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'NEW' PRISON PROGRAMME

14/8/2019

Johnson has of course a long history of barefaced lying, falsifying facts, playing fast and loose with evidence, plagiarism. So, it’s no surprise that this week’s announcement by the Ministry of Justice about prison building is rife with all of these. What is new is that Robert Buckland, the new Secretary of State, has put his name to this nonsense, presumably a price he was willing to pay for promotion. He has already failed to live up to the requirements of his office.

Here are some of the many ways in which today’s statement simply does not hold up:

The commitment to 10,000 new places is not new. It is very old. Liz Truss made it in 2016. She said they’d be ready by 2020 – a few months’ time. None have yet been completed.
This 10, 000 is in addition to the 3,360 places in 2 new prisons being built at Wellingborough and Glen Parva. Therefore, what is being promised is 3, 360 more places than previously planned, not 10, 000.
But previously, these were to be modern prisons in replacements for old prisons that would be shut. This is now unclear – some of the 10,000 places will be in old prisons, shut because unsuitable or costly, which will now be reopened. This is important, because Buckland claims that new prisons are better for rehabilitation. But we don’t know what proportion of the extra 10, 000 will be in new prisons, as opposed to old, mothballed jails, now reopened.
No date is being given for the programme’s completion - or even its commencement. 10, 000 places by….2050? Same trick with 20, 0000 more police…no date given. So, meaningless as a commitment.
The costings don’t make sense. Buckland says ‘up to £2.3bn’ for 10 ,000 ‘new’ places. But totally new prisons cost about £100k per place to build. Much less if you are just reopening mothballed prisons. So, £2.3bn is over twice as much as needed. What’s all that money for?
Buckland claims the programme will reduce overcrowding. This is nonsense. Current projections are for the population to rise 3, 000 between 2018 and 2023. At that rate of growth, then if 10, 000 new places take 10 years to build, most of that capacity will be absorbed by growth in numbers, meaning little reduction in overcrowding.
Moreover, Johnson has also said that prisoners convicted of violence and sex offence should in future serve much longer than they do now – a huge increase in average time served. Moreover, Johnson had promised 20, 000 extra police officers. That too means a big increase in numbers sent to prison. So, Johnson is proposing a huge rise in prisoner numbers which is unquantified, but which would totally overwhelm this 10, 000 place programme. So, more overcrowding. Not less.
The strategy requires a long-term increase in operating costs that is completely unquantified. About £200m a year.
Buckland says: “More and better prison places means less re-offending and a lower burden on the taxpayer in the future.” There is no evidence whatsoever for this statement, that I am aware of. I am asking MoJ what evidence they use to support it.
He says: “Ageing prisons are expensive to run and maintain, and are less effective at promoting rehabilitation and ultimately cutting crime.”. There is no evidence that I am aware of for the latter part of that sentence. I have asked MoJ what evidence they use to support it.
The statement ignores the evidence that we do have: that success in reducing reoffending is linked to prisoners feeing safe, and that safety in prisons has been catastrophically undermined by deep cuts in staffing level and prisoner officer pay, made by Buckland’s Tory predecessors. Buckland shows no recognition of this, and no intent to do anything about it.
Finally, Buckland seems to share his master’s taste for cynical jokes. Buckland says: “This prison modernisation will complement our previously announced reforms to probation”. Tory Secretaries of State deeply damaged the probation service by a botched, hasty privatisation that worked so badly it had to be halted, causing enormous waste of public money and human resources. Currently, the Government is struggling to work out how to restore the service to basic functioning, at considerable extra cost. Meantime, inspection reports tell us that the botched privatisation has made rehabilitation of prisoners more difficult. Still, it may be true that the Government is botching both sectors at once and in that sense, the plans are indeed ‘complementary’.

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(Three years later)

13/8/2019

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Never in my life have I so bitterly regretted being right;

https://www.julianlevay.com/articles/ichabod

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I was formerly Finance Director of the Prison Service and then Director of the National Offender Management Service responsible for competition. I also worked in the NHS and an IT company. I later worked for two outsourcing companies.

Now retired, I write about criminal justice policy (or the lack of it), cultivate our allotment and make glass.

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'NEW' PRISON PROGRAMME

(Three years later)

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Criminal justice
EU referendum
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