INQUIRY INTO THE EDUCATION OF PRISONERS
SUBMISSION FROM THE PRISON REFORM TRUST TO THE EDUCATION AND SKILLS
SELECT COMMITTEE
For further information please contact:
The Prison Reform Trust
0207 251 5070
enver.solomon@prisonreformtrust.org.uk
1.
Introduction
1.1 The
Prison Reform Trust (PRT) is an independent charity that works to create a just,
effective and humane penal system. We
inquire into the system, inform prisoners, staff and the wider public and seek
to influence government towards reform.
PRT provides the secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group on
Penal Affairs. Each year we publish a number of reports on all aspects of
prison life that receive widespread media attention, inform ministers and
officials and lead to changes in policy and practice. Over 4,000 prisoners and
their families contact our advice and information service each year. We jointly
produce a range of prisoners’ information booklets with the Prison Service.
1.2 PRT
is pleased to respond to the inquiry’s request for evidence.
1.3 This
submission firstly examines important background information in relation to
prison overcrowding that cannot be ignored when examining any area of prison
life. It then goes on to identify the level of educational need amongst the
prison population. The main focus, however, is on a report published at the end
of last year by PRT, Time To Learn –
Prisoners’ Views on Prison Education (October 2003). The key findings and recommendations are highlighted and copies
are enclosed for the committee to examine in more detail. Finally, this
submission considers issues concerning specific groups of prisoners, women,
young offenders, remand prisoners, elderly prisoners and mentally ill
prisoners. A number of references are made to other PRT publications which also
will be sent to the Committee together with this submission.
1.4 It
is important to note that during 2003-2004 prisoners spent an average of 23.1
hours each week engaged in purposeful activity, lower than the Prison Service’s
target of 24 hours. The Prison Service has only met its purposeful activity
target once in the last eight years. On average prisoners spent 3.4 hours in
education each week and 1.6 hours in vocational work compared to 2 hours in
exercise and 12.1 hours in work/workshops.
1.5 The
bedrocks that should underpin education provision, sentence planning and
personal officer schemes are missing in many prisons, particularly the large
local establishments which hold the bulk of the prison population. Sentence
planning which is extremely important if prisoners are to use their time
constructively, is often haphazard and not carried through. Similarly personal
officer schemes which are crucial in order to engage with and motivate
prisoners are not in place for many prisoners. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
recently reported that over the last three years the proportion of prisoners
with a personal officer at HMP Leeds has fallen from 90 per cent to 40 per cent
(HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Full Announced Inspection, 30 June –
1.6 Prison has a poor record in reducing
re-offending – 59 per cent of prisoners are reconvicted within 2 years of being
released. The reconviction rate for male young adults (under 21) over the same
period is 74 per cent. For
prisoners who are sentenced for burglary, one of the most common offences, the
reconviction rate is 75 per cent.
2. The
Context
2.1. Overcrowding
2.1.1
In April the prison population
reached its highest ever recorded total of 75,544 resulting in unprecedented
levels of overcrowding. At the end of May, 91 of the 138 prisons were
overcrowded. Eighteen prisons had fifty per cent more prisoners than their uncrowded capacity.
2.1.2
Around 17,000 prisoners are
currently sharing a cell designed for one. The vast majority will eat their
meals and share use of a toilet (sometimes unscreened) in the cell.
2.1.3
A Prison Reform Trust report, “Prison Overcrowding: The Inside Story” (September
2002), revealed how over three-quarters of prison watchdogs are concerned that
prisons in England and Wales are suffering from a deepening overcrowding crisis
which is threatening prison safety, leading to prisoners being held in inhuman
and degrading conditions, prompting continued movement from one establishment
to another and damaging attempts to reduce re-offending by prisoners. The report is based on findings from a unique
study of Independent Monitoring Boards, the watchdogs appointed by the Home
Secretary to monitor prison conditions.
2.1.4
Several Boards made particular
reference to the disruptive effects of
overcrowding on education and skills provision:
· “The
problem we are encountering…is constant transferring of prisoners –
particularly Category Bs – this does have an effect in Workshops and
Education. The throughput of prisoners
is having an effect all round, with specific impacts on Reception and Property,
Discipline Office, Correspondence etc.” (
· “…we
have witnessed effects on individuals’ programmes of rehabilitation, training
and education and courses such as offending behaviour, when these are suddenly
disrupted mid-stream and the inmate has to go through reassessment and
allocation at the new establishment. Such action ‘flies in the wind’ of the
policy to try and address individuals’ problems and carry out rehabilitation to
enable them to re-enter society as better citizens.” (Soke
Heath IMB)
· “All
aspects of education and activities are at risk of being disrupted; teachers
and instructors have difficulty in establishing working relationships with boys
as they are constantly being moved. One boy in the middle of his A level course
had to be transferred out. Such movement is demoralising and dispiriting for
both the boys and the staff and is out of the control of the Governor. ”
(Feltham BoV).
· “The
increased volume of prisoner movements ties up officers to the extent there may
be no courses provided for the short stay prisoners.” (Woodhill
BoV).
2.2
Staffing problems
2.2.1
Overcrowding
puts staff under enormous pressures and has contributed to high levels of staff
sickness. The average staff sickness rate in 2003-2004 was 13.3
days, far higher than other parts of government. This is an improvement on the
previous financial year when on average each member of staff took 14.7 days
sickness absence. However, the number of working days lost due to sickness
absence per member of staff increased by 23 per cent between 1999 and 2003.
2.2.2
Many prison officers leave within
two years of joining the Prison Service. Of the 2,245 officers recruited
between 2000 and 2003, 1,390 left within two years of signing up, a drop out
rate of 60 per cent.
2.2.3
Prisons
suffer from inconsistent and unstable leadership with a high turnover of prison
governors.
In the five years to March just under a third of all
prisons (44) have had four or more governors or acting governors in charge. The
average tenure for prison governors in HM Prison Service is one year and nine
months.
2.2.4
Staffing
shortages mean that prisoners do not get
3. Education
and skills need and provision
3.1 Many
prisoners enter custody with a history of educational under-achievement and
poor skills:
·
Half
of all prisoners are at or below the level expected of an 11 year old in
reading, two-thirds in numeracy and four-fifths in writing.
·
More
than half of male and more than two-thirds of female adult prisoners have no
qualifications at all.
·
Half
of all prisoners do not have the skills required by 96 per cent of jobs.
·
Nearly
half of male sentenced prisoners were excluded from school and nearly a third
of all prisoners were regular truants whilst at school.
3.2 There are a significant number of
prisoners suffering from dyslexia. Research suggests it could be as many as 17
per cent of the total prison population.
3.3 Education
is critical for the effective rehabilitation of prisoners. Research highlighted
by the Government’s Social Exclusion Unit has found that prisoners who do not
take part in education or training are three times more likely to be
re-convicted and that basic skills learning can contribute to a reduction in
re-offending of around 12 per cent.
3.4 In 2002-2003 an average of £1,185
per prisoner was spent on education in jails. This is less than half the
average cost of secondary school education at £2,590 per student per year,
which many prisoners have missed.
3.5 The
Prison Service has made the delivery of basic skills programmes for literacy,
and numeracy a top priority and in recent years it
has made significant progress in this area. In 2003-2004 the Service predicts
it will surpass all its targets for basic skills provision. However, this
achievement masks significant shortcomings in the opportunities for learning
available to all prisoners across the estate.
4. Time to
Learn – Prisoners’ Views on Prison Education
4.1 PRT,
supported by Barclays, published a unique study in October 2003 of prisoner’s
perspectives on prison education based on interviews with 153 prisoners in 12
prisons (copies are enclosed with this submission). Time to Learn says that prisoners are being denied opportunities
for education and training because of a failure to prioritise learning. It
states: ‘Despite the highly appreciated efforts of some education staff there
was a desultory second best feel to prisoners’ accounts of education’.
4.2 The
report highlights a number of barriers to learning in prison:
·
A shortage of places on courses and
in training workshops resulting in long waiting lists, particularly in local
prisons. Overall there is a lack of vocational and accredited skills-based
workshops.
·
Movement between prisons disrupting
education due to a failure to transfer educational records and significant
differences between prisons in the courses offered.
·
Wide disparities in education
funding between prisons resulting in striking variations in curriculum. Some
prisons focus mainly on target driven basic skills, others offer a wide range
of educational opportunities. Overall there are limited opportunities for
distance learning.
·
Bad timetabling forcing prisoners to
make trade-offs to get to classes. This involves prisoners having to choose
between education or phoning their families or taking showers or exercise.
·
Low rates of pay for attending
education courses compared to prison work, discouraging many prisoners from
learning.
·
Inconsistencies in procedures to
assess education needs and a failure automatically to follow up assessments
resulting in poor sentence planning.
4.3 The
report concludes that if prison education is seen as a remedial activity to
tackle perceived skills deficits at the basic level then it would best not to
pretend otherwise. But it warns that this would exclude at least half of the
prisoners interviewed for the study. If education and training are to become a
central plank of prison life then significant additional resources are needed
to making this a reality across the estate. It says that the Department for
Education and Skills and the Prison Service may have understated some of the
difficulties they face in delivering education and skills training to prisoners
and puts forward a number of key recommendations:
·
The resources available for
education and training should be comparable with those in mainstream provision,
including supervised access to the internet. Funding between prisons with
similar roles should be made equitable.
·
Rates of pay for prisoners attending
education and training should be comparable with the rates of pay for other
work.
·
The curriculum should be of equal
relevance to the needs of all prisoners, taking into account the wide range of
different abilities and backgrounds. It should also ensure a degree of
consistency of provision between prisons, in particular between prisons of the
same security category.
·
In managing prison regimes staff
should ensure that prisoners attending education and training should receive
the same access as other prisoners to facilities and the main regime
activities.
·
Learning passports or personal
records of achievement that include targets for education and training, to be
maintained by prisoners and supported by staff, should be introduced.
·
Successful peer-support schemes in
education should be increased and the active involvement of prisoners.
5.
Resettlement
5.1 If
prisoners are to benefit from the education and skills training they receive
whilst in custody it is critical that they are given support before release to
make preparations for continuing their studies or training when they leave
prison.
5.2 The
Prison Service introduced a new resettlement key performance indicator (KPI) for
2002-2003 to ensure that 28,200 prisoners get employment, training or education
places after their release. The outcome for the year was 32,993, just over a
third of the 90,000 prisoners released a year and well above the target. However, PRT’s
analysis of the Prisoner Service’s KPIs, A Measure of Success (August 2003) raises questions about the accuracy of
this figure.
5.3 Firstly,
it includes 7,086 prisoners who only attended an interview at their local
Jobcentre with a view to taking up an education, training or employment place.
It is not known what actually happened to these prisoners. Secondly, the
remaining 25,906 is based on a survey of a representative sample of prisoners
who were interviewed in the last three weeks of their sentence about their
expectations of finding education, training or employment. It is not known if
they were actually successful. The Prison Service should measure education,
training or employment outcomes soon after release.
5.4 The
achievements that the Prison Service would claim on resettlement are not
reflective of the general practice on the ground in establishments across the
country. The Time to Learn study
found that prisoners had low expectations about the chances of finding
employment or training and a general resignation about the inevitability of
self-employment due to the burden of having a criminal conviction.
5.5 PRT has found that the prisons with good
resettlement projects are the exceptions rather than the rule. This is
supported by the findings of the Chief Inspector of Prisons who in her annual
reports for the past two years has noted the ‘patchy’ nature of provision and
the ‘absence of a coherent and effective resettlement strategy’.
5.6 The
Home Office initiated a thorough review of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act
in 2001. This resulted in the publication of ‘Breaking the Circle’ in July 2002
and a subsequent commitment to find an early legislative opportunity to
introduce the measures. The review recognised the crucial importance of
employment opportunities, within a framework of sensible safeguards, if
rehabilitation of ex-offenders was to be improved. As the Social Exclusion Unit
found “Research shows that employment reduces the risk of re-offending by
between a third and a half”. Current legislation offers little encouragement to
ex-offenders, who often feel that they have served a double sentence, with the
period before an offence becomes spent continuing long after release from
prison or completion of a court order. The complexity of the current
arrangements is the source of much confusion for both ex-offenders and
employers. PRT supports the recommendations in ‘Breaking the Circle’ and calls
for their early introduction.
6. Specific
groups of prisoners
6.1 Women
6.1.1
The women’s prison population is
made up of a disproportionate number of vulnerable and damaged individuals. Two
thirds of women in prison show symptoms of at least one neurotic disorder such
as depression, anxiety and phobias. More than half are suffering from a personality
disorder. Forty per cent of women in custody have attempted suicide at some
stage in their life.
6.1.2
A report by PRT, supported by the
Nuffield Foundation, published last year, ‘Troubled
Inside: responding to the mental health needs of women in prison’ (July
2003) highlighted the inadequate care provided for women because of the poor
standard of mental health provision in prisons that falls well short of
provision in the NHS. The report urged the government to ensure that the
ambitions for improvements in mental health services are realised in the
practice of the NHS and the Prison Service, recognising that women prisoners
have much higher rates of mental disorder, drug abuse and histories of abuse
and self-harm than their counterparts in the community.
6.1.3
The report of the Committee on
Women’s Imprisonment published by PRT four years ago called for a systematic
improvement in the quality of regimes in female prisons. There is still a need
to provide more opportunities for education and training that are aimed at
getting women into employment or further training on release. The reports
overarching recommendations were that there should be a reduction in the number
of women held in custody and that a Women’s Justice Board should be established
to oversee all work with women offenders.
7.1
Elderly Prisoners
7.1.1
In the last decade the number of prisoners aged over 60
in jails in
7.1.2
A
report published by PRT and the Centre for Policy on Ageing earlier this year,
‘Growing Old in Prison: a scoping study
on older prisoners’ revealed that education and rehabilitation programmes are not geared to the needs of elderly prisoners
and only a minority pursue these programmes. It
called on the Prison Service to develop a national strategy for older
prisoners.
7.1.3
Due to the rising prison population
and the significant increase in elderly people in custody there are now
believed to be a record number of disabled prisoners, although the Prison
Service does not currently collect data on disability. Disabled prisoners say
that they are rarely given equal access to prison activities and some complain
of poor treatment and discrimination. One prisoner recently contacted PRT
saying: “I have been in
three prisons and only in one have I had no problems with the treatment of the
disabled. Here, education is on the
third floor, so I can’t access it. ”
7.2
Short-term
prisoners
7.2.1 In 2002, 57 per cent of all those
sentenced to immediate custody by the courts (42,141 people) were sent to
prison for terms of six months or less.
7.2.2 These short term prisoners are not
usually able to benefit from education or
training programmes, but as a result of
imprisonment they are in danger of losing their housing, employment and stable
family relationships. The Prison Service has very little to offer these
prisoners in the way of constructive rehabilitation. PRT believes that these
offenders would be far better off serving rigorous and effective community
punishments.
7.2.3 The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, writing in the Observer in February 2002 stated: “Our
prisons are crowded places full of people on short sentences that do not allow
prison staff to do one of the things they are best at – rehabilitation work.
Prison staff work hard to provide programmes which
tackle poor education and skills, and help people find jobs. Those on remand
and short sentences are not inside for long enough for these programmes to make a difference – but they are there long
enough to lose their jobs, their family relationships, and even their homes.
This can push someone off the straight and narrow for good.”
7.3
Remand
prisoners
7.3.1
In
2002 over 58,000 people were imprisoned in
7.3.2
Opportunities
for work or education are restricted. The government’s Social Exclusion Unit
has noted that that compared to sentenced prisoners, remand prisoners, are half
as likely to have participated in work whilst in prison. The Office for
National Statistics (ONS) has found that young people on remand are 20 per cent
less likely to have attended education classes during their current period in
custody. This may be an unintended outcome of the regime for those on remand,
as they are not required to work or take part in education, although it is
clear that for those who want to access education and training, there are
insufficient places.
7.3.3
A
study by the Prison Reform Trust, ‘Restricted
Access: Legal Information for Remand Prisoners’ found that prisons are
failing to equip remand prisoners to prepare for trial. It found that only half
(48%) of prison libraries in jails holding remand prisoners stock the standard
legal texts that under Prison Service regulations they must provide. Prisoners
highlighted difficulties accessing the information they needed.
7.4
Young
prisoners
7.4.1 Three years ago the Government made
a commitment in its election manifesto to develop a strategy for effective rehabiliation with the eight thousand 18 to 20 year old
prisoners in
7.4.2 As the Chief Inspector of Prisons
reported in her inspection of Hindley YOI last month
there have been significant improvements for younger teenagers but regimes have
deteriorated badly for older teenagers. The Chief Inspector noted that 18 to 20
year olds experience long periods locked up, restricted access to training and
skills, limited exercise and little or no help with resettlement.
7.5
Mental
illness
7.5.1
Research
has found that there are up to 500 patients in prison health care centres with mental health problems who are sufficiently
ill to require immediate NHS admission (Mental health care in prisons, British
Journal of Psychiatry, No. 182, 2003).The Chief Inspector of Prisons has
estimated, based on visits to local prisons, that 41 per cent of prisoners
being held in health care centres should have been in
secure NHS accommodation (HM Chief Inspector of Prisons annual report
2001-2002).
7.5.2
The
Prison Service is unable to meet the needs of people with serious mental health
disorders. Prison officers and health care staff struggle to cope and resources
are wasted. It is wholly inappropriate for these people to be held in Prison
Service custody.
7.5.3
There
needs to be a comprehensive system of court liaison and diversion schemes
across the country so that offenders who are acutely ill or at risk of suicide
can be given hospital places, possibly under the Mental Health Act 1983.
Enclosures:
- Centre for Policy on Ageing and Prison Reform Trust, Howse, K., Growing
Old in Prison – A scoping study on older prisoners.
- Hough, M., Jacobson J., Millie, M. (2003) The Decision to Imprison: Sentencing and the Prison Population.
- Prison Reform Trust, Braggins, J and
Talbot, J Time to Learn: Prisoners
Views on Prison Education.
- Prison Reform Trust, Rickford, D., (2003)
Troubled Inside: Responding to the
mental health needs of women in prison.
- Prison Reform Trust, Solomon, E(2003) A Measure of Success: An analysis of the Prison Service’s
performance against its Key Performance Indicators 2002-2003..
- Prison Reform Trust, Levenson, J.,(2002) Prison Overcrowding: The Inside Story.
- Prison Reform Trust, Ruthven, D., & Seward, E., (2002) Restricted Access: Legal information
for remand prisoners.
- Wedderburn, D.,
(2000) Justice for Women: The Need
for Reform.