Fellow Romans

The speech Starmer won't give.

The first duty of any government is the safety of its citizens. That requires an efficient, moral and reliable criminal justice system.

I stand here today because our criminal justice system is not achieving these aims. I have to explain to you what this difficult situation is, how we arrived at this point, and what we are compelled to do to address this situation.

The criminal justice system is in crisis. We have all seen the stories around prisons. But criminal justice is far more, it is an interlocked system encompassing the police, probation, courts and prisons. They rely on each other, and a weak point in that chain can damage the whole system.

The police have all but abandoned dealing with crimes they feel are less important. But a person breaking into your home and taking your goods IS important. You rightly expect this to be dealt with quickly and efficiently. The police are failing in their core duties of detecting and solving crime.

The courts service is straining at the limits of its capacity. Court buildings are crumbing. We have insufficient numbers of Judges, and lawyers are overburdened to a shocking degree. Waiting times for trials can now stretch into years.

The probation service has been fragmented, overburdened by bureaucracy, and is short of staff. We rely on the work of the probation service to monitor those offenders in the community, and they are unable to fulfil this to the extent we would desire.

And then prisons, the centrepiece of our criminal justice system. Our prisons are full. They do not rehabilitate offenders well. There is also a shortage of staff to do this difficult job of trying to work with people who obviously don't want to be there.

We have entered government to find all these problems coming to a head, and unlike the Conservatives, we WILL address the problems, we MUST address the problems. It is fundamental to good government and a stable society that people have a criminal justice system that detects crime, catches criminals, and gets them before the courts for due punishment, with space in prisons to take them.

We currently don't have such a system. We have inherited a shockingly underfunded and neglected criminal justice system.

This brings us to the immediate crisis - there is no more room in prisons. The Tory government KNEW from their own statistics that this was going to occur, and they decided to avoid addressing what is now a crisis. They ignored the problem and handed it to us. Well, WE are competent and confident enough to address what the Tories created then ran away from.

We are bitterly disappointed that the party of law and order has reduced criminal justice to disorder and lawlessness. People now have little faith in the system to keep them safe. This is fully a result of Conservative neglect. They chose not to deal with the prison population. They produced a plan to build new prisons, then failed to implement it. And in winning your votes, it is now left to us to pick up the pieces.

These are the difficult decisions, decisions no government should be put in the position of having to make. We are going to have to continue the Tory plans to release more prisoners early, and delay sending some people to prison from court.

I can understand how this will be shocking. People sentenced to prison should go to prison, and those in prison should serve their sentences. That we cannot now guarantee to do that shows the deplorable state of the system the Tories have left us all.

We will make every effort to ensure that the prisoners we release will be low risk. These will NOT be violent or sexual offenders. We are determined to use the space we have in prison to protect you as best we can.

The prisoners we release will be low risk, non violent criminals. Nevertheless, there is a chance that something will go wrong, that one of them will cause significant harm. We will use every lever in our power to prevent this. But we must also face this sad reality.

This decision will be condemned by some. And these are not decisions we would ever make in any other circumstances. We can only apologise that we are in this position and stress that it is not one we created. This mess was a Tory creation, but now our problem as a society to deal with.

This scandalous situation highlights many problems. But it also provides opportunities. We could just keep building ever more prisons, with each cell costing tens of thousands to build, and each prisoner in them costs 40 thousand pounds a year. And what do we get for this huge investment of your taxes? A shocking rate of reoffending.

We don't believe that this is good enough. You deserve better outcomes for your money. We need to reduce crime effectively. And prison isn't delivering what we need.

We are going to use this Tory created crisis to examine every part of our criminal justice system. Every nook and cranny. And we are determined to make it better. And I dont mean merely making the current system more efficient. The present system fails to cut crime. We must look at every avenue, every idea, every nation, to discover ways where we CAN cut crime, not merely recycle criminals endlessly through prisons.

This period of crisis is the best time to have a national conversation on crime and punishment.

I need your help to do this. I need your support and your patience while we carefully examine all the options. No government has had the courage to do this in decades. Now we have been led into crisis by the last government, it is time to face hard realities and search for affective solutions.

Crime is a blight on society. It causes huge harm to those effected. Let us use this moment to determine the future of an effective criminal justice system.

Thank you.

Penal Reform and Unintended Consequences

Part One

There are many types of prison reform. Some efforts result from a political spasm in the face of tabloid populism. Some flows from great strategic changes following a crisis. On rare occasions, changes flow from an understanding that prison is a rather rubbish way of dealing with any problem.

And even the briefest glance at penal history reveals that all criminal justice reforms contain within them a ticking time-bomb – the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Short, Sharp Shock
The early, heady days of Thatcherism were a truly different place in many ways. One echo of our times, though, was the presence of a media created and driven moral panic. In the early 1980’s, amidst inner city riots, the popular panic was a fear of “feral youth”. Merely stepping out of your front door was bound to end with a mugging. Most likely by a Black teenager. Or so the tabloids were having it.

And Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw made the most basic of errors – he took the bait and began making justice policy as a response to media driven panics. He can’t be overly chastised for this, it is the usual pattern of Ministers with crime and justice.

The combined result of popular panic and an Old Duffer was the gloriously PR friendly “Short, Sharp Shock”. The old Borstal system was abandoned wholesale and replaced with Detention Centres. The aim seemed to be to treat criminally inclined kids with physical harshness. Education and training were replaced with gym circuits.
The end result of this policy spasm was a little empire that quickly sank into a quagmire of deliberate brutality.  It transformed indolent burglars into extremely fit young men with a grudge. And crime did not fall.

Drug Testing
On the face of it, prisoners should not be enjoying illegal drugs. I’m hard pressed to play the oppressed prisoner in the face of that simple statement. And yet...

Outsiders often fail to appreciate that each prison comprises a society, a warped microcosm of life on the Street. And drug use is a feature that permeates the walls, as drug users move in and out of the criminal justice system. For the majority of my captivity the drug culture centred on cannabis. Contrary to revisionist myth, the cannabis culture was a broadly accepted one in most prisons, with staff ignoring its consumption to varying degrees. A stoned prisoner is a happy prisoner – and a happy prisoner is one who isn’t going to present problems. A fairly benign equilibrium was in effect.

Michael Howard peered down from his office into this situation, and choked on his cuppa. Prisoners will not take illegal drugs! The policy was uttered, a big fat Manual printed, and a whole infrastructure of Drug Testing Suites, dedicated testing staff, legal procedures, laboratories... It was a bandwagon many in the Prison Service leapt upon. A quick tinkering of the Prison Act and Mandatory Drug Testing was born in the mid 1990’s.

Prisoners soon discovered the crux of the problem. Cannabis – its THC component -remains in the body to be detectable via urine testing for up to 30 days. The chances of actually continuing to use cannabis and not get caught was slim. This could have led to some interesting manouevres were it not for developments in the wider society – heroin. For many years heroin was viewed as a “dirty” drug, and its users viewed similarly. While not being unknown in prison, heroin was far from common on the landings.

As drug testing collided with the cannabis culture inside prisons, outside prisons there had been growing a larger number of heroin users. Heroin was becoming more socially acceptable (in some circles!). And these addicts were entering prisons in ever increasing numbers. Along with their cravings, they brought with them the solution to the “detectable for 30 days” problem.

Heroin can be expelled from the body in 2 days. The chances of taking heroin and remaining undetected by drug testing was a seemingly attractive one. As time has passed, the availability of cannabis has collapsed, as prisoners shifted towards heroin (and of late, New Psychoactive Drugs). The number of new addicts created is not known; nobody cares, no one asked. The crimes they went on to feed their addiction, countless.

A vastly under-appreciated consequence of this War on Drugs was a tightening of general perimeter security and, more significantly, a huge transformation in the circumstances in which prisoners received visitors and struggled to keep their relationships alive. Prior to this wave of new security measures, domestic visits often took place in reasonable conditions (considering...). Staff were not intrusive and various intimate activities were ignored and policed by prisoners (“not in front of the kids!”).

The drug war destroyed these conditions. Staff became massively intrusive, CCTV in visits became ubiquitous and it was a rare visits session where staff failed to see something suspicious and pile mob handed upon a family. Physical contact is massively restricted. The result has been that as the prison population nearly doubled, the number of domestic visits has almost halved. Needless to say, family support is one of the major factors in reducing reoffending.

For nearly 20 years the drug testing policy has actively fostered a drug culture dominated by heroin. Savagely addictive and morally corrosive, tens of thousands of new muggers and burglars have fell into its grip. And then re-entered society to add to the 10 Billion pounds a year bill and immeasurable human misery that follows reoffending.

This miserable failure of a policy continues.


Part 2 – IPP, Education and Offending Behaviour Courses

Ken Faces the Lions

It's not often that I await the moment when one of our leaders takes to a podium to begin waffling, but the speech by Ken Clarke at the Tory conference has been eagerly awaited.

It is not uncommon that a speech at that venue has had direct and harsh effects on the prison landings. Few political speeches have such a powerful and immediate impact. Michael Howard's "prison works" speech heralded the introduction of a daily regime and restrictions which we still endure. Leon Brittain had a similar effect in the very early 1980's. And so what the Home Secretary - now Minister of Justice - has to say is deadly important to us.

This is not a natural home for Ken Clarke, with many of his audience tuning out from any speech that fails to include the words "capital punishment" or "the birch". And our Justice Secretary is a more thoughtful man than Howard, or at least less tempted by cheap populism.

That said, his speech was littered with the word "tough". Thankfully, it wasn't welded to any particular policy or practice and so our daily lives should remain unscathed. Perhaps he took refuge in that mantra, used it as a shield of sophistry to lull the audience into a state of Tory hypnosis...lest they noticed the absence of any real Hush Puppy being placed on our throats.

The central point of Ken Clarke's speech was actually a relaunch of an idea propagated by Ann Widdecombe under John Major (sorry for the image that may provoke...) - the Prisoners' Pay Act. This is law, but has never been activated, laying in the overstuffed draw that contains innumerable policy wishes.

The idea is frighteningly simple and - largely - uncontentious. Prisoners should work a full 40 hour working week, in activities which are productive and which develop our skills and training. For this effort, we would be paid the National Minimum Wage and so pay taxes and National Insurance. It has always been intended that a large chunk of this wage would be removed and handed to victims. It is with some regret and cynicism, then, that I have to declare that this idea is a dead duck. Allow me explain.

The present working regime currently provides work for maybe a third of the prison population, say 30,000 people, for a maximum of eight hours a day - in theory. Only a small minority of these workers are actually engaged in genuine, productive work, that is have some good or service to present at the end of the working week. Most are in Education or ancillary services - cleaners, kitchen, stores, orderlies, and so on. And of those actually producing some tangible product, most will be creating goods for the prisons internal market - furniture, clothing, plastics, etc which have always been the staple of prison industries.

In order to bring to life the policy announced by Ken Clarke, it would require the whole daily regime of each prison to re-jigged around providing an 8 hour working day. Very few prisons are able to do this, largely because the staff working hours and shift patterns do not bend in that direction. And the Prison Officers' Association is unlikely to ever allow it to be so changed. One tiny illustration of the regime barrier to a full working day is the fact that staff lock us up for an hour and a half every lunchtime, in some prisons its two hours - for staff to have their lunch. Any other jobs in life that offer a lunch break of that length?

Assuming the Prison Officers Association can be dragged into the 21st century and a daily regime created that has space for a real working day, there is the matter of infrastructure. Prisons are not all the same. There are local prisons, high security prisons, training prisons, open prisons...and the physical structures in each differs. In local prisons, city centre edifices, where can the land be found to build the workshops to hold up to a thousand men? And who is to pay for these structures, which would need to be built in every one of the 130 odd prisons? This is a huge investment at a time when there is the least amount of cash available.

Assuming we can crack the staff problem and the physical investment problem, we hit the largest difficulty. Most prisoners are not put to work because the work just isn't available, not as a policy decision. And where is this work to be conjured from, when it has been impossible to find for the last fifty years?

Already, the press are complaining that giving prisoners genuine work would deprive the law-abiding of those jobs - as if we would ever be given the work anyone else would do!

Employers would have to be found which would be content to invest in establishing a workshop, possibly in the face of that prison having a highly transient population. Training and skills would be a side issue, over-ridden by some managerial target to get us out of our cells and into work, no matter what. Even so, assuming we could crack the staff problem, the physical infrastructure problem, and the work supply problem...

We then enter the murky world of law, morality and politics. Legally, prison work is forced labour. Slavery. Many companies wouldn't want their image tarnished by that association, even though the European Convention or Human Rights ("the prisoner's friend"!) gives a dispensation from the ban on slavery in respect of prisoners!

This issue is complicated by the fact that thousands of prisoners, such as myself, are no longer held in prison for punishment - we are past our tariff. What is the legal and moral position of forcing us to work on penalty of harsh punishments for refusing?

Again, assuming we can resolve that issue, along with the others, there is the matter of the 'victims tax' on our wages. This has always caused me difficulty. The criminal justice system is impersonal, our offences are against the Crown, not the individual victim. This is why victims are not represented in court.

The judge in any case can order that we pay compensation to our victim, along with any other punishment. In my case, they did not do so. Victims can also sue us in the civil courts for damages, and receive money from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

Why should a politician usurp these judicial functions and try to fine me thirty years down the line? And where is this money to go? The suggestion is, to 'victims groups'. Does this mean the groups who campaign for the likes of me to serve literally life, or be executed, or live a terrible daily existence? I hope you can appreciate my objection to being forced to fund a campaign to kill me??

The final hurdle that this whole policy has to overcome is a social one. Assuming all goes perfectly and hordes of newly skilled prisoners hit the streets. Will employers queue up to take us on, or shun us in perpetuity? And if the expectations of prisoners is raised, to be shattered on release...guess what the re-offending rate may be?

That most prisoners don't work is a situation that has existed since time immemorial, and it is not a situation that any are happy with. Changing the estate into a hive of industry, though, has proved impossible in the past.

Ken Clarke may give this policy an impetus that was previously absent and so force through some significant change. To underestimate the structural, financial and legal barriers, though, is to fall into the error of "the finger pointing at the moon". A declaration isn't reality, and it will be interesting to see if Ken Clarke has the necessary steel toecaps in his Hush Puppies.

Reform and Rehabilitation

It is common to use these terms interchangeably, to the general detriment of both. To rehabilitate is "to be restored to ones previous position". To reform is "to abandon evil ways".

To reform, then, is a personal transformation, motivated by the individual's desire to change. It does happen! There comes a time in many criminals’ lives when they look back at their life and shudder at the waste of it.

Assuming that this does occur, what are the practicalities? If you decide to sort your life out, what can prison do to support that change? Is it even the place of prison to offer any support?

A prisoner intent on reform, with the best will in the world, is likely to be frustrated and inhibited. He will still leave prison ill educated and with no real training in employable skills. He will still have lost his home, his job and possibly his main relationships.

He will be rewarded for his personal transformation on release with £48, a train ticket, and a clear plastic sack with HM Prison Service emblazoned upon it to carry his possessions through the streets of a hostile society.

To chant that "prison works" is an insult to the people who want and try to change. At a cost of over £40,000 a year, that the prison experience completely fails to support individual reform should make even the most punitive politician scratch their heads and wonder.

Harsh Regimes

The declaration by Ken Clarke that prisons are not particularly effective institutions has lobbed a grenade into the wasps' nest that comprises the tabloid commentators.

That's always a good thing. And watching those filled with hate twisting and turning to find some rational basis on which to build their bile is always entertaining.

One strand that I have detected amongst these big mouths is the idea that prisons are just too damn soft. Ergo, if prisons had harsh regimes, crime would be deterred. Simples...

That history reveals the effects of harsh regimes passes these idiots by. With the resources of the Net and their newspaper at their fingertips, they manage to avoid learning a single fact that may mar the pristine beauty of their prejudices. Wilful ignorance is the worst sort.

Harsh regimes have been tried. A lot. Not just in Britain but across the world. Endless number-crunching from these experiences reveals that there is no particular connection between harsh prison regimes and crime rates.

Sorry. Looks as if we are going to expend just a bit more mental effort to crack this problem.

Why?

From Ed:

Please visit the Facebook site and look at the letter just posted from Ben's barrister to get a full explanation of what happened to Ben on Wednesday and why we so badly need a reform of the system in the this country.

Whether to Riot - part 2

Even if, as some claim, past riots have led to improvements for prison conditions, the question still remains whether riots now (or in the future) could achieve positive change.

I say no. Leaving aside the morality of using violence in an attempt to gain benefits (I take a Gandhian view of these things); I doubt the utility of violence. We are no longer in 1990. The PS has trained its staff, honed its procedures and altered the very architecture of prisons all with the aim of containing and suppressing riots quickly.

No longer will Bristol prison have to deal with a riot equipped only with one squad of 12 riot-staff. This was the case in 1990. No longer do staff withdraw and wait for us to run out of things to smash before they re-enter. As demonstrated in Lincoln in 2003, the strategy is now to re-enter the area in force as fast as possible. Luckily, no one listened when the then Home Secretary asked that the prisoners be machine-gunned.

No longer can rioting prisoners easily move between wings, or access crucial administrative areas of the prison. New barriers of gates and bars section the internal prison structures precisely to confine riots to small areas.

For all of these reasons, I have repeatedly argued that the riots of 1990 are unlikely to be repeated. Not because prisoners are now happy, contented people but because the structures that we face when we lift our fists in anger and frustration are so much stronger and more competent.

Dilemma and Change

We were wandering around the yard, wrapped up against the cold. It would have been difficult to tell which was the most bitter, the weather or our temperament. Such is the social life of Lifers.

Along the way, we were dissecting the current state of the prison, its facilities, opportunities and - most of all - the capabilities of its senior management.

Between us we hashed out a rough series of ideas which we persuaded ourselves could transform this backwater into a functioning and positive prison. I had to call a halt to this.

Even if we were right in our analysis and prescriptions, surely to try to build a better prison raises all sorts of moral dilemmas for a prisoner? Would a "better" prison (or prison system) be one which would be more enticing to Judges, and so more likely to be filled?

This is a perpetual dilemma for those involved in prison reform. Do too good a job and the risk is that prison becomes an ever greater attraction as a solution to social ills. This thinking has led the charity NACRO to jump into an unholy alliance with Group 4 to run private prisons. Prison reformers running prisons(!)raised an eyebrow when I heard the news, then I vented my spleen in a thousand words in Inside Times.

And yet the issue isn't as clear as I would like. Should people such as myself aim for reform, knowing the risks? Or should we aim for total abolition?

My present view is that we should continue to campaign for prison reform, but only on the understanding that this is a process and not a destination. I will advocate anything that increases the influence that prisoners have over their own lives. Where this leads is a matter for history and determination to reveal. Vive la resistance!