For years the two main political parties have competed on how many new prisons they promised to build in the vain hope that this would solve the overcrowding crisis. They claim that the lovely shiny new prisons will provide work and education and turn lives round. How wrong they are. You cannot build your way out of a prison over-use crisis.
Only a few weeks ago yet another dire inspection report on a brand-new prison was published. Five Wells prison was built on the site of another failing prison, Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, and was opened only two years ago. It is a huge jail, holding 1,650 men, ostensibly as a resettlement establishment. It is due to take even more men later this year, raising its capacity to 1,715.
The G4S-run prison has had four directors and it is reported that 500 staff have left. The inspection says that rates of prisoner self-injury and rates of positive drug tests are high. It is meant to be a resettlement prison which means it is meant to be getting men ready for release, yet there was no support to develop skills for jobs on release.
Endemic problems identified even in new prisons
Buckley Hall prison near Rochdale, another ostensible resettlement prison, is just 30 years old yet has endemic problems. A quarter of inmates are active drug takers, and violence and self-harm is rising. Despite being relatively new, the buildings are shabby and grubby.
Parc prison near Bridgend, run by G4S, has seen ten men die inside the prison in recent months apparently linked to drugs. This too is a relatively new jail, opening in 1997.
If anyone lives under the delusion that new prisons are any better than old prisons and are any solution to the prison crisis, just read the Five Wells inspection, or indeed any inspection of a new prison over the past few decades. Five Wells illustrates the truism that you cannot build your way out of a prison crisis. Increasing capacity simply increases the problems, costs more and creates more crime. The only way to deal with the crisis is to reduce capacity and reduce the use of prisons.
Criminal justice and the political race to the bottom
It is very disappointing that the Labour Party has announced that it will build 20,000 additional prison cells, and it appears that the two main political parties are in a puerile battle to see how they can build more prisons than the other. Prison sentences in the UK have got longer and longer, yet there is no evidence that doubling a prison sentence reduces recidivism or deters others from committing crimes.
The crisis across the whole criminal justice system has meant that people wait months in custody on remand, some for more than six months, often experiencing the worst prison conditions. Some 10% are found not guilty and 20% are given a non-custodial sentence if they are convicted. There is no compensation for being held in prison for months if you are found to be innocent.
Prison is a poor investment
Five Wells prison cost around £253mn to build and it will cost some £20mn a year to run. Once prisons are open they tend to be with us for decades and sometimes even centuries.
Imagine if the government, instead of building a new prison, said to the local community that it could have a one-off capital spend of a quarter of a billion and a further £20mn a year for the next century to do with whatever they democratically decide, they would not choose a prison. Pretty much anything they did choose would help to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour, whether it was a sports centre, investment in special educational provision for children and young people, a nursery, better street lighting and crime reduction measures.
In the United States a programme to invest in local communities instead of building more prisons has been doing exactly this. Known as ‘justice reinvestment’ it shows how money locked into the bricks of a prison can be diverted into community programmes that enhance cohesion and crime reduction. States as diverse at Arkansas and New Hampshire are working to reduce the unnecessary use of prison.
Time to invest in a real alternative
It is morally and socially wrong to keep building more and more prisons. This money could be invested in local communities that are suffering years of cuts to services. Let’s invest in schools, hospitals, mental health and drug rehab, and policies that reduce crime and disaffection. This is a prison reduction programme, not a radical prison abolition vision. It is realistic for politicians to take this on board and present it to the public.
If Labour thinks that taking power away from local communities to force them to have a prison will be popular, they have another think coming. If the party really thinks this will be popular, give local people a say, let them decide if they want a prison or for the £250mn to be spent on local assets instead.
It is naïve, even duplicitous and mendacious, to tell people that building more prisons will solve the overcrowding problem. It never has and it never will. It will create more stinking drug-ridden jails that spit people back out into the community more angry, bitter, violent and unemployable than before. Prison building is a policy that is guaranteed to fail and it is reprehensible that politicians who do know better tell such lies to their voters.
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