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Prisons full to bursting

The beginning of May saw disturbances in three prisons: Ranby, Guys Marsh and Lindholme. All hold low security prisoners, predominantly serving short sentences. Lindholme and Ranby have some life sentence prisoners; the part of Guys Marsh which flared up is a Young Offenders Institute. All three are overcrowded.

The prison population of England and Wales stood at 70,683 on 17 May 2002. On the same day the previous year it was 66,006. The ‘Certified Normal Accommodation’ is 63,033, 7,650 less than the actual number of men, women, boys and girls crammed into the decaying old institutions and the new ones rapidly being brought into use through private finance initiatives.

The number of men and women in gaol in Britain has been growing steadily since 1993, following a reduction during the preceding five years. This reduction had in turn followed the last great ‘overcrowding crisis’ of the late 1980s, but came far too late for the then Tory government to avoid the massive prisoner uprising, which swept through the system in 1990.

Although the 1990 revolt, which began at Strangeways prison in Manchester, was primarily caused by the appalling attitude and brutality of prison staff, there can be no doubt that the overcrowded, insanitary conditions in which prisoners were being held for up to 23 hours a day, for weeks on end played a major role in fuelling discontent. Since Strangeways, the state has largely kept the prison population subdued through carrot-and-stick measures such as parole and the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme. But with more and more prisoners shoved into the system every week, many of these measures become inoperable, and ultimately irrelevant. The desire for ‘privileges’ cannot be used to divide and rule if there are none to be had and the system can only manage containment.

Since John Major made his infamous ‘prison works’ speech in 1993, a succession of Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries, first Conservative and now Labour, have fought for the ‘tough on crime’ prize, vying to see who can increase sentencing by the most. All the hype about ‘diversion from custody’, ‘weekend imprisonment’ and more electronic tagging cannot disguise the fact that more and more people are being sent to prison for longer and longer, with anyone convicted of two violent crimes getting an automatic life sentence, and other mandatory severe sentences for repeat offenders in the pipeline. The Penal Affairs Consortium has pointed out that

‘At present, prisoners serving less than 12 months in prison comprise less than 12 % of the total prison population. The major expansion of the prison population during the 1990s has been mainly a result of many more people receiving significantly longer prison sentences, even though there has not been an overall increase in offence seriousness.

‘There is a danger that penal reformers will be tempted to accept the proposition that increased resort to community sentences for less serious offending should go hand-in-hand with ensuring that the public is protected from more serious offenders through the greater use of long prison terms. Such propositions have great political value but the effect could be to drive up the prison population faster than ever before. The experience of the USA in the last 20 years should leave nobody in any doubt that it could happen here.’ (Newsletter of the Penal Affairs Consortium, April 2002)

Locking up more women

Women prisoners make up just 6% of the total prison population, but the number of women imprisoned has increased sharply. Between March 2001 and March 2002 the number of women prisoners increased by 18%, from 3,500 to 4,210. On 17 May it stood at 4,328. The result has been the sudden redesignation of several men’s prisons in order for them to house women, frequently change in regime or facilities, together with a severe deterioration in the conditions for women in the existing prisons

For example, at Holloway prison, north London, women are held in dormitory accommodation; although there is in-cell sanitation, the only access to showers or baths is during ‘association’ periods. Due to overcrowding and alleged understaffing, these association periods are entirely subject to the whim of the staff on duty on any given day, and prisoners are going for up to five days at a time without being able to wash.

Locking up more black people

On 31 March 2002 there were 15,540 prisoners in England and Wales, who were described as being from an ethnic minority. This is a staggering 23.7% of the total prison population, and rises to an even more staggering 30% if the female prison population is considered separately. In an attempt to ‘explain’ these statistics, the Home Office suggests that ‘a better way of comparing the ethnic composition of the prison population with that of the general population would be to exclude those prisoners who are not resident in England and Wales from the analysis’ (Prison Population Brief — March 2002). However even if this is done, and the 5,470 non-white foreign national prisoners currently incarcerated in England and Wales are miraculously removed from our consideration, 16% of all prisoners, and 17% of women prisoners, are still described as other than white, in comparison to 5% of the total population.

Almost all the foreign national prisoners will be deported at the end of their sentences, irrespective of whether they had lived in Britain prior to their arrest. In addition, on 31 March 2002, English and Welsh prisons held 640 prisoners, who were detained purely under immigration legislation. These are people who have either committed no crime at all, or who have finished their criminal sentences and are being detained pending deportation or an appeal against it. FRFI learned of one particularly appalling example of such detention. A Nigerian national, who had lived and worked in Britain for 15 years, was imprisoned for two years for fraud. Had he been British he would undoubtedly have served his sentence in an open prison, and been released on an electronic tag after 10 months. Instead he served one year in a Category C, closed but low security, prison. At the end of this time, instead of being released, he was detained in prison under the Immigration Act, pending his appeal against deportation. As there was no space to put him anywhere more ‘suitable’ he was moved to the notorious Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight, where he was held in solitary confinement in the segregation unit for two weeks before being located a place on a wing.

Locking up more children

The total number of ‘young prisoners’ (ie those aged 15-20) increased by 4%, from 10,930 in 2001 to 11,400 in March 2002. The number of ‘juvenile prisoners’ (aged 15-17) was 2,480. With huge media scares being initiated about ‘teenage thugs’ and ‘child crime-waves’, this trend can only continue…

Locking up everyone

…as can the general increase in imprisonment. The Home Office’s projection, published in March 2002 and based on data compiled up to the first quarter of 2001, was that the prison population would reach 70,700 by September 2002, 74,400 by September 2003 and 87,000 by 2008. As the first of these figures has already been reached four months ahead of the prediction, and as the prison population rose by 700 in the first two weeks of May alone, these projections begin to look increasingly unrealistic, and imprisonment on the same scale as in the USA looks like a real prospect in Britain.

Source:

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