prisons
The ‘Inhumane’ Jail Sentence Abolished More Than a Decade ago That’s Still Traumatising Inmates and Their Families
Changes to the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) scheme in England and Wales announced in November - that will free 1,800 offenders from indefinite prison sentences - didn't "go far enough" and for those still incarcerated, "it probably harms them even further, because it just reinforces the fact that they have no hope of getting out", a campaigner has said.
IPP was designed to protect the public from serious offenders whose crimes did not
merit a life sentence and were created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and used from April 2005. Offenders sentenced under IPP are handed a minimum jail term they must serve, and upon completion can apply to the Parole Board for release. If successful, they're put on supervised licence for 10 years, with any infringement returning them to prison where their release is again determined by the Parole Board.
Some IPP prisoners have served close to two decades behind bars for sentences of just a few years - for crimes as minor as stealing mobile phones. The UN says the legislation is "inhumane" and has been reflected in at least 86 suicides by prisoners since being introduced. It has also been branded the "single greatest stain on our justice system”.
IPP was abolished in 2012 - for offenders convicted on or after 3 December 2012, with the Government stating the system was “not defensible” - but the change did not apply retrospectively to people who were already serving the sentence.
According to a Ministry of Justice factsheet, IPPs were handed down at a rate of more than 800 a year over the seven-year period they were used, resulting in more than 6,500 offenders serving IPP sentences. Government figures, as of 30 September 2023, showed there were 1,269 offenders still serving an IPP sentence who had never been released on licence. Hundreds more, it is estimated, are back in prison having been recalled over licence breaches. Figures from December 2022, showed there were 1,394 unreleased IPP prisoners in custody, and 1,498 recalled IPP prisoners - a total of 2,892 prisoners. Those figures showed that all but 35 unreleased IPP prisoners had passed their tariff date.
Re-sentencing IPP offenders has been advocated by parliament’s Justice Select Committee, the Centre for Crime and Justice and IPP campaigners to rectify the situation, but was rejected by the Government.
Earlier this month the Byline Times Podcast investigated IPP and unpicked the long-ranging impacts it has had on people sentenced to it, and their families. Host Adrian Goldberg spoke to Ishuba Salmon who lost 17 years of his life to it; Emma McClure, who represented inmate Matthew Price who reached out to the Justice Secretary and members of the criminal justice community before taking his own life while on licence, writing that he was "stuck in a never-ending cycle of which suicide is quite possibly really the only way out" , and Donna Mooney from campaign group, UngrIPP, whose brother took his own life in jail in 2015. Listen to the podcast here.
"I never killed nobody. But I was on the wing with people who did kill people, and they went home before me"
Ishuba Salmon, former IPP inmate
Ishuba Salmon, 44, was sentenced under IPP to a minimum term of five years after being found in possession of a firearm while in a stolen car. He served 12 years and nine months before being released in September 2018: "I never killed nobody, but I was on the wing with people who did kill people, and they went home before me."
While still on his IPP licence, Salmon was arrested over an allegation of wounding with intent. He was cleared and was preparing to leave court after the judge said, "I was free to go," when he was taken downstairs by court security, and returned to prison. For another four years: "I was quite happy, justice had prevailed, and then we just made a mockery of our own British court system."
Salmon added: "I can't get back my daughter's 17 years that I've missed out of her life. I want her to look at her Dad and see a good role model and someone she's proud of. Not some guy sat down in jail for the rest of his life and wasting away."
Matthew Price, 48, was handed an IPP in 2010 for seriously wounding his friend, with a three-year minimum term. Unlike other inmates who have served more than ten years longer than their minimum tariff, Price was released in 2013 - but he didn't cope well with being on licence for the next decade and took his own life in June 2023.
A month before doing so, Price issued a desperate cry for help, writing to Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, several law firms and the Justice Select Committee, explaining that "asking for help will go against me, not asking for help will most likely kill me". He described IPP as a “death penalty by the back door”.
Price was struggling with his mental health and an earlier attempt on his life had led to further IPP supervision. He feared reaching out again for support would mean he'd never have his licence revoked.
“I’m stuck in a never-ending cycle of which suicide is quite possibly really the only way out"
Matthew Price, deceased IPP inmate
Emma McClure from SL5 Legal was the last person to speak to Price, having taken on his case shortly before his death, after seeing his letter. She told the Byline Times Podcast that when her late client's 10-year supervision mark approached, "the stress and the idea that he wasn't going to be successful" in having it revoked became too much for him. Then things got worse: he was denied legal aid and his case stalled due to "chronic delays" in the court system: "There's just issues and issues and issues and delays and delays, delays. And then unfortunately, it proved to be too much for Matthew and he did ultimately take his own life," McClure explained on the podcast.
Corner John Hobson later ruled that Price's mental health had been adversely affected by IPP and further changes were announced to the law by the Justice Secretary. The 10-year licence period is to be reduced to three, before the first review. And if the Parole Board decline and the IPP offender is still in the community without issue two years later, the licence will automatically terminate. The change is currently in the Prisoners Bill and is at the report stage at the House of Lords.
"Successive governments have recognised for well over a decade now that the IPP regime is a stain on the criminal justice system and needs to be dealt with. But no one's prepared to do anything at the moment."
Emma McClure, lawyer
McClure says the changes don't go far enough - that the three-year licence period is still too long, given the consequences of breaching it: "We're now almost 20 years down the line (since IPP was introduced) where they've been in custody all that time, and then you're letting them out, and the idea that that person is then going to be able to lead a completely spotless life for three years. And I'm not talking about committing offences. I'm talking about missing appointments. I'm talking about lapsing into substance use, I'm talking about having an argument with somebody, and that will lead you back into custody."
Part of the problem, the lawyer explained, was that the prison system was never given the added resources it needed to cope with an influx of IPP inmates which created a cycle of anguish. Offenders never got the rehabilitative support they needed - would "fly past" their minimum terms - become "resentful, frustrated... fall into despair", use drugs, become violent, and ultimately be "denied parole because of it".
In 2022, a Select Committee recommended that all IPP offenders be re-sentenced, "but no one's as yet been prepared to grasp that thorny issue", McClure said, adding: "Successive governments have recognised for well over a decade now that the IPP regime is a stain on the criminal justice system and needs to be dealt with. But no one's prepared to do anything."
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) told the Byline Times Podcast that its "thoughts remain with the friends and family of Matthew Price" and reiterated that it wants to give "rehabilitated people the opportunity to properly move on with their lives, which is why we are changing the law to curtail licence periods". That change, the MOJ said, would see around 1,800 people have their IPP sentences ended immediately.
Donna Mooney's brother, Tommy Nicol, took his own life in prison in 2015, age 37, after getting knocked back by the Parole Board and thinking he was "never going to be released", and having been denied access to courses he needed to complete to lower his risk. He was jailed under IPP for stealing a car from a garage and getting into a fight.
"He (Tommy) referred to it as psychological torture. Often, he said it was a 99-year sentence... because you can apply to have the licence lifted, but that's often denied," Mooney, from IPP campaign group, UngrIPP told the Podcast.
"I could talk for years about how horrendous it is," she continued. "I've seen it firsthand with my brother, and I live it every day and know what he went through is horrific, that 1000s of people are being kept indefinitely in prison on the sentence that was abolished more than a decade ago."
Like McClure, Mooney was "happy" the Government has made changes to IPP, but said it "doesn't go far enough" to help those who have been most dramatically impacted: "The people who are being the most penalised by this sentence, those stuck in prison still many who have served more than 10 years, 15 to 17 years over their initial tariff. It won't affect them because they've never been released. It's not going to impact those people who've been recalled for no further offence."
"1000s of people are being kept indefinitely in prison on the sentence that was abolished more than a decade ago"
Donna Mooney, IPP campaigner
Mooney continued: "It doesn't do anything for those people stuck in the system. And in fact, it probably harms them even further because it just reinforces the fact that they have no hope of getting out. It's kind of perpetuated that pain for them.
"The key thing that we often say to people is that a more dangerous person didn't exist between 2005 and 2012. A policy did."
Mooney's family received undisclosed damages from the MoJ after beginning a civil claim in the high court over her brother's death, but she takes little comfort from the victory. It helped show people in charge "that my brother countered for something and that he wasn't just a number, and he wasn't this horrendously awful person that they tried to make him look during the inquest" - but it didn't stop other families from having to go through the same trauma. Despite the legislative changes, Mooney notes, "the sad thing is that people are still dying".
"More people are dying on the sentence in prison and in the community than ever before... the last two years I've seen the highest suicide rates in prison of people in my opinion ever."
Taxpayer to Pay for Radon Crisis at Prison Owned by Duchy of Cornwall – Despite Government Giving It £1.5 Million a Year in Rent
Taxpayers will foot the bill for making HMP Dartmoor safe from deadly radon gas – despite the Government paying the Duchy of Cornwall £1.5 million a year to rent the jail, Byline Times can reveal.
This newspaper revealed in January that 96 inmates in two of the six wings of Britain’s oldest jail – owned by Prince William – were being “temporarily” evacuated over fears of poisoning from the gas, which kills 1,000 people annually.
It was later reported that the number had increased to 196 inmates amid work to "permanently reduce" radon levels in the category C prison to ensure staff and prisoner safety.
While a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was unable to say how much or long it would take to fix the issues, a Freedom of Information request by Byline Times has revealed that the entire bill – expected to be several million pounds – will be paid for by UK taxpayers.
While the Duchy of Cornwall receives a considerable sum from the Government to use the prison – and has a 52,450-hectare estate, mostly in the south-west of England, worth more than £1 billion – it will not contribute to repairs.
A MoJ spokesman said that was not a condition of the lease.
The Duchy of Cornwall did not respond to a request for comment.
Radon is the UK’s second-biggest cause of lung cancer behind smoking. The colourless, odourless, gas is present at the 640-prisoner jail due to the decay of uranium in the granite of its bedrock and walls built using the igneous material.
The MoJ said no inmates or staff have suffered adverse health effects at HMP Dartmoor, which houses a museum attraction in its old dairy, visited by 27,000 tourists a year who pay £4 per adult to enter. It does not turn a profit.
The evacuation follows several years of radon monitoring and comes in spite of the introduction of additional airflow and ventilation measures to combat the problem. Byline Times understands pumps will be installed under the prison in Princetown, Devon, to extract the radon and allow the cells to return to regular use.
HMP Dartmoor was set to close due to its underfunded and crumbling state before a Government U-turn in 2021.
Staff shortages had previously led to prisoners being locked in for up to 23 hours a day, with a lack of capital investment causing “safety and security issues for prisoners and staff”, according to the MoJ.
The MoJ declined to say where prisoners had been moved to, but it is another headache for the beleaguered department, which has overseen a sharp rise in inmate numbers since 1990 – a situation described by Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor in December as a “time bomb”.
The Next Big Injustice Scandal? Allegations of ‘Blood on Government’s Hands’ as Thousands of Prisoners Remain Locked Up Despite Serving Time
Almost 3,000 people are victims of “one of the worst systematic errors of justice” of the past 50 years, as they are still held behind bars in UK prisons despite having finished their sentences - in many cases over a decade ago.
The new data from the Ministry of Justice shows that 2,852 people given ‘Imprisonment for Public Protection’ (IPP) sentences, described as the “single greatest stain” on the UK’s criminal justice system, are still in prison today, despite this type of indefinite sentence being abolished in 2012.
Hundreds have now died while serving beyond their sentences, according to reform think tank the Institute of Now (IoN), with the group dubbing it “one of the most lethal” scandals - “destroying the lives of thousands; unnecessarily filling prisons; costing taxpayers billions; and breaching British values and standards of law.”
IPP was introduced in England and Wales in 2003, as part of the Criminal Justice Act, originally intended to protect the public from dangerous offenders whose crimes did not merit a life sentence. IPP offenders at that time were given indeterminate sentences with a minimum term to serve, after which they could be considered for release by The Parole Board.
However, IPP was overused and eventually handed out to almost ten times the expected number, many of whom were guilty of very minor crimes. As a result, the sentence was ‘abolished’ in 2012.
Yet the abolition was not made retrospective - meaning that all existing IPPs were still subject to their sentence and thousands remained in prison. Due to the difficulty for IPP prisoners to satisfy terms to be released and notoriously overbearing recall conditions, thousands of IPP prisoners have remained locked up after serving their sentences.
Mass Scale
Of the 2,852 of the IPP victims still in prison today, 1,227 of these have never been released on licence, and more than half of these have served 10 years over their original sentence, with some serving multiples of their original minimum term.
These are enough IPP prisoners to fill more than four average-size UK prisons, according to the IoN analysis.
Adding up the number of years spent by IPPs beyond their minimum term, it equates to over 10,000 years – equivalent to a cost of £500 million to the UK taxpayer, but far more than that in the personal loss to prisoners and their families.
With so many in prison now beyond their minimum terms with low prospects of release, the cost of these ‘overspent’ years is estimated to increase to over £1billion by 2028.
As an example, one current IPP victim is Thomas White. He was sentenced in 2012 – just months before IPP was abolished – for stealing a mobile phone and has never been released from prison. In 12 years, Thomas has only met his son, Kayden once, and he has spent much of this time in solitary confinement.
White’s sister, Clara – like Kayden and many family members of people given IPPs – has suffered severe emotional strain, witnessing her brother’s mental health deteriorate over the years under the strain of an open-ended sentence with no clear route for release, according to the Institute of Now.
The organisation says that as a result of his continued imprisonment, he has developed psychosis, borderline personality disorder, and ADHD. His sister says this is a failure of the state to put right a gross miscarriage of justice: “The saddest thing for IPP families on the outside is that we trusted the Government – they had a duty of care. They had a duty of care to look after my brother and they didn’t, they failed him.”
At least 88 people given IPPs have already committed suicide in prison, with the number feared to be much higher, due to the difficulty of recording how many have killed themselves while on licence in the community, the IoN claims. 1,600 additional instances of self-harm by IPP prisoners were recorded in the past 12 months alone.
High Profile Opponents
The sentences have faced overwhelming cross-party criticism, but with little signs of action so far.
David Blunkett, the former New Labour Home Secretary responsible for implementing the policy in 2003, is one of many voices from across the political divide calling on the Government to fix what he called an “unjust” and “immoral” sentence , speaking to a Parliament committee in 2021. International actors are also urging the UK to fix the IPP cycle of suffering – UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Edwards described the policy as “inhuman” and “degrading” , in a public statement in 2023.
In 2017 – before becoming the UK Secretary of State for Justice – Alex Chalk KC described IPPs as “unconscionable” and “one of the greatest stains” on the British justice system. He suggested the Government had “blood on its hands” in failing to end the system.
Yet critics say he has become the latest in a line of ten justice ministers who have ignored expert advice on how to solve the IPP crisis, including rejecting strong recommendations by a House of Commons Justice Committee Inquiry in 2023 to review IPP sentences.
And former Conservative PM Sir John Major told an audience at the Old Bailey in May 2023: “When [IPP] was abolished, no action was taken to determine a just and definitive sentence for the prisoners already serving for an indeterminate time. This was an extraordinary omission.”
Lord Brown of Eaton-Under-Heywood, Former Supreme Court Justice, writing in a foreword to a report on the impact on those recalled under IPP in March 2020: “I have no hesitation in describing the continuing aftermath of the ill-starred IPP sentencing regime as the greatest single stain on our criminal justice system.”
Rory Stewart, the former UK Minister of State for Prisons, also told his Rest is Politics podcast in December IPPs are “fundamentally inhuman and completely in contravention of the way the law should work.”
Henry Rossi, a human rights campaigner and Founder of The Institute of Now, which is committed to abolishing IPP, said: “IPP is a systematic error and a form of state violence which has no place in a modern society. Far too many people, both prisoners and their families, have been subjected to psychological torture from this wicked sentence, which in so many cases, has led to suicides.
“Prisons are not the place to manage those that have served their time as punishment. The UK has blood on its hands and the government must urgently relook at this draconian sentence and release post-tariff IPP prisoners with the appropriate support.”
Hamid Sabi, a London-based human rights lawyer who has served on the Iran Tribunal, China Tribunal, and the Uyghur Tribunal, added: “Political inertia and lack of focus has to date stifled any chance of reform to IPP, as successive governments – despite acknowledging IPP as a mistake – have demonstrated wilful blindness and disproportionate risk aversion when faced with the issue. The UK faces a mass public shaming on the world stage if this issue is not urgently addressed.”
Ministry Pushback
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said the Government had reduced the number of unreleased IPP prisoners by three-quarters since new IPP sentences were scrapped in 2012. The MoJ added there had been a 12% in the last year alone “where the Parole Board deemed prisoners safe to release.”
The MoJ spokesperson added: “We have also taken decisive action to curtail licence periods and continue to help those still in custody to progress towards release, including improving access to rehabilitation programmes and mental health support.”
The ministry disputes the notion that the costs of keeping the remaining IPP prisoners in custody is “unnecessary”.
And officials played down comments from the Lord Chancellor describing the sentence as a “stain on our justice system” - claiming the mechanism is important for public protection. People serving an IPP sentence in prison, whether not yet released or recalled following release, can only be released when the Parole Board deems them safe.
The MoJ claims “all but a small minority” of these prisoners have had at least one parole hearing to demonstrate they are safe for release and have not done so.
The Government claims that “retrospectively changing the sentence which was lawfully passed poses a risk to public protection”. This is despite ministers currently pushing through legislation to overturn nearly all the Horizon Post Office scandal convictions retrospectively.
And the ministry pointed to a HM Inspectorate of Probation review of IPP last December they said found that the probation service is making “proportionate and necessary” decisions to recall IPP offenders on licence for public protection.
As of 31 December 2023, there were 1,227 prisoners on IPP sentences who had never been released. There were around 6,000 when the sentence was abolished in 2012.
Justice officials say the Government has proposed new laws which will mean offenders are automatically referred to the Parole Board three years after their first release, for the Board to consider if their ongoing licence should be terminated, and ending their sentence. However, it is not clear when this legislation will be implemented.
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
Prince William is Radiation Prison Landlord – Parts of UK’s Oldest Jail Evacuated
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Ninety-six inmates of Britain’s oldest prison - owned by Prince William - are being evacuated over fears of radon poisoning, Byline Times can reveal.
Cells in two of the six wings at 215-year-old HMP Dartmoor, which the Government rents from the Prince’s £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate, are putting prisoners at risk of “prolonged exposure” to the radioactive gas, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has confirmed.
A spokesperson told this newspaper: “A small number of prisoners are being relocated as a precautionary measure after routine testing revealed higher than normal levels of radon.”
Radon is the UK’s second biggest cause of lung cancer behind smoking, claiming 1,000 lives a year. The colourless, odourless, gas is present at the 686-prisoner jail due to the decay of uranium in the granite of its bedrock and walls built using the igneous material.
No inmates or staff are said to have suffered adverse health effects at HMP Dartmoor, which houses a museum attraction in its old dairy, visited by 35,000 tourists a year who pay £4 per adult to enter.
However, the prison’s main “induction room” – through which all new prisoners pass during a two-week arrivals process – was closed last year following a negative report from HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, published in June. Such action is only taken when radon exceeds a technical measurement of 200 Bq/m3, which equates to ten times the level found in the average home.
Lawyer Gareth Roberts examines new proposals that may be robust, but are they good policy?
Gareth Roberts
The evacuation of Dartmoor’s E and F Wings follows several years of radon monitoring and comes in spite of the introduction of additional airflow and ventilation measures to combat the problem.
Byline Times understands that pumps are now to be installed under the Category C prison in Princetown, Devon, to extract the radon and eventually allow the cells to return to regular use.
It is not clear whether Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall as landlord will finance the work or whether the burden will fall on taxpayers. In the private rental sector, such costs normally fall on landlords under the Housing Act 2004, however the MoJ says this information is not “readily accessible”.
HMP Dartmoor was set to close in 2023 due to its underfunded and crumbling state before a Government U-turn in 2021 saw it win a reprieve to continue operating.
Staff shortages had previously led to prisoners being locked in for up to 23 hours a day, with a lack of capital investment causing “safety and security issues for prisoners and staff”, according to the MoJ.
The MoJ is declining to say for security reasons where prisoners will be moved, but it is another headache for the beleaguered department, which has overseen a sharp rise in inmate numbers since 1990 – a situation described by prisons inspector Charlie Taylor in December as a “time bomb”.
It’s Hard to See How ‘Prison Works’
Overcrowding, rising prison deaths, financial cutbacks, and no deliverable plan – the prison system in England and Wales is close to chaos
Martin George
A source with knowledge of the situation told Byline Times: “Dartmoor is known for its granite, and the radon it emits. The gas builds up indoors, especially in areas with bad ventilation like Napoleonic-era cells.
“Lack of staff caused by the pandemic meant men spending even more time than usual in their cells, breathing toxic gas. There have been serious worries about the potential health impacts.
“It all raises questions about the suitability of HMP Dartmoor as a place of correction and rehabilitation.”
HMP Dartmoor was originally built in 1809 to house prisoners from the Napoleonic War. Inmates have included the Irish nationalist leader Eamon de Valera, and East End gangster Jack “The Hat” McVitie.
In 2013, the Government announced the facility was to shut in an overhaul of the penal system to make way for a new £250m “super-prison” in Wrexham, north Wales.
Officials at the time said the jail, which houses prisoners including sex offenders who are not expected to make a determined escape attempt, had no “long-term future in a modern, cost-effective prison system”.
However, HM Prison Service scrapped the plan in 2019 and in 2022 signed a new lease with its owner, the Duchy of Cornwall, to keep HMP Dartmoor open "beyond 2023 and for the foreseeable future".
The source added: “Dartmoor is infamous as one of the worst jails in the country. It is falling down and its walls are made of thick granite.
“Fixing the radon issue will be expensive at a time when HMP Dartmoor desperately needs other investment.”
Closing the prison would be problematic for the Government, which has overseen a record prison population of almost 90,000 people in England and Wales, up eight per cent on a year earlier, leading to overcrowding.
That number has doubled in the last 30 years as a result of longer criminal sentences and a tougher approach to violent and drug-related crime. It is forecast to potentially exceed 100,000 in the next few years.
Prisoners are already increasingly forced to double up in cells “designed by the Victorians for one person”, warned Mr Taylor.
Analysis by The Independent in October revealed that 78 out of 124 jails in England and Wales were over capacity.
Last October, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk announced offenders given jail sentences of less than a year will usually see those sentences suspended and do community service instead, in an effort to ease prison overcrowding.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice has paused all “non-critical maintenance work” on Britain’s jails.
With Boomers Retiring, Worker Co-ops Are on the Rise
Three great stories we found on the internet this week.
Teamwork
In the years ahead, more and more baby boomers will retire, some of them without plan for who will run their businesses. One response to this “silver tsunami”: creating worker-owned cooperatives. In worker co-ops, the workers run the business and keep the profits. This has been shown to result in better pay than traditional businesses — and more productivity, too.
Credit: Brian O’Doherty
Case in point: When the owner of Baltimore’s Common Ground Cafe retired and closed the shop last summer, its employees banded together and quickly began to organize. In the first six weeks after the cafe reopened as a worker co-op, Common Ground was able to raise wages by up to 25 percent.
Reopening as a co-op “was the best feeling in the world,” barista Sierra Allen told Yes! Magazine, “because we get to see our customers, we get to spend time with one another, and when we see issues, we can fix them the way we see fit.”
Under the sun
Solar power has become the cheapest form of energy in the world, making it an appealing option for Native American tribes who lack reliable access to electricity. That — along with the impacts of fossil fuels — is why Cody Two Bears, member of the Sioux tribe in North Dakota, started building solar farms.
Two Bears is the founder of Indigenized Energy, which installs free solar farms for tribal nations. A 1,100-panel solar farm that Indigenized Energy built in Cannon Ball, on the Standing Rock reservation, produces enough energy to power 60 homes and saves the tribe up to $10,000 per year.
Courtesy of Indigenized Energy
When reservations were created, the government intentionally placed many of them on land that wasn’t good for farming. But now, because the tribes have been such good stewards of the environment, much of that land is ideal for renewables. “Some of the lands that were the worst lands 160 years ago are now some of the most pristine because our tribal nations have protected and preserved them,” said Two Bears.
Free reads
A new major book award has launched in the US with a unique jury: 300 incarcerated people. Created by Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation and the Center for Justice Innovation, the competition is a way for those serving sentences “to meaningfully participate in our shared national cultural conversation,” Freedom Reads CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts said in a press release.
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The finalists are Tess Gunty, Jamil Jan Kochai, Roger Reeves and Imani Perry. Before the winner is announced in June 2024, incarcerated people will also be able to participate in live discussions and literary readings.
John J. Lennon, a writer who is serving a life sentence, was involved in planning the award and is serving as a juror. “The award just tells us, hey, we can add meaning, it shows us that our word can count too,” Lennon said.
The post With Boomers Retiring, Worker Co-ops Are on the Rise appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
It’s Hard to See How ‘Prison Works’
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On an autumn afternoon in 1993, a middle-aged man stood up in front of a crowd of 2,000 like-minded supporters, adjusted his glasses, and let rip.
“Prison works”, declared then Home Secretary Michael Howard to rapturous applause. In those two words at the Conservative Party Conference, he articulated what for decades has been the cornerstone of Tory policy on law and order.
Since then, overcrowding, rising numbers of prison deaths, financial cutbacks and the absence of a deliverable plan, mean that the prison system in England and Wales is now close to chaos.
But back in 1993, Howard was determined to spell out just how and why he believed prison was so effective.
“It ensures that we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists – and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice," he said. "This may mean that more people will go to prison. I do not flinch from that. We shall no longer judge the success of our system of justice by a fall in our prison population."
Just as well, really. Prison numbers in England and Wales have risen by 80% since that speech. They currently stand at more than 88,225 and could pass 100,000 by around 2025.
Although the Government has committed to building 20,000 new prison places by the mid-2020s, by last June only more than 5,000 had been delivered, and some of those will simply replace parts of the existing estate that are deemed unfit for use.
The current practice of inmates sharing two, and even three, to a cell designed for one is likely to continue for some time.
For many who have been to prison, overcrowding is the biggest issue.
Marc Conway has spent more than 15 years in a range of prisons – from young offenders’ institutions to high security jails like Belmarsh. He now runs prison reform consultancy, Fair Justice.
EXCLUSIVE
From Prisoner to Publisher: Reformed Robber Unmasks Britain’s Broken Prison System
Stephen Jackley, a former prisoner turned author and campaigner, pulls back the curtain on the UK prison system in an exclusive interview with Byline Times, as he launches his new book ‘Just Time’.
Josiah Mortimer
“You can be banged up for two to three days at a time, except when you’re allowed out to get food," he says. "So there’s an almost forced intimacy with someone you’ve never met before. It’s not as though you’re locked up with a friend or a brother.
"Any phone calls have to be in public or in front of your cellmate. Imagine your girlfriend is telling you she’s leaving you, or your kids are having difficulties at school, and you have to deal with all of that in front of other people. That’s so difficult.”
He believes overcrowding leads to even bigger problems: “The more inmates they have on the landing, the less prison staff they have per inmate, so the less resources they have for people to go to rehabilitation or re-offending courses.
"And there’s less one-to-one time with prison officers to help you with housing, jobs, universal credit, maintaining family ties. All that makes it more likely that you will re-offend. So overcrowding causes re-offending.”
Mifta Choudhury has also spent many years in the prison system. He was convicted at 16 for murder under joint enterprise laws and served 14 years. He founded Youth-Ink, a charity which focuses on reintroducing ex-prisoners into the community, and has also seen how the lack of prison places causes problems on the wings.
“I was in one prison where overcrowding and staff shortages meant that inmates with mental health problems weren’t getting their medication on time," he says. "There was one lad who needed his meds at 3.30 every day, but they didn’t let him out of his cell to get it until 4.20. I was walking down the stairs and I saw he was in a right state. He just lashed out at a prison officer, and I had to jump in and grab him and pull him off that officer."
No Real Answers
The rapidly increasing prison population may be a measure of failure, but it’s far from the only one.
In the 12 months to June 2023, there were 313 deaths in prison custody (up from 288 the previous year), and in the same period there were almost 60,000 incidents of self-harm – the vast majority in female prisons (up 11% year on year).
At the heart of this is the perennial question of money.
Although in absolute terms government spending on prisons is up since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, the amount in real terms – adjusted for inflation – has fallen by 5.3%.
Conway knows how that affects morale on the landings: “You’re getting cheaper food, and that definitely causes people to feel not looked after, even depressed. Resources for things that help people relax, like table tennis equipment or pool cues, are all cut. Offender behaviour courses cost money and those get cut too.
"So people are less likely to be rehabilitated. Sometimes you can’t get basic things like toilet roll, and that makes a massive amount of difference. So people get angry.”
In addition to creating extra prison places, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk wants more short sentences to be served in the community. But such alleviation measures are likely to be outweighed by the Government’s commitment in the recent King’s Speech to tougher sentences for the worst offenders and ending automatic halfway release for serious crimes like rape.
Chalk has floated two other ideas to reduce the pressure.
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The first is to create hundreds of so-called pop-up cells – essentially secure portacabins – on prison grounds, which will add some level of extra capacity in low-risk prisons.
The second is to allow some prisoners to serve part of their sentence abroad.
Although details are sketchy, it seems bizarre to think that a Government which has spent the best part of a decade torpedoing its relationship with its nearest neighbours in the EU will suddenly strike up a partnership in which Europe takes some of our most serious offenders.
It’s perhaps more likely Chalk wants to send offenders much further afield – something akin to the controversial and unlawful Rwanda scheme to take failed asylum seekers. Who would want to bet that a plan to send British prisoners abroad wouldn’t meet a similar fate in the courts?
“It makes me feel physically sick, thinking of sending criminals to Australia like we did hundreds of years ago," Conway says. "And how would that work for prisoners? How does my family come and visit me, for example?
"And I bet the Government is not going to send all these people to places like Scandinavia, I’ll bet it’ll be to countries with much harsher regimes. To be honest, it sounds like something out of Charles Dickens.”
The Ministerial Merry-Go-Round
Alex Chalk emerged unscathed from the Prime Minister’s recent reshuffle and seems to have a genuine interest in the criminal justice system and its many problems. But some of his predecessors have given a very different impression.
On occasions, previous justice secretaries have even appeared reluctant to support the judiciary or the rule of law.
Many will remember that, in November 2016, then Justice Secretary Liz Truss failed to defend three High Court judges pictured in a Daily Mail front-page under the headline 'Enemies of the People'. The right-wing tabloid press was angry at the judges for ruling that the Government could not trigger the process of leaving the EU without Parliament's approval. The Justice Secretary’s initial reaction to the Mail headline was silence.
Equally remarkable was the response in September 2020 of a future Justice Secretary, Sir Brandon Lewis, to a Government bill to amend the UK’s withdrawal agreement with the EU. A trained barrister, he admitted that the bill broke international law – but suggested this might be acceptable because it did so only “in a specific and limited way.”
There have also been some demoralising U-turns at the department.
Last January, then Justice Secretary Dominic Raab extended magistrates’ sentencing powers so that they could imprison criminals for up to a year – as opposed to the previous upper limit of six months. The idea was that magistrates would be able to rule on a wider range of cases, thus reducing backlogs at overworked crown courts after the pandemic and a decade of court closures and cost-cutting.
More than a year later, however, Raab quietly cut the upper limit to six months again. The reason was given as “downstream pressures in the system that have arisen since the extended powers were introduced”. Translation: increased sentencing powers meant magistrates were sending too many people to prison, and there just weren’t enough prison places to cope. Better to have defendants waiting months for trials in overcrowded crown courts instead.
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On top of its chequered recent history, the Ministry of Justice has long lacked continuity of leadership. Since 2010, there have been 10 different justice secretaries and 13 different prisons ministers.
Some experts believe this fast-moving ministerial conveyor belt has promoted a culture of short-termist thinking and headline-chasing – rather than one of developing thought-out plans which need time to deliver.
“Prisons minister is a poisoned chalice,” argues Marc Conway. “It’s a pretty low-ranking job, and ironically, I think many politicians get sent there as a punishment. Continuity is vital for effective change, but no one stays as Prisons Minister long, so you just don’t get it.”
For Mifta Choudhury, “every time we’ve had a different justice secretary or prisons minister – whether it’s Labour or Conservative – it feels like they’re changing the policy or changing the system. Change is very disruptive for inmates, and that’s when people start kicking off... because none of us have control over our lives once we’re inside”.
So, 30 years after Michael Howards' infamous speech, can we say with any confidence that prison works?
“I will always say: follow the evidence,” says Conway. “Reoffending is at an all-time high, suicides in prison are at an all-time high, staff sickness is at an all-time high. So I ask you, does prison work?”
Mifta Choudhury goes further: “I think it’s the whole criminal justice system that doesn’t work – prisons, probation services, the lot. It works in the sense of keeping people contained, but that’s where it ends. There aren’t any steps towards preparing people for life outside. They’re just holding people in prison like it’s a warehouse.”