13. Memorandum submitted by
the International Centre for Prison Studies, King's College London
1. The International Centre for Prison Studies[13]
(ICPS) welcomes the timely decision by the Home Affairs Committee
to carry out an inquiry into the rehabilitation of prisoners.
2. Over the past decade the number of people
in prison in England and Wales has risen by over 60%.[14]
While there has been an increase in the budget of the Prison Service
over that period and also an extensive prison building programme,
neither of these has kept pace with the increase in numbers. As
a consequence the Prison Service has only been able to meet its
basic obligation to provide every prisoner with a bed by means
of a complex system of ferrying prisoners all over the country
at short notice, with the result, for example, that young men
sentenced in the south east of England are likely to find themselves
sent at short notice to an establishment near the Scottish border.
Overcrowding, which according the Prison Service's own conservative
figures is now over 10%, is not merely a matter of finding additional
beds. It also puts significant pressure on the infrastructure
of catering services, of hygiene and sewerage facilities, of health
care, of the ability to provide proper visiting facilities for
families and on the general duty of care which the Prison Service
has towards all prisoners. The Director General of the Prison
Service described this graphically in the following terms:
. . . the more we put pressure when we "churn"
people through, the less we deal with individuals, and are more
at risk of missing individuals that we might otherwise notice.
We are greatly at risk of individuals in the
prison being completely dehumanised—it's a very big machine
that is churning away—as individuals, they are not very
important to it and they feel the weight of imprisonment at that
point and it looks like a very scary world they are entering .
. .[15]
3. The pressures of simply coping with daily
activities has meant that the Prison Service as a whole and individual
prisons in particular have increasingly struggled to deliver the
objective of providing activities and programmes which are likely
to contribute to the achievement of the Prison Service's statutory
obligation under Prison Rule 3:
The purpose of the training and treatment of
convicted prisoners shall be to encourage and assist them to lead
a good and useful life.[16]
4. Traditionally the Prison Service has
sought to meet this statutory duty by providing prisoners with
a wide range of activities, including education, industrial work,
skills and vocational training. This has been done partly with
the aim of ensuring that during their term in custody prisoners
should not have a life of inactivity or boredom and partly in
the expectation that after release former prisoners who have undergone
positive experiences will be less likely to return to a life of
crime.
5. In more recent years the Prison Service
has placed great emphasis on a series of courses aimed at changing
the behaviour of individual prisoners, which are colloquially
known as "offending behaviour programmes". These courses
are based on the premise that it is possible to change the way
a person behaves and reacts to various events through a programme
of psychologically driven interventions. They were initially advocated
in the prison setting as a new tool to be used to reduce the likelihood
that persons who undertook them would re-offend. The programmes
were first developed by psychologists working in the Correctional
Service of Canada. They were subsequently patented and sold to
a number of prison services, including that of England and Wales.
Recent research by the Home Office[17]
has found no differences in the two-year conviction rates for
prisoners who participated in cognitive skills programmes and
a matched group who did not.
6. In recent years ICPS has carried out
a number of international comparative studies on experiences which
have the potential to reduce the likelihood that released prisoners
will resort to future offending. These have included work for
the Cabinet Office Social Exclusion Unit's investigation into
Reducing Re-offending by Ex-prisoners[18]
and for the Prison Service into the use and organisation of offending
behaviour programmes. We have not been able to uncover any evidence
which suggests that an intervention which takes place exclusively
within the prison setting can be expected to have an effect on
re-offending rates. Such evidence as is available indicates that
the possibility of re-offending is more likely to be reduced
by a series of factors outside the prison. These include the provision
of accommodation, of employment and of a social support system.
In view of this the Prison Service might concentrate its efforts
on ensuring that during the time in prison the offender is encouraged
to develop life and work skills and is put in touch with the statutory
and voluntary community agencies which can provide accommodation,
employment and support after release. In England and Wales the
Prison Service has recognised this imperative by re-naming what
used to be the Directorate of Regimes as the Directorate of Resettlement,
thus emphasising that every experience which a person has inside
prison should be aimed at helping him or her to resettle in society
on release.
7. Research carried out by ICPS has discovered
that many prison systems in Western Europe also recognise this
fact and direct their rehabilitative efforts at resettlement.
This is done in a variety of ways. In some countries, for example,
prisons are organised in local clusters, so that prisoners always
remain as close as possible to the communities from which they
have come and to which they will return. This makes it easier
for them to make contact with local housing, employment and other
support agencies during their sentence. In some countries prison
service areas or regions are contiguous with the boundaries of
the local authorities which are responsible for providing these
services. There is also a growing tendency to encourage local
services which deal, for example, with drug and alcohol abuse
to include the local prison in their planning, rather than for
prisons themselves to develop parallel resources exclusively in
the prison setting. This makes it more feasible that on release
the former prisoner will be able to continue to access these services.
8. In conjunction with its international
research, ICPS carries out projects in the United Kingdom and
the Committee may be interested to learn of one of these, which
is called the Restorative Prison project. This project has set
out to discover the extent to which it is possible to achieve
four aims in the prison setting:
— To create a new structural relationship
between the prison and the surrounding community.
— To provide opportunities for prisoners
to work for the benefit of others.
— To raise awareness among prisoners
about the sufferings of victims of crime.
— To develop a new basis for resolving
conflicts in prisons.
9. The project began in 2000 in three prisons
in the north east of England. An important element of the project
has been the co-operation between the three prisons and Middlesbrough
Council for the re-development of Albert Park, a Victorian "Peoples
Park" that had fallen into disrepair. The park is located
in an area of significant social disadvantage and is of strategic
importance for the regeneration of west and central Middlesbrough.
The Council secured a large grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund
for the capital work required to restore the park to its Victorian
glory, but needed a source of volunteer labour to do a portion
of the work. This need led to a partnership between the prisons
and the Council. The prisons made a high quality contribution
to refurbishing boats and railings, producing furniture for the
café and community room, bunting and flags for events and
mosaics for the visitors room. The prisoners were not just regarded
as free labour. Their contribution was acknowledged on all the
fixtures and fittings they built. Their families and friends were
invited to a presentation in the park Visitor's Centre. A leaflet
was produced for visitors to the park giving information on the
prisoners' involvement and pointing out the community benefits
of such involvement. Each prisoner involved was given a certificate
of recognition and thanks by Middlesbrough Council. Other departments
in the Council became aware of the initiative and of the fact
that many of the prisoners involved came from Middlesbrough and
would return to it on release. One spin-off was a decision by
the Housing Department to look at its responsibilities for housing
ex-prisoners returning to Middlesbrough.
10. As part of the project ICPS commissioned
the local University of Teesside to evaluate the work in Albert
Park. 107 interviews were carried out with prisoners who had been
involved, prison staff, staff of Middlesborough Council, probation
staff, and members of the local community who used Albert Park.
The findings were substantially positive. The members of the community
surveyed commented favourably on the quality of the prisoners'
work and one-quarter said their attitudes towards prisoners had
become more favourable as a result. These members of the public
felt that giving prisoners such work might make them think more
about their contribution to society. The prisoners felt the work
was worthwhile and were motivated by the idea that the public
would benefit from what they were doing. Prison staff felt that
working for the project was useful in promoting citizenship.
11. The success of the Albert Park project
has led to interest from other local authorities. A similar project
has now started in Gateshead and discussions have begun in a number
of other areas. The important point to register is that these
projects are not just about parks. The regeneration of the parks
is seen as a symbol of community regeneration. The involvement
of prisoners and other offenders is also a symbolic recognition
that they are a part of the community, to which they have a responsibility
and which has a responsibility to them.
12. In the final year of the Restorative
Prison project ICPS has embarked on discussions with the Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Local Government Association
with the objective of raising awareness among local government
agencies about the important role they have in the resettlement
of ex-prisoners. This is relevant to the Crime & Disorder
Act 1998, which obliges each local authority to "formulate
and implement . . . a strategy for the reduction of crime and
disorder in the area" within their boundaries.
13. In conclusion, ICPS would urge the Committee
to consider the importance of linking programmes, activities and
the provision of resources in prisons, wherever possible, to those
which already exist in the community. Available evidence indicates
that a strategy of inclusion, rather than one of exclusion or
which emphasises the "separateness" of offenders, is
likely to contribute most to the Government's wish to reduce re-offending
and to reduce crime.
14. Finally, this submission has referred
primarily to programmes and activities for adult male prisoners
and to overcrowding in male prisons. The situation in England
and Wales with regard to women prisoners and to children and juveniles
in prison requires even closer scrutiny, as do the resources which
they need.
Andrew Coyle CMG PhD
Professor of Prison Studies
13 The International Centre for Prison Studies is
part of the School of Law in King's College, University of London.
It carries out work on prison systems and the use of imprisonment
around the world within the framework of the international human
rights instruments. In the United Kingdom it carries out research
on a variety of prison related topics. It has undertaken a comparative
study on the structure and organisation of penal systems in 22
jurisdictions for the Social Exclusion Unit (2001) and a study
of joint prison/probation arrangements in a number of countries
for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (2003). Back
14
See www.prisonstudies.org World Prison Brief. Back
15
HM Prison Service, Local Prisons-The Way Forward: Local Prisons
Conference report. Conference held in Wakefield, September 2002. Back
16
Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 728, The Prison Rules 1999. Back
17
Home Office, Research Findings 206, Searching for "What
Works": an evaluation of cognitive skills programmes, 2003. Back
18
Social Exclusion Unit, Reducing Re-offending by Ex-prisoners,
2002. Back
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