Joe Black - Want To Buy A Prison System? Only One Previous & Not So Careful Owner.

 

'Breaking the Cycle', the Coalition's Green Paper on "Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders" [clearly illustrating the true priorities of the so-called 'Rehabilitation Revolution'], was published last month (December 2010), generating a rather confused response amongst commentators. The Tory tabloids and (what is laughingly called) the quality Tory press, having already painted renown Thatcher-era 'Wet' Justice Secretary Ken Clarke as a fifth-columnist in Conservative ranks, were by-and-large hostile, accusing Coalition ministers of betraying core Conservative principles.

For example, under the headline 'Get out of jail free', the Sun claimed "Thousands of thugs are to dodge jail after the Tories yesterday ditched their vow to get tough on crime." However, the prime target for their ire was inevitably Clarke himself: "Lock him up" fumed (ex-SWP and nominal Labour Party member) Rod Liddle in his Spectator column, with the Sun even threatening a prolonged campaign against and his reforms Clarke (a "hand-wringing social worker" who will make Britain a "criminal paradise").

THE TORY TALIBAN

Strangely the Daily Mail choose not to attack Clarke directly (in fact claiming to support his 'gamble' in emphasising "rehabilitating criminals and reducing Britain’s terrifying reoffending rates"), though they still managed to give plenty of space to members of the Tory Taliban such as Philip Davies and to the sort of right-whinge pressure groups, such as Civitas (home of failed Labour local councilor, sociologist and incompetent statistician turned self-proclaimed 'criminologist' David Green *), that masquerade as responsible 'academic' bodies i.e. 'think tanks', pet projects for the wealthy and/or well-connected Rightist political ‘hobbyist’.

The latter is also the 'spiritual guardian' of the 'Prison Works' flame and it was inevitable that, following Clarke's Green Paper launch, the head of the Church, St. Michael Howard himself, was seen to rise from his coffin. Swooping to defend the PW credo, he resurrected his long-standing vendetta with Clarke claiming, contrary to Clarke's vociferous defence of his own position, that prison does in fact work and that there is plenty of 'evidence' to back up such a claim. The current Home Secretary Theresa May was another high-profile supporter of the PW tenet, no doubt part of some behind-the-scenes turf battle between departments.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

Needless to say, a number of other usual suspects such as the Labour Party, in the guise of Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan, the Daily Mirror ('Thousands to escape jail under new ConDem plans') and the Prison Officers Association were equally as vociferous in their condemnation of the Green paper and the abandonment of the sort of 'American-style' sentencing policies that the Party had vigorously pursued for the past decade and a half whilst in power.

The POA of course had its own best interests in mind rather than the Labour Party's as it stands to loose a significant part of its income through lost membership fees with anywhere between 1-2000 screws slated to loose their jobs through the cuts. Those on the liberal Left and the majority of prison reformers largely welcomed the Green Paper, a number of the latter no doubt seeing it as an ideal opportunity to gain greater influence within the industry on the back of the 'Big Society'.

However, the one group unreservedly rubbing their hands at the news were the outsourcing firms such as G4S, Serco and Sodexho. They, like Harry Fletcher assistant general secretary of NAPO (the only voice of note to condemn the Green Paper for what it is, a plan "to drive down costs and introduce the private sector"), see it as the next stage in the progressive 'marketisation' (sic) of the 'justice' sector, something oddly that those defenders of the Free Market the Tory press steadfastly chose not to highlight.

NEO-VICTORIANISM

None of this should come as anything of a surprise to anybody given past history and it’s not as though the Tories had not flagged all of this up in their policy paper ‘Prisons With A Purpose’ back in 2008. It’s all there, the full Neo-Victorian ‘Rehabilitation Revolution’ (including coining of the phrase) beefing-up 'punishment and payback' (sic):
● prisons to become "places of hard work and industry";
● tougher community sentences with tagging, curfews & unpaid work;
● increasing the collection of fines including the seizure of private property in lieu of unpaid fines/costs;
● a stronger emphasis on compensation for victims of crime;
● introduction of 'decentralisation' and competition with ‘Integrated Offender Management’ via ‘Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts’ [independent fee-earning public sector prisons and probation trusts];
● deportation of Foreign National Prisoners at the end of their sentence;
● divert less serious offenders with mental illness and drug dependency into treatment rather than prison;
● ‘payment by results’ rehabilitation schemes,
● reform of sentencing - simplify / abolish mandatory minimum sentences / cut back on IPP for all except most serious offenders / increase the use of financial penalties;
● localising youth justice and making local authorities responsible for youth detention.

And with much of this being overseen by directly elected local Police and Crime Commissioners and involving Neighbourhood Justice Panels. We were warned.

 

 

What was not carried forward from ‘Prisons With A Purpose’, much to the dismay of the ‘Law & Order Brigade’ was the populist Tory pledge from the election that anyone convicted of carrying a knife would face an automatic jail sentence, along with plans to build the Prison Service out of its overcrowding predicament – 5,000 more places than New Labour had planned – scrapped in favour of Clarke’s rolling back of sentences of less than 6 months and the plan for minimum-maximum sentences (too expensive apparently). Other innovations include proposals to halve sentences for those who plead guilty as early as possible (likely to provide half the reduction in prison numbers promised) and to end mandatory minimum sentences. The announcement of the latter proved an innovation too far and brought an immediate slapping down by David Cameron, already spooked by some of Clarke’s more controversial (read: liberal) pronouncements, and rumours of an en mass MoJ reshuffle.

THE FAG END

So, what are we left with? Well, firstly we have a Right of Centre political grouping pushing an agenda of mass privatisation of the Prison Service (together with an already effectively ‘privatised’ Probation Service) under the guise of ‘decentralisation’ and the ‘localisation of services’, all regulated via a series of Prison Service Instructions laying out the basis for a national framework for ‘offender management’ that will be operated at the local level [Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts] and paid for on the basis of outcomes – the more ex-prisoners they keep out of prison and they longer they do so, the more money they will get.

Unfortunately this could only possibly succeed (if at all) at anything approaching a recognisable ‘local level’ where they are large population densities and a profusion of prison places and types. The reason for this is that most prisoners, even those on the shortest of sentences ended up getting shunted around the country from prison to prison which, under the proposed new structure, would mean from Trust to Trust. Who would take responsibility for such a prisoner’s post-release behaviour? Certainly not the governor of his last prison. What would happen in Wales where there are only four prisons and they are all in the South and 3 of those are Young Offenders Institutions?

Then there’s the problem of the need to invest in the management of large numbers of prisoners that a Trust would receive their ‘payment by results’ for (beyond the day to day costs of incarceration one assumes) after 2 years of ‘non-offending’ (whatever the criteria fir that are). This inevitably rules out the myriad of small local ‘providers’ operating in favour of the large Prison Industrial Complex corporations mentioned earlier. Which, let’s face it is, is more or less what the whole scheme is about (even if it is disguised as a cost-cutting measure): lucrative contracts for a small coterie of favoured transnational companies with the possibility of a lucrative position for ex-ministers on the company board when ministers leave parliament.

So, even if he does succeed in abandoning the past couple of decades’ fanatical pursuit of 'American-style' sentencing policies, Ken Clarke’s helming of the Green Paper’s reforms might just leave England and Wales with a prison system where the private sector will have made much greater inroads than they have so far managed anywhere else in the world, including the U.S.A..

 

* David Green's response to 'Breaking the Cycle' was an article in the Daily Mail entitled 'Prison does work, Ken, and here's the proof', which inevitably repeated his and his fellow PW-followers' obligatory and basic error of logic in mistaking correlative evidence (better imprisonment rates and crime rates) for evidence of causation.