“Locking up more people for longer in our overcrowded prisons reduces constructive activity and extends aimless periods behind bars “

Juliet Lyon,
Prison Reform Trust

Every four years elections are called. The parties launch into an election campaign always mentioning the same factors which will get them elected. As always crime is at the top of the list. The parties will thrash out arguments about how to reduce crime, how crime has gone down since the current government was in power etc. So when Gordon Brown announces the next election we will have a list of figures of how new labour have tackled crime or not.

In England and Whales we jail the most people in Western Europe. This is not linked to the high crime rate as no more people are appearing in court then the early 90’s. Michael Howard's entry as home office secretary in the early 90’s was the start as he urged judges to dish out more custodial sentences. When labour came into power they adopted the same stance of liberally handing out prison sentences. Has this policy helped to reduce crime? No because now our prison population is bursting and the guards are going on strike for the first time in 68 years.

On 29 of August the Prison Officers Association (POA) staged a surprise walkout. They’re reasons were about pay and conditions and especially about the prison population. The Prison population is 80,762 which leaves 1,646 places free… yet on the day of the prison strike 900 people sentenced to prison or remand were rejected. If the figure is 900 it can be used as a rough average for the number of people put in prison per day. So that means if daily about 900 people are being sent to prison then there is likely to be a repeat of early 2007 when prisoners had to be held in court or police cells because there were no spaces in the prisons.

In order to combat the problem of over crowding, the government have tried different options and programmes. In the prison system there are two different types, closed and open prisons. In theory closed prisons are for prisoners considered a threat and ones who have committed serious crimes for example rape, murder etc. Open prisons are designed for those not considered a threat to society but also prisoners from the closed jails being slowly reintroduced into society. However this system has been shown to fail. Many petty criminals have ended up in high security prisons when they should be in open prisons. While at the same time more serious criminals have ended up in open prisons and simply walked out and committed similar crimes again. The central reason to why this happens is because the prisons are over crowded so offenders are sent to wherever available places are. 

The closed prison system fails when it comes to releasing ‘rehabilitated’ offenders early to reduce prison population. A typical example is when a person is released into society with little or no work experience; the chances of gaining successful employment are very slim with six out of ten employers admitting they refuse to hire ex-prisoners. Naturally if they can’t find a job they’ll sink back into criminality. The rate of re-offending is two out of three returning to prison within 2 years of release. In these cases prison becomes a revolving door for many with little or no chance of rehabilitation - especially as in a closed prison they spend the majority of the day locked in cells with limited training or education programmes.

In contrast the open prisons work in a completely different way. Many of the prisoners will work in normal jobs which the prison itself will find for them. These jobs will allow the prisoners to work with the general public. These programmes are much more effective because they reintroduce offenders step by step into normal society. It also puts far less strain on the guards, is financially more economical (It costs £40,000 a year to keep a prisoner in a closed prison) and the re-offending rates are far less compared to closed prisons.

In the future the government wants to tackle the problem of over crowding by privatising and building new prisons for the predicted prison population. The conservative estimation for the future prison population is estimated at 88,000 but the more likely figure by 2014 is about 102,000. The government plans to create 9,500 more prison places by 2012 which will still leave them 5000 places short. Obviously it’s a short sighted solution. If they follow this theory it means that in 2024 the government are going to have to build another 10,000 places with our tax money. If they abolished the deconstructive policy of liberally dishing out custodial sentences and made full use of community sentences and fines the crime rate would decline and space would be freed up in the prisons, allowing prisoners to be more effectively rehabilitated.