NEW SPS UPDATE
The latest news coming out of the Scottish Prison Service is that the release of the Industries review has been delayed yet again. Apparently it has been decided that "further work was necessary, to provide the level of detail appropriate, to make informed decisions on what activities that prisoners should engage in to help with the aim of reducing recidivism" according to a Freedom of Information request. "This work was allocated to a senior manager in June 2009 and is now ongoing. As a result of the level of detail being analysed as part of this task, it is unlikely that it will concluded until 2010. [18/08/09]
FINE CELL WORK
In the Independent on Sunday 16 Aug there was an article about Anne Tree and the Fine Cell Work charity she set up entitled 'They all got the needle with me' (also on-line under the slightly more comprehensible title 'Meet the aristocrat who's got prisoners in stitches'). Fine Cell Work, for those who have not come across it before in the pages of the Sunday colour supplements or who have not seen its products in the V&A or heard about its commissioning to recreate tapestries for the newly refurbished Dover Castle, is "a social enterprise that teaches needlework to prison inmates and sells their products", to quote their website.
Ms. Tree herself is the daughter of the 10th Duke of Devonshire and freely refers to herself as "a Victorian do-gooder who had a calling to help people in prison who weren't being helped otherwise." In her time she has been a prison visitor, deputy entertainments officer at Wandsworth Prison and introduced ex-Labour Cabinet minister Lord Longford to Myra Hindley.
Her plan for Fine Cell Work was "to provide prisoners with "real" work to do while in jail that would pay them enough to provide a small nest egg to ease their re-entry into society on release." A laudable sentiment you would say. However, some would say the reality is slightly different.
The article claims that the charity "employs 350 inmates in 26 prisons ... each earning up to £500 a year making intricate, high-quality cushion covers and rugs." Sounds good, but the Fine Cell Work website, which displays prisoner-made cushions for sale at £50-£195 and patchwork quits costing up to £1200, claims that the 403 prisoners it employed in 2008 earned £61,890. A swift calculation using those figures gives an average of £153 each that year or less than £3 for the 20 hours work a week the average prisoner works.
The fact that the work is done by prisoners banged-up in their cells on their own time should mean that what they earn is extra to their IEP wages and might lead to the prisoners accruing a "small nest egg" over the average 3 years they work for the charity. Yet, a wage rate of 15p an hour is not particularly good, even by prison standards.
That is not to say that Fine Cell Work does not also give an opportunity for prisoners, 80% of whom are men, to learn new skills and many Fine Cell Work alumini testify to benefits like increased self-confidence and self-worth. And we certainly need more social enterprises to be established in UK prisons to help create some meaningful work opportunities for prisoners whose opportunities are often limited to cleaning, laundry and kitchen work or some mind-numbing low-skill high-tedium Contract Services job. Unfortunately the only notable examples of prison-based social enterprises have been the defunct Barbed design studio at HMP Coldingley, The Clink restaurant at HMP High Down and the market gardening Community Interest Company at HMP Erlestoke.
Yet we really need projects that prisoners can become actively involved in the day-to-day running of as well as gaining real skills and financial benefit from, rather than serving food to people in a restaurant that you are unable to eat in and from which you gain no financial benefit other that normal prison wages, as happens at The Clink. To that end the Community Interest Company model as used at Erlestoke is much the preferable because of the real involvement of the prisoners themselves in running the enterprise rather than it just being paid lip service by the Prison Service. [18/08/09]
TRAINING PRISON FAILS TO TRAIN
HMP & YOI Parc, a Category B local training prison run by G4S, has been criticised by the HM Inspector of Prisons, following an unannounced inspection, for failing to carry out its role as a training prison. The official report said there were only 70 education and 289 work places for 1,200 male prisoners at the private jail, resulting in the majority being banged up all day.
Anne Owers went even further and said, "Parc is Wales' only generic training prison and at present it is unequipped to perform that role. Welsh prisoners therefore either need to leave Wales, or to miss out on the education and training opportunities they need in order to increase their life chances outside prison."
This follows an announced inspection in January 2006 that found among others things that: "At the time of our visit 199 prisoners were unemployed. Although most prisoners were allocated to work places, for many there was in fact no work. On one morning of the inspection, only 6 out of the 69 prisoners in workshops were actually working. Some of the work was repetitive and tedious, and offered little skills training."
"The claim made to inspectors that this nevertheless instilled a ‘work ethic’ was scarcely credible. There was little work skills training, and the quality of education was poor – this was particularly unacceptable for the prison’s juvenile population."
There was also "insufficient work and skills training, and delivery of education, particularly to juveniles, was weak. Prisoners’ time out of cell met contractual arrangements, but was inaccurately recorded, and there was insufficient activity to occupy them." [Feb 2009]
ASSOCIATION OF PRISONERS STATEMENT
It has just been announced that Ben Gunn has taken over from John Hirst as the General Secretary of the Association of Prisoners (AoP). The AoP is an ad-hoc association of serving prisoners originally formed in 2000. After a period of inactivity, recent moves by a number of prisoners has seen its reemergence and the AoP has decided to take on the government over the issue of prisoners' voting rights. Along with the voting issue, Ben has also pledged to take on the issue of prison labour in the area of Contract Services. [Feb 2009]
AoP STATEMENT
BOOKER/DHL GUILTY OF AGE DISCRIMINATION?
Many prisoners are only now feeling the full force of the recent change in their prison canteen supplier. In the change-over period Aramark, as everyone expected, "ramped up their prices to a stupid level", to quote one prisoner, and Booker/DHL have followed suit.
On top of that, Booker/DHL have almost halved the list of items that were previously available, with a loss of some 350 items has been widely reported, many of them being particularly popular amongst the customer base. One item some of the older members of the prison population are particularly rankled about losing is their denture fixative! As the same prisoner said, this loss "has led to some mumbling. It would be screams but their teeth fell out..."
However, this is not a laughing matter, it is merely another illustration of the standard lack of consideration of prisoners' needs shown by canteen suppliers that they have long been resigned to.
SCOTTISH PRISON SERVICE INDUSTRIES REVIEW COMPLETED
We understand that the long mooted review of SPS Industries by Paula Arnold, ex-Deputy Head of Industries, has been completed and has been handed over to the SPS Board for consideration.
Amongst the items that we are told are covered is the fact that there is something like £400,000 of stock of SPS Industries' Athol garden furniture stock crammed into every available space at the Fauldhouse depot. It appears that whilst new stock has arrived, there has hardly been any stock leaving via sales and this has been the case well before the 'credit crunch' arrived. All this stock has been made at the Scottish tax payers' expense and some of it has been there for so long (we are told that a number of stock lines have not sold in years) that some of it is rotting. No wonder the annual income of the Industries department has plummeted in recent years [see] and, as we come to the end of the current financial year, this situation will again make a large dent in the Scottish Prison Service's annual returns
It also appears that the number is up for the very same Fauldhouse depot and its staff. The place is just too costly to remain a viable option, especially if we see the end of Industries as a whole.
As a reward for clutching the poisoned chalice of the review, with the inevitable task of recommending the redundancy of some of the people that she has worked with for years, Paula Arnold has just moved to the position of Operations Manager at HMP Glenochil despite her preferred option of Deputy Governor at HMP & YOI Corton Vale (more office politics we understand).
We await the publishing of the review with batted breath and can only hope that it will be the final nail in the coffin of SPS Industries and that Scottish prisoners will end up with proper training programs that will equip them with the sort of useful skills that will get them a decent job on the outside, rather than some McJob whilst being exploited for profit by SPS Industries and Contract Services. [Jan 2009]
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