A day in the life of Britain's (over-crowded) prisons

20 March 2007 by Rod McLaren

Prison over-crowding has been back in the news in the last week (together with other stories on life sentencing and post-sentence support). The Home Office is looking at a number of short-term measures ahead of a summer expected to see the prison population rise to 83,000, three thousand above its effective operational capacity. Firstly, they’re planning to import converted sea containers as temporary accommodation for prisoners. Secondly, they’re considering whether they’ll need to release up to 2,500 prisoners early, a move that’s likely to be least controversial if they’re foreign nationals who are immediately deported. There’s also thought of setting up jail cells in high streets and shopping centres to detain suspects for short periods.

Last week, the Guardian ran a long story called A Day Inside, which interviewed 42 prisoners and workers in the system.

Anne Owers, 59
Chief Inspector of prisons, London
Another [email] related to a trip to Poland to talk to their ombudsman and look at their prisons. We have many things in common, such as overcrowding and the challenges of monitoring the prisons. Our system is generally regarded as a model for how to do it. [...] The figures are startling. Women are 5% of the population but account for over 50% of the self-harm cases. [...] When I give a prison a good report, which happens quite a lot, I tell them that the bad news is that hardly anyone will get to hear about it. There have been huge improvements in prison healthcare, education and training, but with the population at this level I worry if it can be sustained. Maybe we will look back and say this is as good as it got.

Mark Drew, 39
Reception officer, HMP Wandsworth, London
The first thing we do is go up on the wings to collect prisoners due in court that day. They’re moved to holding cells before passing through reception where they’ll have a full strip search for any concealed items – drugs, mobile phones, tobacco. They also have all their property searched, x-rayed and logged. They will probably change into their own clothes, before going through to another holding area where they wait to be picked up by police vans. We often have about 100 people passing through reception in one day, including remand and convicted prisoners; each person spends about 15 minutes going through reception. Experience tells you who will need more help to be put at their ease. For those few moments, you sometimes feel like a father figure – many prisoners come from broken backgrounds and have no fixed abode. Around 8.30am, prisoners who need to go out to police stations are brought down by wing staff and because London jails are so overcrowded we also have a fair number due for transfer to prisons across the country.

These days, those “police vans” are nearly all contracted out to GSL, Serco Premier and Reliance.

David Ramsbotham, 72
Chief inspector of prisons 1995-2001, now a campaigner on prison issues
The downside is that the parts are better than the whole. The prison service consistently fails to turn the good practice for which these awards are given into common practice. How many of the good things that are done in a prison are still being done three years later? [...] I also talked at length to a number of senior probation officers. I’m alarmed at the implications for them of the offender management bill [the controversial plan to part-privatise the probation service]. The bill is riddled with nonsense. If it’s about setting targets rather than allowing people to deal with people then you are doomed to fail.

There’s a lot to improve in prisons still, and some big decisions to make, but it’s good to see an article that shows some of the human side in criminal justice, and some of the progress being made.

Disclosure: GSL is a customer. There’s a case study .

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