Violence inside prisons in England and Wales is at its most serious level ever and is getting worse, the new chair of the parole board has warned.
Prof Nick Hardwick said that the stabbing inside Pentonville prison on Monday was “the most extreme example of the decline in safety” that he and others have warned about for years.
In his Howard League Parmoor lecture, he says that without “a very substantial increase in staffing levels” ambitious government plans to improve rehabilitation and education or tackle extremism “are simply not achievable”.
He welcomed a £14m scheme to recruit 400 extra staff at the 10 worst prisons, which was announced two weeks ago by the justice secretary Liz Truss. But he added: “It does not compensate for the thousands of extra staff who have been taken out of prisons over the last few years and I am afraid a lot more than 10 prisons are in trouble.
“The meaning of the increase in suicides, assaults and murders we are seeing now is not just the awful consequences for the prisoners, staff and families involved but the evidence they provide of a loss of control of our prisons.”
Hardwick, who is the former chief inspector of prisons, said Truss and her justice ministers fully understand the gravity of the situation and the need for a very substantial increase in staffing.
“The 400 extra staff must be just the first immediate step,” he said. “The problem is now of such a scale, and the resources required to address it so significant, that it will take a government-wide commitment to address it in the next spending round. And whether government as a whole understands the problem I don’t know.”
He rejected the prison governors’ association call for a public inquiry, describing it as a “cry of anguish”, but said the last thing that was needed now was to wait for an inquiry report before action was taken.
Hardwick said that if staffing numbers cannot be increased quickly then the record 85,000 prison population needs to be reduced. As the new chair of the parole board, he says it is not for him to advocate radical sentencing or population management changes but ministers do need to be looking at all options.
Instead he set out a plan to cut prison numbers in one area he is responsible for – the release of 3,263 prisoners serving imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences who have past their initial “tariff” period but have no set release date.
He said the parole board could resolve some of the problems surrounding one group of IPP prisoners who have mental health problems or have chaotic lifestyles but do not pose a risk of serious further offending and could be managed in the community. He gave the example of an elderly and frail sex offender at one recent parole hearing who could be released to a care home provided he had no contact with children but the difficulty lay in finding a care home prepared to take him.
“If the parole board can resolve some of these issues and continue to make the progress it has been making, and if nothing else changes, we estimate we can get the number of IPP prisoners down to about 2,000 by 2020.”
Ministers could go further, and more quickly, by considering the options of compassionate release for a small number of IPP prisoners by making it easier to release short-term IPPs with tariffs of less than two years and reduce recalls after their release by limiting licence periods.
Justice ministers confirmed in the House of Lords on Thursday that a prison safety and reform white paper will be published shortly to be followed by legislation in the new year. Richard Keen, for the government, said safe and secure prisons were a fundamental part of ministers’ reform ambitions.
