What happens when government policy meets an entirely unfit system? Today’s report on HMP Peterborough by HM Inspector of Prisons reveals a jail unable to handle the government’s early release scheme. Last October, in an effort to stop our prisons running out of room, Alex Chalk announced the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, under which prisoners would be released 18 days early. Last month, with the prisons almost full again, he amended the policy so that prisoners can now be released 60 days early.
Every recalled prisoner costs money to return to prison
Today HM Inspector has revealed what this means in practice. HMP Peterborough is a large, Category B ‘Reception’ prison; this means it receives men directly from the courts and releases many into the local community. Although it is a private prison, managed by Sodexo, it’s similar to many public ‘B Cat’ jails across the country; it has a large, transient population, many of whom serve short sentences there.
When they inspected Peterborough, in mid-January this year, inspectors found 30 per cent of prisoners were being released homeless. No wonder; the ‘commissioned rehabilitative services’(CRS) provider, Interventions Alliance, was receiving 40 referrals every month, and despite being budgeted to have someone working 4 days a week, in fact ‘there had been no regular staff on site for over a year’. The prison holds no data on whether former prisoners are homeless three months after release. When prison management introduced a ‘strategic housing specialist’ to address these problems, she found that no one from Interventions Alliance or the relevant prison departments attended the meetings, which ‘left her unable to make improvements’. Meanwhile prison managers at Peterborough have been obliged to release some men 18 days early under the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, even when they have no address to go to; often with just the £89.52 ‘discharge grant’ in their pocket.
There is a clear link between housing and reoffending; when people are released from prison with a stable home to go to, and a job, they are much more likely to be law-abiding. Homeless and desperate people are much more likely to make the practical choice to commit crime, if that’s how they’re used to surviving. If we want to facilitate better moral choices we need to create opportunities for former prisoners to change paths.
Reoffending costs a great deal. The bill is estimated at over £18 billion a year, and it does harm to victims, communities and the mutual trust which should weave society together. Reoffending also piles yet more pressure on the prison system. Peterborough receives about 700 men each year who have been ‘recalled’ to prison after release, either for breaching their licence conditions, or because they’ve committed another crime. This churn of prisoners is familiar to me from my time as a prisoner at HMP Wandsworth; many prisoners were released and swiftly recalled. I even knew one man who was released and recalled twice during the 11 months I spent there.
Every recalled prisoner costs money to return to prison, takes up cell space, and if their recall is only for a short period, as most are, all it achieves is to disrupt their lives even further, while providing no opportunity for training, education or work (‘purposeful activity’) which make them less likely to commit crime in the future. At Peterborough, inspectors found that some prisoners were released 18 days early, only to be recalled before even reaching their original release date.
There are other problems with the jail, of course. Only ‘44 per cent of prisoners were engaged in purposeful activity’ while 42 per cent are ‘locked up during the working day’. Days spent lying on a bunk bed, staring at daytime TV do not benefit prisoners or our society. A lack of purposeful activity is known to lead to more drug taking and sure enough, at Peterborough drug testing indicates that ‘well over a quarter of the population were active drug users… at the time of the inspection’.
Peterborough is the first big, reception prison to be inspected since Alex Chalk’s early release scheme was introduced. These patterns are likely to be repeated across public sector prisons too. Throughout the justice system more widely, we are all being failed. Instead of tinkering with policy, the government needs to reform and fund the system properly. Otherwise we’ll continue to waste an estimated £50,000 a year doing little to reduce reoffending, and much to increase it.
We’re all paying the price for our rotten prisons
8
3
09.04.2024
What happens when government policy meets an entirely unfit system? Today’s report on HMP Peterborough by HM Inspector of Prisons reveals a jail unable to handle the government’s early release scheme. Last October, in an effort to stop our prisons running out of room, Alex Chalk announced the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, under which prisoners would be released 18 days early. Last month, with the prisons almost full again, he amended the policy so that prisoners can now be released 60 days early.
Every recalled prisoner costs money to return to prison
Today HM Inspector has revealed what this means in practice. HMP Peterborough is a large, Category B ‘Reception’ prison; this means it receives men directly from the courts and releases many into the local community. Although it is a private prison, managed by Sodexo, it’s similar to many public ‘B Cat’ jails across the country; it has a large, transient population, many of whom serve short sentences there.
When they inspected Peterborough, in mid-January this year, inspectors found 30 per cent of prisoners were being released homeless. No wonder; the........
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