Julian Le Vay: Thoughts on Government
  • Articles
  • About
  • Contact
  • Books
    • Competition for Prisons
  • Articles
  • About
  • Contact
  • Books
    • Competition for Prisons

Buckland's folly, your grandkids' debt

7/7/2020

5 Comments

 
Robert Buckland is going to build another 4 prisons. Unfortunately, he has forgotten quite why.

A degree of amnesia is perhaps understandable. A succession of Tory Ministers has been announcing plans to build 10, 000 new prison places for such a long time, it’s almost become a ritual divorced from reality, like Harvest Supper.

Let’s help restore that memory!

Nearly 5 years ago, Michael Gove announced plans to build 10, 000 new places in 9 new prisons. That would have allowed old prisons with poor conditions and facilities, and high running costs, to be closed, demolished and those sites used to build 3, 000 new homes, the sale receipts partly paying for the prisons. In the process, the estate would be configured to better match demand and supply. New gizmos would make new prisons whizzier. It really was a most cunning plan.  A few months later, his successor, Liz Truss, confirmed the plans, promising 5 new prisons would be open by 2020. That is to say, today.  The number actually open today is…none. Just two are being built. They will open in 2021.

Why did the plan fail so spectacularly? After all, in my day we built and opened new prisons within 40 months of going to tender. Though we were never quite so stupid as to plan to open 5 prisons in one year, knowing how difficult it is to open a new prison (none more so than the last publicly built and run prison, Berwyn, which remained troubled and half empty for years after opening). But back then, HMPS was headed by people who knew all about prisons, as opposed Jo Farrar, who knows all about  running Bath Council, and prison building was handled by HMPS itself, not the incompetents who inhabit the centre of MoJ nowadays.

The reason for the failure was MoJ’s almost unbelievable incompetence. As the NAO helpfully documents (they’ll have to go, won’t they, Dominic?), two full years was spent shuffling paper back and forth between MoJ and Treasury. MoJ’s disastrous loss of financial control (see here) meant that capital had to be switched into current to plug the £1bn deficit in the budget. MoJ therefore had to look to private finance, not because it was better value, but because the cost could be spread over 25 years (prisons on the never-never). But (as I explained in my book!) PFI was never going to look as good as it had in the ‘90s, now that the public sector had got much improved its ability to build faster and cheaper, while the cost of public borrowing had plummeted. So HMT rejected their proposal. And then pulled the rug out from under MoJ by abolishing private finance altogether. So, back to the drawing board….

Last August, Buckland,  Truss’s successor but two (do keep up!) announced (again) a programme to build 10,000 new prison places. No, not those 10,000. Another quite new 10,000. No dates promised this time – someone had learnt a lesson, indeed they only have one site as yet. And the reason for building them had changed. Not to close intolerably inefficient and unsuitable old prisons – what an idea! But to accommodate Johnson’s plan to lock prisoners up for longer. Although no estimate of how many places would be needed has ever been produced.

The latest announcement is still with the 10,000 figure: but the rationale has largely disappeared. It’s not to relieve overcrowding (surely no-one would build prisons just for that remnant of liberal hand-wringing! Overcrowding is nothing to worry about, bar the occasional lethal pandemic, of course), not to close old prisons, not to accommodate Johnson’s extravaganza – which is no longer so much as mentioned. (Why not, I wonder? Cummings was so proud of it only last year. Caution stirring in HMT at last?)

The ‘reasons’ now advanced are…well, absurd.

First, to reduce reconvictions. The idea is that shiny new prisons with shiny new gizmos in them (politicians, like children, are irresistibly attracted to shiny new gizmos that whirr and buzz) will be ever so much better at preventing reoffending. (Not, however, so much better than we can ever stop building new prisons – oh, dear no). The evidence for this is, well, nil.

In fact, we know perfectly well that this rationale is nonsense:
  1. We know – bugger it, this is MoJ’s own research! – that for offenders who are suitable for either prison or community punishment, the latter do better at reducing reoffending. So we know that the money would be better spent boosting community punishments, and preparation for release amongst shorter term prisoners. And shifting offenders from short prison sentence to community disposal. Thus creating space within the existing prison system. As Buckland staunchly believed when Gauke proposed this, but was happy to instantly unbelieve, as the price of getting Gauke’s job.  Now, you will recall MoJ promised the privatisation of probation would focus on preparing shorter term prisoners for release. As we know, MoJ screwed all that up so completely the contracts had to be cancelled and the probation service reorganised yet another time. Meanwhile Inspection report after report documented the catastrophic degradation of the quality of probation work across the country. If MoJ wants to burn money, that then is where to spend it.
  2. We know – not MoJ’s research, as they’ve never othered to inquire (why evaluate what you’ve already done, when you might not like the results? Better to drone on about the bright new future), but my own calculations, that the biggest, most sustained, most costly attempt ever to reduce reoffending through prisons ‘saved’ maybe 80 ,000  recorded crimes a year – out of 5, 000, 000.  That was for the entire population, 70, 000 odd. So, building new prisons for 4,000 prisoners might, if they were very much better at rehabilitation, save at best 3,000 crimes a year. At fantastic cost.
  3. We know – through Katherine Auty and Alison Liebling’s ground breaking research - that what distinguishes those prisons with lower reconviction rates is NOT shiny new buzzy gizmos, rather that prisons are safe and felt to be so by prisoners. And what MoJ has done this past 10 years is, of course, precisely the opposite: MoJ has made prisons much more unsafe and prisoners much more fearful, by irresponsibly cutting staff numbers and pay.
  4. And let us avert our eyes from the last publicly built and run prison, Berywn, boosted in almost exactly the same terms before it was built, and a disaster ever since it opened – especially in the area of activity for prisoners and preparation for release (1).
The second reason advanced by Buckland and the wretched crew at MoJ, is so ludicrous as to be frankly embarrassing. It is to boost the local economy by creating jobs. This is obscene. If we want to justify  loading more debt onto your grandchildren to boost the economy now, let’s build something that enhances life and produces more wealth, or saves the environment – green energy, railways, schools, or what about the 500,000 homes needed in this country, anything but prisons, which will do no good at all to anyone. What community anywhere wants a prison built, if it could have something more positive and less threatening? Certainly not the people of Full Sutton, who fought the new prison there tooth and nail.

And it can’t boost local economies  quite so much as they boast. Because as Treasury claim, a tad unfortunately, in the same press release, the prisons will in fact be prefabricated and transported to the site to be assembled (“Components, such as concrete walls, and pipework for water and electricity are built by companies around the country using modern, standardised processes and assembled on site.”). So, not locally. (Treasury, in that blissful state of near total ignorance of what Government’ have done previously which characterises Government today, clearly do not know that the first PFI prisons did that a quarter of a century ago. Prefabrication off-site is as exciting an innovation as cardboard.)

The wilful ignorance, serial incompetence and cynicism of the MoJ is unforgivable. Particularly since this programme, like everything else done by Government nowadays, will be paid for by forced borrowing from future generations. Johnson plans to lock up more of the younger generation and for longer, then force them and their children to pay for it. Government Debt, which the Tories made such a fuss about when it was only  80% of GDP, and used to justify destructive cuts in prisons, the police, legal aid, has in recent months reached 100%, a level last seen in the early ‘60s when we were still paying off war debt. And as Johnson builds, and the economy slumps, and millions are unemployed the debt will rise much higher. War debt was finally extinguished only by the rapidly rising growth rates of the late 50s and 60s. Does anyone seriously expect to see such growth again – post COVID, post Brexit, post global warming? This debt may even outlast the prisons we are now building.

This plan disgraces everyone involved.

Note

From latest Inspection report on Berwyn, HMPS' flagship  brand new state of the art rehabilitative prison, opened just 3 years ago

"One of the greatest challenges...was the lack of activity places. It is difficult to understand why and how the procurement of work and training places for a new prison could be so delayed...some [places] were of inadequate quality...Even those that were available were not fully used. Many prisoners were unemployed...staff did too little to support a sound work ethic. The prison was struggling to develop its approach to offender management and resettlement.....There had been no assessment of current need.....Too few offending behaviour programmes to meet need." Etc.,  etc.

5 Comments
Eric Fairbairn
8/7/2020 09:15:20 pm

Why don't people listen to people who know what they are talking about? Why are politicians not held to account? Why are people not being informed about such scandalous waste?

Reply
Julian
8/7/2020 10:37:41 pm

Eirc, you ask the questions that perplexed me all my professional life.

Reply
john simpson
13/7/2020 11:41:42 am

I am now becoming my father and shout at politicians on the TV who are clearly telling lies. I will never now if my father had insight into what they were being untruthful about back then, but what I do know is about prisons. I have heard the last four or is it five, there have been that many Justice Ministers sit in front of Justice Committees clearly telling them what they want to hear and not what is actually happening. As a business Prisons are failing, yes you get the odd sprout of hope when a prison introduces an initiative and one prisoner gets a job and lets hope he doesn't come back. They have even now commissioned the services of ex offenders to tell them what is best for the Prison Service. I'm sorry, but guess what there is some alternative voices out there who also may have an opinion about what is going wrong, because lets be clear, some of the leaders in the Service now will not raise their head in case it damages their career path. Sad but true I have worked with enough of them. Be radical MOJ, be truthful and have the integrity to say this isn't working what else can we do, and making more capacity available is only admitting defeat and showing the lack of innovation and thinking about what works. I struggled to understand this strategy of teh new prisons initially, I thought it was to replace the pathetic accommodation that people are housed in within some establishments, but no, its because we know this is not working so build more spaces, that will fix it. Come a new Government, build new prisons we need to ensure we keep these people locked up. There will be no end to this roundabout until someone stops it and looks a the bigger picture. Next we will hear about Prison Reform....... hold on have we already had that as well?

Reply
Julian
13/7/2020 12:37:50 pm

I've been shouting at the TV most of my life John. It doesn't listen! I used to think prison building wd stop when we ran out of money. We have run out of money.! But we are just runing up t=debt instead. It's pretty sickening.

Reply
Barry Snelgrove
14/7/2020 09:17:06 am

I spent 39 years working in Probation and what became HMPPS working for every Secretary of State from the Home Office days 1980 onwards through to Gauke when I retired last year. I totally identify with the frustration expressed by Julian who knows his stuff! What has always worried me is our total inability to learn from and ensure we are informed by history and what actually works. As a student I learned about the Barlinnie Unit in Scotland that reformed Jimmy Boyle. His book is still relevant today if you want to understand the vital ingredients of changing people...safety and respect. To reform one of the most violent notorious criminals in Scottish history you would expect more Barlinnies would have been created but no it was closed.On a different subject also dear to my heart electronic tagging, when Mr Grayling supported by his cronies introduced a new strategy , those of us who had been working in the area for 10 years were sidelined and considered dinosaurs when we criticised the idea of breaking up the contracts into 4 parts expecting rival contractors to share IP and work together. Disaster! The wasted costs of trying to do the impossible could have been better spent on solving the problems we knew about. But politicians want silver bullets and are prepared to try and catch them in the teeth! Prison build for the sake of looking modern and use of expensive suppliers is wasted money. We know from research that investment in Probation and community resources designed to humanely address issues faced by offenders is more likely to impact on reducing crime. Politicians just fear they will look soft rather than choosing to point at evidence of what works best and is cheaper! Building homes is by far the better way to stimulate the economy and improve everybody’s lives .

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    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.

    Archives

    July 2024
    June 2024
    April 2024
    November 2023
    October 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016

    Categories

    Criminal justice
    EU referendum
    Politics

    All
    EU
    Justin Russell
    Outsourcing
    Privatisation
    Probation

    Click below to receive regular updates

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly