Prison Service in crisis
01 May 2003
By July 2003, with the prison population rising to over 74,000, there appeared to be a general recognition amongst criminal justice professionals and prison reform campaigners that the prison service was sliding into crisis. The prison population was increasing by an average 15 prisoners a week, and even on its own terms the prison service is struggling to cope. The UK has the highest imprisonment rate in the European Union at 139 per 100,000. Internal Home Office security reports, produced weekly by the prison service security group, show up to six serious security alerts each week, with more than 1,200 security incidents over a snapshot 14 days inside the 135 prisons of the England and Wales prison estate. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, warned that overcrowding means that the prison service is heading for "crunch point."
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, speaking in the House of Lords on 16 June, warned that David Blunkett's Criminal Justice Bill will, if implemented, drive up prison numbers still further. The Prison Reform Trust warned that the bill would bring an extra 14,000 inmates into the prison system over the next decade. The increasing toll of inmate deaths indicated moreover that the crisis caused by overcrowding was manifested not only in terms of the Home Office's main concern - prison security, but in serious risk to the physical and mental wellbeing of prisoners.
In the first week of June alone there were seven deaths within the prison estate - at HMPs Blakenhurst, Styal, Wealstun, Leyhill, and Sudbury. At HMP Blakenhurst, four prisoners have committed suicide and at least two others made serious suicide attempts in the 3 months up to 10 June 2003. The Howard League for Penal Reform has called for an independent inquiry into HMP Styal, where five inmates have committed suicide in the past 10 months. Styal takes recently convicted and remand prisoners and has a fast population turnover with little opportunity for prisoners to form friendships. By all accounts it has an entrenched drugs and bullying culture.
Among the failures in care highlighted in relation to Styal campaigners have sought to highlight the death of Sarah Campbell on January 18 2003. After her first night at the prison, Sarah asked to see a prison officer. When an officer arrived an hour later, she had already taken an overdose of anti-depressants. Sarah Campbell had been identified as a suicide risk but had either managed to obtain over 100 anti-depressants upon arrival at Styal or been able to smuggle them in undetected. Deborah Coles, co-director of INQUEST, noted:
With Sarah Campbell there is already a question about why she was sent to prison in the first place when she had a recognised mental health history. Women in prison are an invisible issue. Many suffer terribly; the regimes are more restrictive than in mens' prisons and staff are not being trained to cope with such damaged people. Yet more and more women are being sent to prison when clearly they should be being treated for mental illness.
Research conducted by the Prison Reform Trust suggests that tougher sentencing by judges, rather than a rise in crime has led to the record increase in the prison population (up 71% since 1991.) The report notes that the rise in prison population was due to a "misplaced emphasis on toughness rather than effectiveness", with courts sentencing more to prison, and for longer terms. High sentencing rates were influenced by the "increasingly punitive climate of political and media debate about crime and punishment." As the report indicates - the welfare of a substantial number of poor, damaged vulnerable men, women and children has been put at risk by a determination by the government to be seen as "tough on crime". Thus, the most disadvantaged are thrown to the wolves, even as crime rates fall. The Prison Reform Trust said:
The courts will continue to make everincreasing use of prison unless this clima