The Case Against Private Prisons

Originally published on Left Foot Forward

The right-wing think tank Reform has published a report claiming that private firms are better at running prisons. 'The case for private prisons' criticises the government for moving away from the wholesale privatisation of the prison estate, claiming that private prisons, introduced in England and Wales in the 1990's, are more cost-effective and better managing offenders than public prisons.

Reform's headline claim is that private prisons have lower rates of re-offending than their public sector counterparts. A cursory glance at their statistics does indeed show that seven out of ten comparable private prisons in England and Wales have lower than average rates of re-offending.

But a fundamental problem with Reform's analysis is that prisons are not the only factor influencing recidivism. Home Office research has shown that the quality of post-release support has just as significant an impact on re-offending and therefore the performance of local - public sector - Probation Trusts must also be taken into account.

Five of the seven private prisons held up for lower than average re-offending rates turn out to be in probation areas with lower than average re-offending; so attributing this success to an individual prison is problematic.

Indeed within some probation areas private sector prisons are performing significantly worse than comparable public sector institutions. The private male local prison HMP Forest Bank has a re-offending rate of 60.48% amongst short-term prisoners. This is below the national average of 62.33% but significantly higher than HMP Manchester; a public sector male local prison within the same probation area. HMP Altcourse has a re-offending rate of 60.43% amongst short-term prisoners; again better than the national average but significantly worse than HMP Liverpool, a comparable local prison.

Beyond its dodgy re-offending claims, 'The case for private prisons' utilises very selective statistics to support its other key arguments.

The report claims that 'in 1997-8, one study found that contracted prisons provided between 0.6 and 1.6 hours more out of cells per weekday than public sector'. This is true, but more recent 2010 research by the Prison Reform Trust has found that inmates in private prisons spend significantly more time locked in cells than those in public sector prisons. This evidence was completely ignored in the report.

The report claims that per-place costs are lower in private sector prisons, again relying on research from 1998. This ignores statistics provided by the National Offender Management Service in 2007 which showed that the per-place costs of private prisons were significantly higher than public sector prisons.

Chris Poyner, president of the Public and Commercial Services union's National Offender Management Service group has called prison privatisation 'a national scandal', pointing out that;

"multimillion-pound global companies are being handed huge amounts of taxpayers' money to profit from locking people up by cutting staff and working conditions."

There is in fact no solid evidence that private prisons are better than their public sector counterparts. Audits have however found that inexperienced staff and cost cutting measures have left many private prisons struggling to create a safe environment for prisoners.

Reform's clumsy, agenda driven research and bad statistics only go to show the inherent weakness of their position.

Joe Cottrell-Boyce

Travellers Count

Article published in Inside Time; the national newspaper for prisoners.

Gypsies and Travellers are a tiny minority group in Britain, making up around 0.5% of the population and often living separate, parallel lives to the wider community. Knowledge of these communities, which according to the Department for Communities and Local Government are ‘the most excluded ethnic minority groups in British society’, is all too often informed by sensational stories in the Sun or Daily Mail, or more recently by the ratings-grabbing ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’.

 

The TV shows and headlines fail to capture the grim reality of exclusion and deprivation faced by Travellers in modern Britain: Life expectancy is 12 years below the national average, infant mortality is higher than for any other group, illiteracy rates are off the scale and 25% of Gypsy and Traveller children are not enrolled in education.

Travellers are also massively over-represented in British prisons. HM Inspectorate reports reveal that Gypsy and Travellers make up 5% of prisoners in male Category B Prisons and 7% of prisoners in local female prisons.

A NOMS’ Race Review in 2008 noted ‘particular concerns relating to Gypsy Traveller Roma prisoners’ including ‘difficulties accessing services, including offender behaviour programmes, as the literacy level required was too high, derogatory and racist name calling primarily by prisoners, and by some staff… lack of confidence in the complaints system and the lack of cultural awareness and understanding of staff.’

Until recently, Travellers were not included in NOMS ethnic monitoring, meaning that even where large populations existed, their needs could effectively be ignored. A 2011 inspection of Wormwood Scrubs for example noted that although 9% of prisoners came from a Gypsy or Traveller backgrounds there was ‘no attempt to identify and meet the needs of this population’.

It was for these reasons that the Irish Chaplaincy launched the ‘Voices Unheard’ research project in 2010, to look at the experiences of Travellers in prison. Some key findings from the research were that:

• A lack of monitoring had led to a failure to formulate or implement measures to ensure equality of opportunity for this prisoner group.

• Traveller prisoners often felt extremely isolated when cut off from other community members in prison, leading to incidents of self harm and suicide.

• 59.3 % of Traveller prisoners were identified as requiring basic educational intervention.

• Travellers faced particular problems around resettlement, often due to assumptions by resettlement and probation staff that Traveller sites were unsuitable accommodation for release on licence.

In the course of the research we also came across many examples of prison staff doing excellent work with Gypsy and Irish Traveller prisoners. In HMP The Mount for example, a ‘Traveller rep’ had been appointed who was involved in inductions and advocating on behalf of other Gypsy and Traveller prisoners. HMP Highdown had organised Gypsy and Traveller History Month events for the past two years which had helped overcome the perception of many Travellers that their culture was not valued or respected in the same way as other minority groups.

Across the prison estate the ‘Toe by Toe’ reading programme run by The Shannon Trust appeared to be extremely popular with Traveller prisoners. Having never had any formal schooling many Travellers found that even the most basic literacy classes in prison were beyond their current ability and as a result they were too embarrassed to attend. The one-to-one mentoring approach of Toe-by-Toe overcame this stigma and has a proven track record of success with this group.

In September 2011 the code ‘W3’ for ‘Gypsy or Irish Traveller’ was included on the P-Nomis offender management system for the first time. This is an important development for Gypsy and Traveller prisoners as it meant that for the first time the prison service will have official figures on the number of prisoners from these groups. Knowing more about the size and distribution of the Gypsy and Traveller population will allow the Prison Service to work more effectively with these groups, and provide more resources to meet their particular needs.

But although the code exists, many prisons are not effectively using it and many Traveller prisoners are still being categorised as ‘White British’ or ‘White Irish’. Prison staff working on induction will need to be more proactive; giving prisoners the full list of available ethnic codes to choose from and not making assumptions. The inclusion of Traveller diversity reps at induction in some prisons has proved a particularly effective way of encouraging Travellers to declare their identity.

If you are a Gypsy or Traveller prisoner and would like to be recorded as such, then you can apply to be changed to ‘W3’ on P-Nomis at any time.

Being counted means that you count. If Gypsy and Traveller prisoners are being recorded then more attention will have to be given to their needs.

Joe Cottrell-Boyce

Anti-Traveller attitudes continue to go unchallenged in Britain

From Left Foot Forward

When my mother came to England in the 1950s to work as a nurse, the signs on the boarding houses said ‘No Blacks, No Irish.’ She described it as normal.

You couldn’t get away with putting up signs like that now.

That’s what I thought. Or really, what I thought was that nobody, even if they were racist, would be stupid enough to erect signs like that and attract the attention of the police.

I was wrong. And I was wrong on two counts. Firstly, because there are people stupid enough to put up the signs. Secondly, because I assumed that the police and the CPS would pursue these people under race relations legislation.

Before Christmas, I was walking up through a back street in north London when I noticed a pub that had a sign that read ‘Travellers strictly by appointment only.’

I thought it was a mistake, so the next day I went back to the pub with my colleague Joe.The signs were there alright – three of them making it clear that Travellers weren’t wanted.

Even though I’ve heard a lot of racism towards Travellers, I was surprised that in multi-cultural London a sign like that could remain in the open for some time. We took photos and reported the sign to the police, who promised they would investigate.

I went to the police station and made a long statement, stressing the seriousness of the crime. I made the point that such racist incidences prevent Travellers from getting legal work and getting on with their lives.

I stated that when there are signs like that it’s not surprising that many Travellers in prison point to discrimination in schools and society as one factor that put them on the path to offending.

I stressed that, like everybody else, Travellers have a responsibility for their own actions. But I added that whenever Travellers as a group are singled out for unfair treatment it just means this section of society feel unjustly treated. Then everybody loses.

It is in the interests of the police and society that they pursue these cases of discrimination, otherwise Travellers will rightly feel aggrieved and disconnected.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Islington Police Station. The CPS have decided not to pursue any action against the pub.

The next time I’m in a prison and a young man whispers to me that at school he had to stand on a chair in assembly while he was called a ‘dirty gypo,’ I’ll think, like my mother, that that’s normal.