously, however, your current flawed approach to this results in reports that are misleading, and here is why. 

Between 20th February and 3rd March 2017 you inspected HMP Coldingley where you concluded in terms of 'Safety' that: "Outcomes for prisoners were reasonably good against this healthy prison test." But that simply wasn't true. 

Three weeks after your Inspection, on 29th and 30th March 2017, CPFIG inspected Coldingley and they found that in terms of fire safety the place was so dangerous they served the prison with a Statutory NonCompliance Notice, giving them 28 days to correct the fire safety defects or they would issue a Crown Enforcement Notice.

CPFIG Inspection found failings, among other things, that included:

• The procedure is not always followed for removing cigarette lighters and matches from prisoners in Segregation who appear to be at increased risk of self-harming through fire. 
• Normal and/or emergency lighting doesn’t provide sufficient illumination to implement the Cell Fire Response plan including the removal of a prisoner from the cell. 
• The measures to reduce the spread of fire and smoke were inadequate. 
• There was insufficient evidence available to demonstrate the effectiveness of the smoke control arrangements for E wing after it was confirmed to have extraction only. 
• The generic cell fire response plan was not suitable for the circumstances in which prisoners are not locked in their cells (night san). 
• The training package delivered to staff does not provide sufficient practical instruction on the use of Inundation equipment. 
• An insufficient number of prison staff members working in residential wings are in date with their training in RPE wearing. 
• The number of trained prison response staff members available was not always sufficient to implement the cell fire response plan effectively. 
• The fire safety measures were not always being tested and maintained in good condition and effective working order. 

How on earth could you describe this less than a month earlier as a 'safe' prison? Had you taken with you a Guest Inspector from CPFIG during your inspection the fire safety failures identified less than a month after you left would have been identified sooner, removing the risk to life that your flawed approach allowed to continue unchecked - and which you signed off as 'safe'. 

What we need is obvious: a joined up Prisons Inspectorate You are the Chief Inspector of Prisons, and 'Prisons' means what it says. Conducting an inspection of a 'Prison' is not like some a la carte menu, where you pick and choose what parts you want to inspect and those you choose to ignore - it is the 'prison' as a whole that should attract your full attention; as indeed it used to do. 

Lord Ramsbotham, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons from 1995 to 2001, told me in a recent email communication that during his time as Chief Inspector: "We always took a Civil Engineer, who looked at Fire Safety, he once prevented HMP Canterbury from blowing up because he found that the boiler had been installed the wrong way round!" 

I do not mean to be rude, but you will be the first to admit that you have little experience of prisons, and certainly no operational experience of managing one. After 34 years as a police officer, and just over a year into your current job, it’s hardly surprising. 

Given that lack of operational prison experience it is vital that to discharge your obligations as Chief Inspector of Prisons properly you surround yourself with as many relevant experts as possible; and your lamentable failure to identify the serious fire safety defects at HMP Coldingley in March 2017 demonstrate beyond doubt that from this point on your inspection teams must include an expert on fire safety. 

Grenfell changed everything, and that means it has to change things inside HM Prisons Inspectorate too. With 2,580 fires in prisons during 2016, almost 50 blazes a week, having missed the glaringly obvious fire defects at Coldingley in March this year and after Grenfell, I hope to find that I am knocking at an open door. 

I look forward to your response. 

Kind regards 

Yours sincerely,

Mark Leech FRSA 

Editor: The Prisons Handbook.