Britain’s failing jails are putting the public at risk

To update a familiar political slogan: prison isn’t working. According to Charlie Taylor, soon to leave his post as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, the “public are not being protected properly” because prisoners are being neglected, and there is little sign of improvement, according to The Independent.

As he sees it, Britain’s jails are full of inmates who “lie around in their bed all day taking drugs, watching TV”. This situation is surely wrong from every point of view.

To those who favour retribution as the principal aim of incarceration, the general regime across the prison estate is lax to the point of lawlessness. Drones apparently ferry in consignments of drugs virtually at will, and there are not enough prison officers to ensure discipline, safety and a healthy environment for all concerned. It cannot be right that a quarter of prisoners say they developed a drug addiction while in jail simply because a wide variety of narcotics are freely available — sometimes easier to obtain than on the outside.

For those, like Taylor himself, who take a more humanitarian and practical approach, and believe that rehabilitation is the best way to reduce reoffending, things are equally dismal. Eschewing the jargon, Taylor, on the basis of his six years in the role, concludes that too many prisoners are leaving custody “doomed to come back”, and therefore there is actually an increased danger to the public when they are eventually let go.

Given that it is neither just nor realistic to bang up, say, persistent shoplifters or petty drug dealers for life, some better way has to be found for balancing the punishment and reform of offenders. This task, a sadly perennial one, is currently all the more urgent given the continuing overcrowding crisis and the state of the public finances. Spending some £60,000 a year to let offenders rot away, develop fresh vices and educate themselves on their chosen criminal specialism is not an obviously wise use of taxpayers’ funds.

Rightly, Taylor makes particular reference to one of the most distressing aspects of a grim scene — the insensible detention on an indefinite basis of a previous generation of offenders, initially locked up for relatively minor transgressions, but serving time more typically meted out by the courts to rapists.

The chief inspector has applauded Andy Burnham for taking the “courageous decision” to end the “great injustice” of IPP, and acknowledged the role of The Independent for its long and sometimes lonely support for the campaigners trying to win justice for their loved ones, all long overdue for a serious review of their individual sentencing.

Candid as ever, and tempered by experience, Taylor accepts there are risks involved in any release: “Whenever you let someone out of prison, there is always an element of risk for all of them, particularly if they committed serious offences in the past,” he says. “But if we don’t do that, we just have these people left dangling on these appalling sentences, just wasting their lives, wandering around.”

The result of this routine neglect of the prison population is felt by the public who suffer the consequences, as evidenced in the official statistics. Recalls to prison are outstripping releases, with 25,531 offenders returned to prison in the first half of this year compared to 25,255 releases.

As with IPP, the government has made some constructive moves to improve matters. Ministers have accepted some of the recommendations made by former justice secretary David Gauke, for example on the perverse consequences of short sentences, tougher “community” punishments, tagging and for more investment in probation services.

But much more needs to be done immediately within the prisons themselves, not least in stopping any weapons being supplied by drone to terrorists.

A thoughtful man, and one who seems disappointed with the dehumanising rhetoric and careless attitude of successive administrations, Taylor suggests a deeper, wider problem: “It strikes me that sometimes we kind of see prisoners as a sort of alien breed of people, but actually, you know, a big proportion of them are people who, with the right support in the right circumstances, could do better.” So indeed they could – but when will we ever hear anyone standing for election utter such a political “heresy”?