Progressives are right about our rotten prisons

When we talk about ‘under-served communities’, we typically think in terms of an absent or neglectful state. Yet one of the most under-served groups of all is one for whom the state is never absent: prisoners. Justice secretary Dominic Raab is in the headlines after he sent prison and probation staff a style guide instructing them to avoid ‘woke’ terminology such as ‘service-user’ and ‘room’ and stick to ‘inmate’ and ‘cell’. On the face of it, Raab’s orders are another salvo in the culture wars and a bit of positioning by an ambitious deputy prime minister, but the Lord Chancellor might be onto something, if perhaps inadvertently.

Progressives love linguistic activism but changing terminology doesn’t always change outcomes. The situation in Scotland’s prisons is instructive. Scotland is steadily, if unevenly, becoming the most progressive part of the UK when it comes to criminal justice. As I’ve written about previously on Coffee House, there is an ongoing revolution in criminal justice policy under the SNP, with the Scottish government advocating an ‘effective, modern person-centred’ justice system in which ‘people should only be held in custody where they present a risk of serious harm’.