Memorandum submitted by the Prison Reform
Trust
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
2003-04 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% to 40% (HM Chief Inspector of
Prisons, Full Announced Inspection, 30 June-4 July, 2003).
1.6 Prison has a poor record in reducing
re-offending—59% of prisoners are reconvicted within two
years of being released. The reconviction rate for male young
adults (under 21) over the same period is 74%. For prisoners who
are sentenced for burglary, one of the most common offences, the
reconviction rate is 75%.
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 50% 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." (Birmingham IMB)
— ". . . 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 2003-04 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% 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%.
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 unlocked and taken to education or training programmes
simply because there are not enough staff on the wing to escort
them to another part of the prison. PRT has received anecdotal
evidence from across the estate that this is happening in prisons
on a regular basis.
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% 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% 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%.
3.4 In 2002-03 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 2003-04 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.
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 2002-03 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 report's 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 England and Wales has trebled. Despite
this rapid growth in the number of elderly prisoners the Prison
Service has failed to respond to their needs.
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% 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 England and Wales awaiting trial. They endure some of the worst
conditions in overcrowded local jails. There is no requirement
to prepare, or begin thinking about, a sentence plan for a remand
prisoner. This in turn means that their time in custody is not
used to best effect. Very few are given a personal officer to
inform and guide them during their time in prison and they receive
little help to prepare for release.
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% 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 8,000 18-20-year-old prisoners
in England and Wales. This commitment has not been followed through.
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 18-20 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% of prisoners being held in
health care centres should have been in secure NHS accommodation
(HM Chief Inspector of Prisons annual report 2001-02).
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.
References
1. Centre for Policy on Ageing and Prison
Reform Trust, Howse, K, Growing Old in Prison—A scoping
study on older prisoners. London: Prison Reform Trust.
2. Hough, M, Jacobson, J, Millie, M (2003)
The Decision to Imprison: Sentencing and the Prison Population.
London: Prison Reform Trust.
3. Prison Reform Trust, Braggins, J and
Talbot, J Time to Learn: Prisoners Views on Prison Education.
London: Prison Reform Trust.
4. Prison Reform Trust, Rickford D, (2003)
Troubled Inside: Responding to the mental health needs of women
in prison. London: Prison Reform Trust.
5. 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, London:
Prison Reform Trust.
6. Prison Reform Trust, Levenson, J, (2002)
Prison Overcrowding: The Inside Story. London: Prison Reform
Trust.
7. Prison Reform Trust, Ruthven, D and Seward,
E, (2002) Restricted Access: Legal information for remand prisoners,
London: Prison Reform Trust.
8. Wedderburn, D, (2000) Justice for
Women: The Need for Reform, London: Prison Reform Trust.
June 2004
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