UK: No resignations over record number of prison deaths
01 August 2004
Fourteen prisoners took their own lives in August 2004, the highest number of deaths in prison for a single month since records began 20 years ago. Among those who took their own lives were Adam Rickwood, at 14 the youngest fatality ever in a prison in the UK, who died in the secure training centre in Durham. Jason Lee Alldiss was found dead in his cell at HMP Elmsley on 8 August, while serving a two year sentence for aggravated bodily harm. Richard Balmer, who escaped from HMP Castle Huntley, Dundee, was recaptured and sent to HMP Perth. He was found dead in his cell on 14 August. The Scottish Prison Service declined to comment on how Robert died, but launched a fatal accident inquiry. Robert Finch, remanded to HMP Exeter for killing his wife, took his own life on 15 August, the second suicide at Exeter this year. There were two deaths in August at HMP Armley, Leeds - Michael Briggs, on remand for murder, on 12 August, and Richard Carter, serving four years for armed robbery, on 26 August. There were two suicides at HMP Shrewsbury, Mark Keeling, a remand prisoner, and Lee Nottingham, serving a three month sentence for theft.
On 4 September Shaun Hazelhurst and Patrick Kilty, both serving sentences for robbery, were found dead in their cell, at HMP Manchester, with suspicion of a possible suicide pact.
Six of those who took their own lives in August were remand prisoners. The majority were held in local jails - with a high turnover and high levels of overcrowding. To date no prison official has resigned over the record number of deaths in custody this year.
A recent Prison Reform Trust report A Measure of Success records the extent to which jails in England and Wales meet their Key Performance Indicator (KPI) targets. It notes as follows:
- The Prison Service is failing to meet its KPI on overcrowding. The average rate of doubling up in single cells is 21.7%, rising to 75% in some jails.
- The recorded rate of drug use in prison has risen to 12.3%
- The Prison Service has failed to meet its target of providing an average of 24 hours a week purposeful activity, and has only met its purposeful activity KPI once in 9 years.
- Total rate of serious assaults is 1.54% against a target of 1.2%. This is the seventh consecutive year the KPI on assaults has not been met.
- For the sixth year running, the KPI on working with sex offenders has not been met.
KPIs have not been established for time out of cell, distance from home and sentence planning. For the Prison Reform Trust (PRT), Enver Solomon commented: "This report demonstrates that overcrowded jails don't work. They are unsafe, inhumane and ineffective."
A further PRT report on Young Offender Institutes concluded that levels of drug abuse, bullying and violent assaults in YOIs are worse than in adult jails. In some YOIs one in ten inmates test positive for drugs and one in 12 is involved in a serious assault. One of the Prison Service's central targets states that jails and YOIs should keep serious prisoner-on-prisoner assaults to a maximum of 1.2%. In Onley YOI the rate was 8.79%. Last year a Prisons Inspector visiting Onley found young inmates shivering in sub zero temperatures in cells deemed unfit for human habitation. Brookhill and Feltham YOIs also had rates of serious assault five times higher than the target. Thirteen of the 16 YOIs analysed had assault rates above the target.
Government figures for 2003-4 show that 3,337 teenagers sent to custody were deemed at risk of self-harm or had been bullied or abused. There have been 11 self-inflicted deaths at YOIs in the last 5 years. Richard Garside, director of the Crime and Security Foundation, has said that children were the collateral damage of a government policy bent on fast tracking young offenders through courts into prison. He said: "It takes a warped vision of justice to make the speed and efficiency with which disturbed and vulnerable children are prosecuted a meas