Prisons: planning and policies - Justice Contents


5  Conclusion

163. At the first evidence session we held with the Secretary of State after his appointment, he told us his mantra was for "more of the right people to go to prison".[356] He further explained:

    I do not want a criminal justice system, prison system and system of community sentences where effectively the message to the courts is, "Look, you can't actually sentence that person to what you want to sentence him to because we don't have the money to pay for it." That would be a disastrous position for our criminal justice system to be in. We have to do things in a smarter and more cost-effective way.[357]

164. We have not analysed the Secretary of State's position explicitly in this inquiry, but several of our witnesses stressed that the size of the prison population is to some extent determined by conscious political and policy choices, rather than simply a product of sentencing decisions.[358] We have dissected these arguments in previous reports, but in view of the continuing, and sharp, rise in the prison population we feel it is worth emphasising again. The use of custody is a very substantial commitment of public funds which needs to be justified by its effectiveness in punishment, public safety and the reduction in reoffending. During our visit to Texas we were struck by the fact that an ever increasing prison population was seen across the political spectrum as a wasteful and unjustified imposition on the state's taxpayers and we saw that alternative policies were being pursued to rehabilitate drug addicted offenders and work with affected families so as to reduce the prison population.

165. It is possible to take steps to exercise some control over the size of the prison population without interfering with courts' autonomy in sentencing decisions. For example, steps could be taken to make it easier for people to achieve release, by for example, better resourcing of the Parole Board and ensuring that programmes are reliably provided which are necessary for enable prisoners to progress their sentence. The Government could also examine why the provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 2012 to restrict the use of remand through the "no real prospect test", have not had the desired effect. Given the ageing profile of the prison population, finding alternative means of dealing with older prisoners might also be worthwhile. During our recent consideration of the draft sentencing guideline on robbery we reflected on the possibility that the cumulative effect of Sentencing Guidelines might have the unintended consequence of sentence inflation. We rehearsed again in our report Crime reduction policies: a co-ordinated approach? the importance of having readily available community sentences which can provide a credible alternative to custody, and of ensuring sentencers have knowledge of that availability.[359]

166. If decisions taken by the Government tend towards creation of a large prison population, commensurate resources for the prison system must be found, so that people do not end up leaving prison less able to play a productive role in society than when they entered custody. The public safety implications of a diminution of rehabilitative activity stemming from the lack of capacity in the system, however unintended, have not been assessed, and could result in additional costs to the criminal justice system related to re-offending and subsequent returns to custody.[360] For this reason, several witnesses were sceptical whether the initial savings made through reducing staffing levels would translate into a fall in net costs to the Government.[361] Due to the time lag in availability of reoffending data it is not possible to draw even tentative conclusions about the extent of any such effect.

167. As we noted in Chapter Two, the Government believes that there is sufficient capacity within its current prison building programme for the population to grow in line with its latest central prediction scenario of a population of 90,200 by 2020.[362] We concluded in our report on the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms that there was the risk of a change in sentencer behaviour stemming from the underpinning legislation which might impact adversely on the prison population, because the availability of rehabilitative provision for short-sentenced prisoners might make sentencers more inclined to give offenders custodial sentences.[363] In addition, Andrew Neilson believed that a recent ratcheting-up of punitive rhetoric about prisoners and the criminal justice system had influenced the behaviour of the courts, prison governors and prison officers in adjudications. He said: "They take a steer from the top of the Ministry of Justice. If the steer is that they should be punitive, that is what they will do."[364]

168. Regardless of whether there is a need further to expand the prison estate, the Government is looking to continue its new for old policy.[365] While many of the oldest institutions have closed, structural inefficiencies remain in many parts of the estate. Kevin Lockyer, who wrote a Policy Exchange report on the future of the prison estate, believed that it would be necessary to continue to tackle this by replacing prisons:

    …if you have a prison estate with structural inefficiencies built in…you are still left with those structural inefficiencies, and fewer staff. Putting all of your eggs in the benchmarking basket, therefore, is not necessarily a long-term solution to an estate that has those kinds of structural inefficiencies built in."[366]

Nevertheless, the average capital cost for a new prison place is £158,000.[367]

169. Pressure to keep modernising (and expanding) the prisons estate thus further limits the likelihood that resources will be found to improve the efficiency of existing public sector establishments, for example through increasing the availability of in-cell technology. While resources have been found within the current spending review period to build new prisons or prison blocks, running and maintenance costs will also need to be found once those prison places come on-stream and thereafter.

170. Within existing building plans the Government would find it difficult to accommodate another unexpected increase in the prison population that deviates from their central range of prediction and moves towards the upper limit. Had the Government not been able to utilise redundant capacity from the youth estate it appears quite likely that the demand for prison places for adults might already have outstripped supply. Unless there are significant changes in both policy and rhetoric on sentencing, there is a continuing risk of unmanageable growth in the prison population.

171. Insufficient access to rehabilitative activities in prison and the backlog in offender risk assessments are likely to impact adversely on rehabilitative outcomes and hence the effective implementation of through-the-gate support by new providers of Community Rehabilitation Companies. NOMS' belief that there is sufficient headroom in the system both for the implementation of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms and to allow for a further rise in the prison population is difficult to reconcile with the current staffing shortages.

172. Given the size of the prison population, and the likely need to continue to make financial savings in the medium term, there is a real danger that savings and rehabilitation could become two contradictory policy agendas. The question of the sustainability of the system cannot continue to be ignored.

173. The size of the prison budget, the fact that it completely dominates expenditure on crime, the importance of reducing crime, and other problems identified in this report all indicate that we need to re-evaluate how we use custody and alternatives to custody in a cost-effective way which best promotes the safety of the public and reduces future crime. General Elections have a tendency to produce the wrong kind of debate on criminal justice policy, with a competition as to who can sound toughest, rather than an examination of the evidence on what works. This need not be so, and it should certainly not preclude a rational and evidence-based discussion on criminal justice policy in the next Parliament. That task needs to be continued by future governments, by political parties, and by our successors on the Justice Select Committee.


356   Evidence taken before the Justice Committee, 28 November 2012, HC 741-i, Q 2 Back

357   Ibid, Q 11  Back

358   Q 112 [Mr Hardwick]  Back

359   Justice Committee, Twelfth Report of session 2013-2014, Crime reduction policies: a coordinated approach? Interim report on the Governments Transforming Rehabilitation programme, HC 1004 Back

360   PPP19 [Association of Colleges] Back

361   PPP09 [Prisoner Learning Alliance]; PPP23 [Women in Prison] Back

362   Q 379 [Mr Selous] Back

363   Justice Committee, Twelfth Report of session 2013-2014, Crime reduction policies: a coordinated approach? Interim report on the Governments Transforming Rehabilitation programme, HC 1004 Back

364   Q 96 Back

365   Q 377 [Mr Selous] Back

366   Q 82 Back

367   National Audit Office Report, Managing the Prisons estate, December 2013. Back


 
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Prepared 18 March 2015