As much as the country is divided by Brexit, there’s arguably an even more stark division. It’s the one between those directly and repeatedly affected by crime, and those who aren’t.
Prison officers – more so than police, prosecutors, barristers, or probation officers – face the worst of state failure when it comes to crime. They go to work and spend their shifts outnumbered by prisoners, and only marginally less constrained in their movements than their charges.
They see colleagues – and prisoners – routinely and violently assaulted. Recent cases involve a prison officer having their throat slit. It’s the sort of event that, occurring in any other workplace, would be massive news.
But prisons, prison officers, and prisoners are out of sight and out of mind for many. That suits those in the Westminster and Whitehall bubble who are accepting – whether knowingly or not – of the true horror of the status quo.
The reality from recent prison inspection reports is of prisoners locked up for too much of the day in their cells, or, conversely prison officers, poorly resourced and unsupported in the work they do, locking themselves away.
This represents a huge and costly waste of what prison can be: an opportunity to tackle root causes, change behaviour, and cut crime. It’s an opportunity that other countries, including Norway, recognise and realise. They focus on safe and stable regimes that lead away from crime and poverty, and into work. By contrast, we are wasting money and missing a valuable opportunity to cut crime.
And, when things boil over in our drug and violence-filled prisons – as they did most notably at HMP Birmingham – the consequences are severe. It sends ripples – along with injuries and fear – through the workforce and well-behaved inmates alike.
The riot in Birmingham cost £6m – far better, surely, to have spent the money on preventing a riot, than on dealing with the aftermath.
Too many of our prisons continue to froth away. Like saucepans on a stove, being ignored by a disinterested cook. Fortunately, at least, the man facing the heat of the kitchen as prisons minister – Rory Stewart – isn’t disinterested, far from it. But he is trying to feed the 5,000 with just a few loaves, and we shouldn’t be crossing our fingers and hoping for a miracle.
The easy answer, put forward by some, is to just empty the prisons. But it’s fool’s gold. It would do nothing to tackle the underlying lack of resource and leadership, and goes entirely against the grain of public opinion.
Like so many issues of late, what SW1 thinks is in almost total juxtaposition to the view of the public. While YouGov found 70 per cent of MPs back government plans to scrap jail sentences under six months for most crimes, 70 per cent of the public would prefer more prisons and more prison staff as a means of tackling the crisis in our prisons, as opposed to just 19 per cent who would prefer to see fewer people sent to prison.
The target we should be aiming for lies somewhere in the middle. But at a time when law and order is, after leaving the EU, the number one issue for voters, promising to end the prison crisis by emptying prisons would only dig a deeper political hole – not least given the state of our probation services.
Doing nothing is not an option either. More than one in ten male prisoners report developing their drug problem while in prison, and drug addictions fuel almost half of all acquisitive crime, and the prison service is losing officers at an alarming rate.
It is time to tackle the understaffing and to value the role of ‘Prison Officer’ as the driver of personal transformation. It’s also vital to grip the problem of drugs in prison. That means body scanners for prisoners, visitors, and staff – and it also means protecting officers from being corrupted, and rooting out the tiny minority who are.
Crucially though, it will require those in Westminster with control of the purse strings to loosen them, and it will require sustained political and organisational leadership to turn things around.
The crisis in our prisons should unite us all. Those who care about prisoners should be outraged, but so too we should be doubly outraged for the dreadful conditions we are inflicting on prison officers. Without brave men and women working on the landings, empowered to fulfil their duty, we would undoubtedly see far worse problems on our streets.
Rory Geoghegan is Head of Criminal Justice at the Centre for Social Justice. You can follow Rory on Twitter @RoryGeo and read the full report here: Control, Order, Hope
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