When Michael Howard was home secretary, he infamously declared to a rapturous conservative party conference that "Prison works". Since then, successive home secretaries and prison ministers have followed that mantra, if not by word, then certainly by deed, resulting in an all time record prison population.
In fairness to Howard, he qualified his remark by making the, fairly obvious, observation that criminals could not commit crimes while they were in prison. (Not strictly true actually; illegal drugs and violence both flourish within the penal system, but we take the point.) However he omitted to add that criminals did-and do-make up for lost time when they are released from jail.
The current re-offending rates are around 65% across the board, rising to over 75% for young offenders. And they are not the true figures, they are based on the number of ex-prisoners who are caught re-offending within two years of release. (By that calculation, I was always regarded as a prison 'success' story, because I was rarely, if ever, re-convicted within two years of leaving prison-but in fact, after a suitable period of acclimatisation, I swiftly returned to crime as a means of making a living.)
Refreshing then to meet a politician who admits the truth about the penal system, as I did last week, when interviewing the current prisons minister, David Hanson. That the prison service is in a mess is undeniable; overcrowding, rising numbers of prisoners with mental health problems, self-harm and suicide rates on the increase and industrial unrest among prison officers are just a sample of the problems facing those charged with running our jails. The last thing we need now is another prisons minister agreeing that prison works.
Hanson says the opposite, stating categorically that the re-offending rates signify failure, especially among young offenders who, if left unchecked, will run up a bill far in excess of the cost of the crimes they commit. He was equally frank on the issue of mental health in prisons, a topic that previous ministers have dodged. Since the Thatcher government closed down most of the remaining long-stay mental hospitals, supposedly replacing them with care in the community, people with mental health problems have been packed into the penal system at an ever-increasing rate.
Two years ago, I visited Holloway prison and, in the segregation unit, met a middle-aged woman, prone to harming herself and others. I asked her how the staff were treating her.
"I am raped and tortured on a daily basis" she replied.
A few minutes later I repeated the question.
"They are lovely people; we're having jerk chicken for lunch, can I come out and play afterwards?"
Whatever ailed that poor woman, solitary confinement was never going to cure her, nor the thousands like her, currently in the penal system.
Hanson says "We are ready to take on the challenge of mental health". If he does - and transfers the sufferers to more appropriate institutions - he can forget the proposed prison building programme, because that single humanitarian act would free up thousands of places in the penal estate. Then the government could scrap plans for the "Titan" prisons, holding some 2,500 inmates, a move that goes against all considered opinion and evidence. Almost all of the biggest 'scandals' that have beset the prison system have occurred in the biggest jails. Few prisons 'work', but the biggest jails work least of all.
