Conclusions and recommendations
Modernising the prison estate
1. Accommodating the
recent rise in the prison population has been achieved without
increasing crowding to a great extent. But it is worrying that
despite the Government's efforts to supply sufficient prison places
to meet demand, the proportion of prisons that are overcrowded
is growing, and the proportion of prisoners held in crowded conditions
remains at almost a quarter. It deeply concerns us that as a result
of a shortage of prison places in London, NOMS is building prisons
fully intending to hold more prisoners in them than they have
capacity for, as the National Audit Office reported happened at
HMP Thameside. (Paragraph 30)
2. Overcrowding is
a more significant issue than the way it was described to us by
the Secretary of State, who characterised it simply as people
sharing a cell designed to hold fewer people. When a prison holds
many more people than it was designed for this impacts more broadly
on regimes and the capacity of prisons to rehabilitate through
the provision of purposeful activity. If greater overcrowding
is accepted as de facto policy then it is important that NOMS
is clear about the wider capability of the prison estate to absorb
more prisoners when they are building new facilities, expanding
existing ones, and determining an individual prison's decent and
safe level of capacity. Current measures of overcrowding do not
facilitate this, so we recommend that NOMS should design a broader
measure which better reflects the reality of prison conditions.
(Paragraph 31)
3. We stand by the
view expressed in our report on Youth Justice that small custodial
units are safer and more humane for children and young people.
Notwithstanding the potential educational benefits of secure colleges,
we question why the Ministry of Justice sees it necessary to dedicate
scarce funding to develop such a large-scale establishment, when
the number of children requiring secure accommodation is shrinking
rapidly. (Paragraph 35)
4. There is some evidence
about the difficulty the prison system has had in providing appropriately
for young adult prisoners, and there is no definitive answer about
the best forms of establishment to meet their particular needs.
It is clear to us that there is a need for NOMS to ensure that
there is dedicated responsibility for this group both at an institutional
and national level. This is an issue that could be further explored
by the Justice Select Committee in the next Parliament. (Paragraph
36)
5. The estate modernisation
policy of closing of old inefficient prisons and replacing them
with new more cost-effective ones is a good one in principle.
We recognise in particular that some prisons have been operating,
and some continue to operate, with decrepit buildings that hinder
effective rehabilitation; and we note that redesign and re-configuration
provide the opportunity for new technologies and their resulting
efficiencies to be embedded in the infrastructure of the prison
estate. It is unfortunate that to date the resources for capital
investment in new technologies in public sector prisons have not
been found while private sector prisons have given priority to
investment in new technology. We recommend that the Ministry
carry out a cost-benefit analysis of implementation of in-cell
technology across the public sector prison estate. (Paragraph
38)
6. A policy of replacing
older establishments with newer ones is resulting in the creation
of large, multi-purpose prisons, while questions arising from
available evidence on the relationship between the size and effectiveness
of institutions do not appear to have been addressed by the Government.
The success of the Government's policy also depends crucially
on the ability of NOMS to predict demand for places with sufficient
accuracy, and to provide places accordingly. The time taken to
build new prisons, and their associated costs, means that it can
take several decades to yield savings. In addition, these savings
are dependent on the consequent closure of older and more expensive
places, which might not be possible if future demand tends towards
the upper end of what are inevitably imperfect projections. We
welcome the fact that the cost to the public purse of a prison
place has fallen to some extent, but it remains high and it is
unlikely to fall significantly while the population continues
to rise. (Paragraph 39)
7. A key question
is whether making savings in the prison estate inevitably results
in a one-size-fits-all approach to prisons policy. Our evidence
suggests there is a definite risk of this following recent decisions
on custodial provision for children, young adults and women in
prison. We consider that the custodial estate needs to be designed
so that it meets the different needs of different sectors of the
prison population. Reconfiguring the estate could provide an important
opportunity to reconsider the best forms of custodial provision
for key cohorts of prisoners, for example, through smaller, more
geographically dispersed, units for both females and children.
Instead, decisions have been taken to retain the recent emphasis
on a smaller number of large establishments. (Paragraph 40)
8. It also appears
to us that there are some consequences of modernisation that have
not been planned for properly. When prisons are going through
transition, whether that takes the form of opening, changing purpose,
merging, or becoming managed by another sector, levels of performance
are typically affected, at least in the short-term. There may
well be unanticipated and unquantified costs of reconfiguring
the prison estate in this manner. If the pressure to expand capacity
continues, so too will the need for ongoing adaptations of the
estate, with the risk that some establishments may be in a constant
state of flux. (Paragraph 41)
9. It may be prudent
to build prisons to standard specifications to minimise the need
for rebuilding them should they change purpose, this can lead
to prisoners being held in accommodation or conditions that are
disproportionate to the risk that they pose, which is not conducive
to rehabilitation. The approach to security in prisons which we
saw in Denmark assumes that the use of open prisons should be
the default, with restrictions minimised as much as possible.
This is essentially the opposite of the approach taken in England
and Wales, and we believe there is merit in the Danish approach.
The profile of the prison population is changing, including
becoming older, and in some respects more challenging. In this
context, we recommend that the Government review the way prisoners
of different security categorisations are accommodated to ensure
that it remains appropriate and proportionate to the risks presented
by 21st century prisoners. (Paragraph 45)
10. The Government's
working prisons policy is a worthy aim and prison industries are
becoming more common. Nevertheless, it remains the case that most
prisons do not have the facilities for workshops on a scale that
would enable the majority of prisoners to do work which will equip
them for employment on release. Where there are such facilities,
the aims of involving employers on a commercial basis and normalising
a working week for prisoners are not achievable without sufficient
staff to enable prisoners to be unlocked for a full working day.
This appears to be much easier to achieve in prisons dedicated
to that purpose. (Paragraph 51)
11. The current commissioning
arrangements for prison work and learning and skills do not appear
to support the integration of these two vital aspects of rehabilitation.
We recommend that the Ministry of Justice and the Department
for Business, Innovation and Skills take steps to ensure that
the next round of commissioning for learning and skills in prisons
prioritises arrangements for embedding learning in the various
forms of purposeful activity in which prisoners are engaged. In
the shorter term, we recommend that the Government should review
the combined impact of the various policies—the differential
in remuneration when prisoners are in employment, the Victim Surcharge
and Advanced Learning Loans—so as to ensure that they do
not disincentivise to prisoners from developing their of learning
and skills, and hence future employability. (Paragraph 52)
12. In previous Reports
we have commended the Government's creation of a nationwide network
of resettlement prisons. It should not, however, confuse the priorities
of multiple purpose establishments, and dilute the priority accorded
to resettlement needs elsewhere in the estate. This initiative
to improve provision in the last three months of a sentence should
not come at the expense of rehabilitative support for the majority
of prisoners who are serving medium to long-term sentences. If
time in non-resettlement prisons has been used productively, prisoners
will be in a better position to prepare for resettlement. We
recommend that NOMS develops measures of performance to ensure
that the quality of rehabilitative provision for prisoners who
are not in the final three months of their sentence is maintained,
and publishes them regularly. (Paragraph 58)
13. There are also
some immediate issues which must be rectified as a matter of priority
if support for offenders in moving from custody into the community
is to work to best effect. These include as a matter of urgency
resolving staffing shortages and clearing the backlog of risk
assessments. Both issues are likely to hamper considerably the
efforts of the new providers of Community Rehabilitation Companies
as they seek to implement their through-the-gate services. There
is a risk that such services could be rendered inoperable as a
result of failures in the system that are the responsibility of
NOMS. We ask the Ministry to clarity in its response to this
Report whether it has any financial obligations towards Community
Rehabilitation Companies in the event that they are unable to
operate effectively because of failures in the system that are
beyond their control. (Paragraph 59)
Benchmarking and prison staffing
14. We agree with
most witnesses to our inquiry that the benchmarking of prisons
to develop more efficient regimes is in principle an effective
way of reducing expenditure more rapidly than would be possible
through prison-by-prison competition. We also support the phased
approach to the implementation of benchmarking which NOMS has
adopted. (Paragraph 65)
15. All available
indicators, including those recorded by HM Inspectorate of Prisons
and NOMS itself, are pointing towards a rapid deterioration in
standards of safety and levels of performance over the last year
or so. Most concerning to us is that since 2012 there has been
a 38% rise in self-inflicted deaths, a 9% rise in self-harm, a
7% rise in assaults, and 100% rise in incidents of concerted indiscipline.
Complaints to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and other sources
have risen. There are fewer opportunities for rehabilitation,
including diminished access to education, training, libraries,
religious leaders, and offending behaviour courses. (Paragraph
75)
16. A quarter of the
staff who have left the Prison Service in the year to September
2014 resigned. NOMS ought to have foreseen that major reductions
in staffing, less favourable pay and conditions of employment,
and significant changes to prison regimes, would lead to a rise
in people opting to leave the Prison Service, regardless of the
buoyancy of the external labour market. This underlines the importance
of retention as well as recruitment. As NOMS is highly dependent
on its staff to run well-functioning prisons, and it is important
that the Service acts rapidly on the evidence of recent surveys
to ensure that staff feel valued and are given appropriate support
to work in circumstances which are challenging at the best of
times, but currently particularly pressured. Given the importance
of relationships between prisoners and prison staff we do not
believe that making further detrimental changes to terms and conditions
of staff is sustainable as a means of controlling costs if the
prison population continues to rise.
(Paragraph 94)
17. It is possible
that the Ministry might be taking the matter of the sudden rise
in self-inflicted deaths seriously internally, but downplaying
publicly its significance, and the potential role that changes
in prisons policy might be playing in it, is ill-advised as it
could be construed as complacency and a lack of urgency. The Ministry
told us they had looked hard for evidence of factors which could
be causing an increase in suicide rates, self-harm and levels
of assault in prisons. Worryingly, they had not managed to arrive
at any hypothesis as to why this has taken place. In our view
it is not possible to avoid the conclusion that the confluence
of estate modernisation and re-configuration, efficiency savings,
staffing shortages, and changes in operational policy, including
to the Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme, have made a significant
contribution to the deterioration in safety.
(Paragraph 102)
18. Private sector
prisons have not been immune from the imposition of efficiency
savings but once their contracts have been agreed they are insulated
to some extent. They also benefit from their greater ability to
make capital investments in the hope of recouping the benefit
over the lifetime of the contract, while public sector processes
restrain such investment. We conclude that public sector prisons
need greater capacity to invest in cost-effective and operationally
beneficial improvements in the way that the private sector does.
(Paragraph 103)
19. Both public and
private sector prisons have been in a state of flux over the last
two years, for a host of reasons. These include the implementation
of new operational policies, staffing reductions, populations
changing and stabilising as prisons have opened, closed or re-roled,
transfers from the private sector to the public sector and vice
versa, and large-scale building projects on existing prison sites.
It would be surprising if there had not been some adverse impact
on performance. We believe that the key explanatory factor for
the obvious deterioration in standards over the last year is that
a significant number of prisons have been operating at staffing
levels below what is necessary to maintain reasonable, safe and
rehabilitative regimes. Having fewer prison officers can tip the
power balance, leading to less safety and more intimidation and
violence on wings. Interim measures such as restricted regimes
and the national detached duty scheme have been adopted as a necessary
means of minimising the risks of operating with insufficient staff,
but these measures themselves have an adverse impact on the ability
of the prison system to achieve rehabilitation and reduce reoffending.
(Paragraph 115)
20. The Government
has been reluctant to acknowledge the serious nature of the operational
and safety challenges facing prisons, and the role of its own
policy decisions in creating them. Some difficulties could arise
in any process of change, but it is clear to us that the Ministry
had not planned adequately for the risk of staffing shortages,
and failed to act sufficiently quickly to mitigate them. This
unsatisfactory outcome and sluggish response has risked jeopardising
the safety of prisoners and prison staff. We note that NOMS believes
that these problems will begin to recede, and that the situation
will have stabilised by April 2015, but we found convincing evidence
that more pressurised working conditions for staff are compounding
the staffing problem. Over the medium to long-term it is our view
that turnover is likely to remain at undesirably high levels if
some public sector prisons are operating with insufficient staff
(Paragraph 116)
21. The Ministry remains
optimistic that the benchmarking policy will prove a safe and
effective means of reducing costs, but the current difficulties
in many prisons highlights the hazards of seeking to run an estate
operating at 98% capacity with staffing levels which afford too
little flexibility. We welcome a more robust response to assaults
on staff as a response to incidents of violence, but the real
answer lies in staffing levels and regimes which minimise such
violence. We recommend, especially in the light of the Government's
acceptance that there is now a more challenging mix of prisoners,
that staffing benchmarks should be altered upwards to ensure prisons
are able to have the capacity to return to the levels of operational
performance which prevailed early in this Parliament. In its response
to this report we also request the Ministry of Justice to provide
a full update on progress which has been made in restoring staffing
levels, and to set out what other steps it is taking to address
low staff morale and improve the retention of staff, across the
whole prison estate and in areas of particular shortfalls.
(Paragraph 116)
22. The Ministry's
inability to provide us with fully worked out costings of its
reforms is a recurring issue for us. We request the Ministry to
provide in its response to this Report an analysis of the impact
additional staffing and recruitment costs will have on the Ministry's
ability to meet its spending targets for the 2014-15 financial
year, along with an assessment of whether the additional staff
being recruited will be sufficient also to staff the new prison
places opening in the spring (Paragraph
118)
Governance and accountability
23. Release on Temporary
Licence (ROTL) is an effective tool in supporting rehabilitation
and can lead to better outcomes than releasing prisoners without
preparation from a recent experience of the world outside prison.
We recognise that the Government has to ensure that it is operated
in a way which recognises legitimate safety concerns and can maintain
public trust. While the number of failures are very few, the consequences
can be high-profile and tragic. Nevertheless, if as a result of
the restrictions imposed considerably fewer prisoners receive
ROTL opportunities, the chances of effective resettlement for
them will be reduced, undermining the Government's efforts to
institute a rehabilitation revolution. In addition, if there is
any detrimental impact on Parole Board decisions there would be
further upward pressure on the prison population. We recommend
that the overall impact of these restrictions on the sustainability
and effectiveness of ROTL—which should be based on the presumption
that it will be available unless there are strong public safety
grounds for refusal in a particular case—be reconsidered
as a matter of urgency. (Paragraph 129)
24. Prison governors
in public sector prisons and some private sector prisons are no
longer responsible for the sum total of everything that happens
within their prison walls. As well as effectively becoming contract
managers for provision of services for which they used to be directly
responsible, they are constrained in their operational decisions
when dirigiste decisions are taken from the centre on such matters
as the Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme, the 'lights out'
policy and release on temporary licence. We conclude that relegating
governors to an oversight and partnership management role with
much reduced discretion undermines their control over the performance
and safety of the establishment and their ability to govern their
prisons using their professional judgment, as they are trained
at public expense to do. We recommend that the National Offender
Management Service review the cumulative effect of these changes
on prison governors, and report the matter to our successor Committee.
(Paragraph 137)
25. There is a risk
that the proliferation of partner organisations providing services
to prisons could distract prison management teams from their core
role. This potential effect is all the more important when resources
are such that reduced staffing levels are impinging on the safety
of prisoners and staff for which Governors have ultimate responsibility.
(Paragraph 139)
26. We recommend that NOMS examine the scope
for extending self-catering by prisoners. (Paragraph
143)
27. The main foundation
of a safe prison is dynamic security, established through consistent
personal contact between officers and prisoners, enabling staff
to understand individual prisoners and therefore anticipate risky
situations and prevent violence. Prison officers also have a pivotal
role to play in prisoners' rehabilitation. Their involvement in
sentencing, planning and resettlement, and enabling prisoners
to take responsibility, should be enhanced. It would be counterproductive
to reduce their role to one of basic oversight of safety and security.
We are not convinced that the Ministry has considered sufficiently,
or valued highly enough, the complicated and difficult nature
of work undertaken by frontline prison staff under its benchmarking
programme. (Paragraph 145)
28. It is important
that within new ways of working in prisons there is sufficient
time to allow for productive interaction between staff and prisoners,
which contributes significantly to improving safety and rehabilitative
outcomes in prisons. Prisoners themselves have an important role
to play in creating effective regimes. We recommend that NOMS
encourage the establishment of prison councils and other initiatives
which engage prisoners in meaningful dialogue with prison management
about the impact of prison management and policies, and which
provide a framework of support for prisoners who wish to help
each other. (Paragraph 148)
29. If difficulties
experienced by prisoners are not addressed in a timely and effective
manner this can compound the problem. Given that there are fewer
opportunities for prisoners to raise matters directly with staff,
it is important that the more formal prisoner complaints system
functions effectively. This would be aided by the wider availability
of in-cell technology. (Paragraph 153)
30. The future
role of Independent Monitoring Boards would benefit from further,
more detailed, consideration by our successor Committee. We are
also concerned at the backlog of complaints now faced by the Prisons
and Probation Ombudsman, and the likely impact of the rise in
self-inflicted deaths on his workload. The Ministry must discuss
with him how resources can best be made available to manage this.
We remain of the view that the independence of HM Chief Inspector
of Prisons would be strengthened if he or she reported directly
to Parliament. (Paragraph 162)
Conclusion
31. 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. (Paragraph 170)
32. 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. (Paragraph 171)
33. 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. (Paragraph 172)
34. 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. (Paragraph
173)
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