At his first press conference after becoming Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer announced that “We’ve got too many prisoners, not enough prisons”. He went on to caution that there would be no “overnight solution” to prison overcrowding and as an urgent response to the current crisis, the government has now announced plans for the early release of a large number of prisoners.
However, the current crisis of prison overcrowding is not caused by a shortage of prison places, but rather by the manner in which we in the United Kingdom have increasingly turned to the various sectors of the criminal justice system in response to many wider social problems, with the result that we now have one of the highest ratios of prisoners in Western Europe.
An important factor in this matter is that, as in other spheres of public life, there has been an increasing tendency in recent years towards centralisation, with the national government taking control of many areas where there should be much more local involvement. The fact that in England and Wales, we have a single national prison service with few local links is a longstanding example of this. More recently, we have witnessed the terrible damage done by Chris Grayling when, as Justice Secretary, he abolished local probation services and replaced them with a national organisation which contracted out much of the local delivery of services to private companies, many of which had little experience in the field.
We need a more radical solution to the current prison crisis and it may lie in what has become known as Justice Reinvestment. Very broadly, this is a process which involves assessing the total resources, financial and other, that are currently expended on the criminal justice system; evaluating what benefits members of the public and taxpayers get from this expenditure; and considering whether there might be other ways of distributing these considerable resources to provide a better return on the investment.
In the United States, the Justice Reinvestment approach had two initial drivers. One was a need to control the multibillion-dollar expenditure on prisons at a time of reduced public budgets. The other was a realisation that a significant proportion of people in prison came from quite narrowly defined neighbourhoods. Some of these were described as ‘million-dollar blocks’; this was the amount it cost each year to imprison a small group of young men from a particular block of housing. Research indicated that the cycle of imprisonment followed by a return to the community and the likelihood of a future return to prison (the ‘revolving door’) not only negatively affected the individuals involved but also served to destabilise the community.
At the same time, urban geographers began to make the link that these were the same neighbourhoods which had the highest rates of deprivation, of unemployment and of poor education provision and social security support. (Similar research in Scotland in 2005 found that half of the prison population came from just 155 of the 1,222 local government wards and that a quarter came from 53 wards, most of which were in deprived areas of Glasgow.) The question was then asked, sometimes directly to members of local communities, as to whether some of these million dollars that were being spent annually on imprisonment might be spent more efficiently on local services and infrastructure in a way that might make the whole community safer.
The principles of Justice Reinvestment could apply across the whole panoply of criminal justice institutions and there is growing interest in how that might be achieved. One instance of the need for a new approach is the manner in which demands on police services have expanded in recent years. In 2014, the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire reported that his officers spent just 25 per cent of their time investigating crime while almost half of their work related to ‘things other agencies are increasingly moving away from because of their own budget cuts’. This assertion was backed up in an analysis by the College of Policing in 2015 which found that non-crime-related incidents accounted for 83 per cent of all calls to police Command and Control Centres, while the Metropolitan Police estimated that 15 to 20 per cent of incidents reported to police in London were linked to mental health.
One American commentator has written that:
“Part of the problem is that for decades now, communities have been told that the only resource they can have to address their community problems is more policing and more incarceration. Communities that have very real crime and public safety problems are desperate for help, and if the only thing on offer is policing, they’ll ask for policing.”
The latest proposal of the early release of prisoners is an understandable immediate response to the current prison crisis, but it will be no more than a sticking plaster unless it is a prelude to radical reform. A Justice Reinvestment approach would have the potential to end the excessive societal dependence on criminal justice. It may also hold the promise of deeper systemic reform, one which recognises that the resolution of issues of public safety must involve the engagement of other institutions in civil society including health and housing, workforce development, family and child welfare.
Crucially, it will also have to address the need for local solutions to local problems. In this respect, the commitment which the Prime Minister has already made to seek a greater role for Metro Mayors in many matters may be a first tentative step in this direction.
Finally, we might be permitted a degree of optimism that the new Prisons Minister, James Timpson, has managed a national company with strong local roots in its operations and has an excellent track record in providing meaningful employment for many former offenders.
Andrew Coyle is Emeritus Professor of Prison Studies at the University of London. Following a distinguished career as a prison governor he became founding Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies in King’s College London and has spent many years advising national governments and international agencies on prison-related issues in over 70 countries.
Prisons of the World by Andrew Coyle is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £21.99.
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