UK prisons condemned
01 March 1992
Three major British prisons were condemned by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, set up under the auspices of the Council of Europe. The Committee, which visited Wandsworth, Brixton and Armley prisons in August 1990, found that "the pernicious combination of overcrowding, inadequate regime activities, the lack of integral sanitation and poor hygiene... amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment." It also condemned the use of body belts in the restraint of prisoners.
The Committee's report was not published by the Government until December 1991, when the Home Office published its reply to the condemnation. By then, it had announced its intention to close Brixton's "F" wing, the psychiatric wing which had produced 14 suicides since 1989. It had also moved teenagers out of Armley prison in Leeds following a number of teenage suicides there. But its protest that conditions had got better since the visit was undermined by the annual report of the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Judge Tumin, which came out at the same time. Tumin complained that nothing had been heard of promised reforms, and that "expectations in the prison service are too low". He said remand prisons were "cramped and claustrophobic", with "filthy medical facilities" in the reception area, that workshops were still largely unused and training and education undervalued, while treatment for mentally ill prisoners remained far worse than in the old hospitals many had been discharged from.
Too many charges
The conditions in many of Britain's prisons have also resulted in the highest ever rate of prisoners being charged with offences against prison discipline. The latest Home Office report,
published in October, shows that in 1990, 81,790 offences were punished, equivalent to 1.8 charges per head of the prison population. The figures suggest that people who complain are charged with offences against good order and discipline: over half the charges related to disobedience or disrespect to prison officers, or "idleness". Only 5% were heard before a Board of Visitors; the rest were heard by the prison governor.
Over- representation
Another report, commissioned by the Home Office, and published in December by the Prison Reform Trust, showed that black people, unemployed, homeless, uneducated and mentally ill people were vastly over-represented in prison. Sixteen percent of prisoners were black, compared with 5% in the general population, and their sentences were on average almost twice as long as those of white prisoners. In addition, 31% of convicted prisoners, and 44% of remand prisoners, were unemployed. Homeless people accounted for 12% of the convicted population and 17% of the remand population, confirming suspicions that magistrates were more likely to remand homeless and jobless people to prison rather than allow them bail. No educational qualifications were held by 43% of the inmates, and about a third suffered from some form of mental illness.
Report to the United Kingdom government on the visit to the United Kingdom carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) Council of Europe 26.11.91; Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Prisons December 1991; Statistics of offences against prison discipline and punishments: England and Wales 1990 (Cm 1651) October 1991; Independent 16.12.91.